I thought old age was the price paid for a long life. But longevity on the cheap was the pursuit in Horizon: Don't Grow Old (BBC Two). Apparently, the study of ageing is a young field and preventing it is probably the modern equivalent of alchemy. One scientist described growing old as like having multiple sticks of dynamite inside our bodies, all on different-length fuses. I have laid off the firey foods just in case.
Another scientist, determined to stick around for a century or two, discussed "telomere shortening". I couldn't tell my telomeres from my tonsils, but I just grasped the fact that you need long telomeres for longevity. If you need long hair as well, I'm done for.
Calorie reduction is supposed to keep mice young, so a couple of Peter Pan wannabes in their sixties, determined to clock up 120 years on earth, had been starving themselves for years. They weighed their portions and weighed in their torsos with the fierce attention to detail you usually only see at an airport check-in desk. They definitely had nothing to declare.
Their secret was a large breakfast and small lunch. Dinner was just a walk in the park. They could simply have chained themselves in a dungeon to make the torture authentic. I would rather desert the planet before dessert arrives than miss out on life's main course - a decent meal.
David Sinclair, with $270 million to invest in the search for eternal youth after selling his company, cunningly bypassed starvation pains by finding a drug to mimic the effects of not eating while still stuffing himself normally. He was taking something untested called resveratrol. I would volunteer to spread it on my fish and chips, too, if it meant avoiding radishes.
Anorexia was followed by tanorexia in The Truth about Tanning (BBC Three). If you want to forget youth and go straight for ageing, a daily sunbed will bring wrinkles and crinkles galore. Girls Aloud star Nicola Roberts, formerly tanned but now a whiter shade of pale, shone light on the pitfalls of sun exposure, urging addicts to break free.
We saw girls in Liverpool, the UK tanning capital, burning malignant melanomas into their skin in the many unregulated salons that promise beauty but deliver death. With 2,000 fatalities a year, melanomas are the fastest growing form of skin cancer. Nicola's alabaster hue was proof that, for the naturally light, white is right.
Hardcore tanner Tom dreamed of being olive skinned. Months of ultraviolet rays - 15 times stronger than the midday sun - had given him the complexion of a radioactive goldfish. Tom used injections to stay the colour of an amber traffic light. These had the side effect of causing erections. So it wasn't all pointless.
His challenge from Nicola, a sunbed-free month, sent him swigging the bottle in depression. His skin may have been in for repair but his liver was now in a toxic stew. As for his telomeres, it's probably better not to know.
Ray Tarleton
Monday, 22 February 2010
Friday, 12 February 2010
Tune in, Switch off - Mandela and Mo make us take notice
As a teacher in Zambia in the 1970s, I came to love Africa and its people, despite occasionally experiencing the discomforting hostility a few understandably felt for their "former colonial masters", as a message on the staffroom board once described us. South Africa remained out of bounds because of its racist regime, but the landscapes were memorably captured in the location shots in Mrs Mandela (BBC Two).
A lorry chugging along a dirt road, taking Winnie (Sophie Okonedo) from her home to a grim shanty town, reminded me of the dust, distances and danger. I once took the cast of a school play by truck on such roads to perform in a village miles away. I was into community cohesion even before it was invented.
Told in flashbacks from the magic moment of her husband's release after 27 years' imprisonment, Okonedo's compellingly physical performance took us inside the painful heart of Winnie's tortured life.
During visits to Nelson's Robben Island prison, she endured de-humanising conversations with him behind a glass screen. No wonder the marriage was doomed: she would have had more chance of a relationship with cashier number three in the Post Office. And the house search harassments by the petty police were more regular than trains on the Northern Line.
David Morrissey's Major Swanepoel, a spit-spraying torturer with turbo-charged saliva glands and face like a puff adder, was only just on the right side of deranged as he tried to break her indomitable spirit during her own 18 months in prison.
He taught her hatred; she believed it liberated her. In fact, it made her the monster - abused turned abuser - who later sanctioned the murder of Stompie Seipei.
There were symbolic victories such as a Rosa Parks moment when she insisted on buying and wearing a dress from a whites-only store. It was bright yellow - the colour of the African National Congress - and you could feel power shifting through the force of her personality. "When she walks into a room the sun comes with her," said Nelson Mandela. But years clouded by brutality led to her eclipse.
Like Winnie, Mo Mowlam also brought sun and fun into any room she entered, using her personality to change history. Julie Walters' triumphant portrayal in Mo (Channel 4), screened just as Northern Ireland politicians were again locked in negotiations, reminded us how Mowlam's fearless, no-nonsense passion helped secure the Good Friday Agreement while coping with a malignant brain tumour.
