‘Witless Vulgarity’
A new study of reality TV audiences challenges lazy assumptions about the shows and their viewers. Annette Hill wants the critics to take a fresh look
Culture
Frontline Films
Mitchell Miller on two close-up views of the Arab-Israeli conflict
Spectre at the Feast
Jim Herrick enters the murky world of the ghost writer
Private Urgencies
Sarah Lawson is wowed by a progressive poet
Smoke and Mirrors
Wendy Grossman learns a few tricks from Jim Steinmeyer
Divine comedy
Popetowns associate producer, Stacy Herbert, on the farcical story of how the BBC bowed to religious pressure
Throwing Up
Chris Paling is left queasy by Alice Walker
Heavenly bodies
Laurie Taylor finds himself at a feast that's impossible to swallow
Beats, rhymes and grime
As record companies play safe by producing bland supermarket pop, Caspar Melville hopes an unlikely contender - British hip hop - will succeed in bringing music back to life
Anarchist with attitude: Laurie Taylor interviews Linda Smith
Comedian Linda Smith, who died in 2006, was the president of the British Humanist Association. In this interview from 2004 she talks to Laurie Taylor about atheism, authority and her…