Alcohol, cigarettes, swearing and sex kept her going. "Disinhibition", a symptom of the illness, meant she just got stuck in, showing Lord Trimble her suitably coloured orange knickers and telling negotiators: "No cocks on the table."
To us, Tony Blair may have been Prime Minister, but to her he was "babe". Although as she was demoted he became an expletive-blasted bastard.
Julia Langdon, Mowlam's biographer, claims that Mo was part of the Durham University drug-taking and drinking scene in the late 1960s. As her contemporary at Durham, I'm disappointed I wasn't invited.
Ray Tarleton
A lorry chugging along a dirt road, taking Winnie (Sophie Okonedo) from her home to a grim shanty town, reminded me of the dust, distances and danger. I once took the cast of a school play by truck on such roads to perform in a village miles away. I was into community cohesion even before it was invented.
Told in flashbacks from the magic moment of her husband's release after 27 years' imprisonment, Okonedo's compellingly physical performance took us inside the painful heart of Winnie's tortured life.
During visits to Nelson's Robben Island prison, she endured de-humanising conversations with him behind a glass screen. No wonder the marriage was doomed: she would have had more chance of a relationship with cashier number three in the Post Office. And the house search harassments by the petty police were more regular than trains on the Northern Line.
David Morrissey's Major Swanepoel, a spit-spraying torturer with turbo-charged saliva glands and face like a puff adder, was only just on the right side of deranged as he tried to break her indomitable spirit during her own 18 months in prison.
He taught her hatred; she believed it liberated her. In fact, it made her the monster - abused turned abuser - who later sanctioned the murder of Stompie Seipei.
There were symbolic victories such as a Rosa Parks moment when she insisted on buying and wearing a dress from a whites-only store. It was bright yellow - the colour of the African National Congress - and you could feel power shifting through the force of her personality. "When she walks into a room the sun comes with her," said Nelson Mandela. But years clouded by brutality led to her eclipse.
Like Winnie, Mo Mowlam also brought sun and fun into any room she entered, using her personality to change history. Julie Walters' triumphant portrayal in Mo (Channel 4), screened just as Northern Ireland politicians were again locked in negotiations, reminded us how Mowlam's fearless, no-nonsense passion helped secure the Good Friday Agreement while coping with a malignant brain tumour.
Alcohol, cigarettes, swearing and sex kept her going. "Disinhibition", a symptom of the illness, meant she just got stuck in, showing Lord Trimble her suitably coloured orange knickers and telling negotiators: "No cocks on the table."
To us, Tony Blair may have been Prime Minister, but to her he was "babe". Although as she was demoted he became an expletive-blasted bastard.
Julia Langdon, Mowlam's biographer, claims that Mo was part of the Durham University drug-taking and drinking scene in the late 1960s. As her contemporary at Durham, I'm disappointed I wasn't invited.
Ray Tarleton
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Classy birds and culture to boot
Since the demise of the South Bank Show, viewers with a taste for the arts may have struggled to find something in the schedules to whet their appetite
But new series The Review Show (BBC Two), promised "cultural comment of the highest order". It was so high, in fact, that I had to turn down the volume. Guests gathered to talk about Obama's first year in office and the Oscar-tipped film Precious. As American politics fascinate me, and I had already watched and marvelled at this must-see movie, I was raring to go.
Kirsty Wark had only four in her group, but it sounded like 40. Viewpoints by the volume and comments by the crate load were poured out in simultaneous transmission. I was worried the neighbours would complain about the noise. It was like one of those "rounds" in music where each singer comes in a few bars after the previous one and then sings on, ignoring everyone else.
The clips, though, would be great for teacher training. Kirsty displayed classic "how not to do it" classroom control and talked over everyone. She would have struggled to collect dinner money from them.
The panel analysed Obama as if he were a work of art. A grey-garbed Bonnie Greer sighed, almost cried over the "pointy-headed intellectual", the "first viral president" who was now "breaking people's hearts". Apparently he was never real - just "a construct". Well, he has had me fooled all along.
Novelist Harry Kunzu described the President as "a nerd" who only became human when he announced the troop surge in Afghanistan. Apparently this meant he was no longer in charge of his own destiny. The most powerful person on the planet barely human and not in control? Where does that leave the rest of us, just struggling to get through to half-term?
In between trying to keep order, Kirsty even offered her own commentary. To her, Obama was a "global counter-cultural icon". I'm waiting for the A-level sociologists to explain that to me.
Paddy McGuinness displayed marginally better classroom management in the new Saturday night "pre-pub" offering, Take Me Out (ITV1). He lined up 30 love-shorn ladies, searching for a fella in a cross between Blind Date and Fifteen to One. Lights on screens indicated female acceptance. Tom from Surrey pranced around scratching his crotch like a peacock on heat to the screams of the teams. One rejected him because his skin was too tight - a "wind tunnel" look. But his fiery saxophone performance enabled Paddy to use an extinguisher and a double entendre at the same time. Then, roles reversed, Tom turned off the lights of the girls he had just turned on. I think the show is a cultural phenomenon, too, or should that be counter-cultural? I had better check with Kirsty.
Ray Tarleton
But new series The Review Show (BBC Two), promised "cultural comment of the highest order". It was so high, in fact, that I had to turn down the volume. Guests gathered to talk about Obama's first year in office and the Oscar-tipped film Precious. As American politics fascinate me, and I had already watched and marvelled at this must-see movie, I was raring to go.
Kirsty Wark had only four in her group, but it sounded like 40. Viewpoints by the volume and comments by the crate load were poured out in simultaneous transmission. I was worried the neighbours would complain about the noise. It was like one of those "rounds" in music where each singer comes in a few bars after the previous one and then sings on, ignoring everyone else.
The clips, though, would be great for teacher training. Kirsty displayed classic "how not to do it" classroom control and talked over everyone. She would have struggled to collect dinner money from them.
The panel analysed Obama as if he were a work of art. A grey-garbed Bonnie Greer sighed, almost cried over the "pointy-headed intellectual", the "first viral president" who was now "breaking people's hearts". Apparently he was never real - just "a construct". Well, he has had me fooled all along.
Novelist Harry Kunzu described the President as "a nerd" who only became human when he announced the troop surge in Afghanistan. Apparently this meant he was no longer in charge of his own destiny. The most powerful person on the planet barely human and not in control? Where does that leave the rest of us, just struggling to get through to half-term?
In between trying to keep order, Kirsty even offered her own commentary. To her, Obama was a "global counter-cultural icon". I'm waiting for the A-level sociologists to explain that to me.
Paddy McGuinness displayed marginally better classroom management in the new Saturday night "pre-pub" offering, Take Me Out (ITV1). He lined up 30 love-shorn ladies, searching for a fella in a cross between Blind Date and Fifteen to One. Lights on screens indicated female acceptance. Tom from Surrey pranced around scratching his crotch like a peacock on heat to the screams of the teams. One rejected him because his skin was too tight - a "wind tunnel" look. But his fiery saxophone performance enabled Paddy to use an extinguisher and a double entendre at the same time. Then, roles reversed, Tom turned off the lights of the girls he had just turned on. I think the show is a cultural phenomenon, too, or should that be counter-cultural? I had better check with Kirsty.
Ray Tarleton
Monday, 1 February 2010
Cameron's daft education speech is a bedtime story
Let me check I've got this right. Her Majesty's Opposition says that when in power they would boost the status of teachers, squeeze waste out of the system and free schools from government interference. But testing these three policy positions against the statements in the Conservative Party's draft education manifesto, unveiled last week, I wondered if David Cameron had been handed the wrong speech.
Teacher status should have been an easy one for him, but his vision of a "new, noble profession" battling a "broken society" was more Harry Potter than Harry at Agincourt. Has he been reading too many fairytales to his children? Doesn't he know that the present generation of teachers is the best trained and most skilled we've ever had?
When observing lessons, I'm frequently inspired by the preparation, shared assessment with students, innovative use of technology and engagement in learning. The buzz lifts me for days. It's happening like this in schools around the country and it wasn't like this when I started teaching. I'd struggle now as a newly qualified teacher.
Like a playground bully, Cameron took a cheap shot at those with third-class degrees, promising to be "brazenly elitist" and stop our taxes from funding their training. While degree classification might influence the selection of candidates at appointment, I'm more likely to be swayed by A-level grades and the university they attended. But I know, to my shame, that this kind of elitism is deeply flawed: one of the finest teachers I ever appointed, who went on to transform the standards in the subject as head of department, had weak A-levels and a degree from the equivalent of Grimsby Polytechnic.
In any case, in 2006/07, 92.6 per cent of first-year trainee teachers had a 2:2 or above, so why the fuss? The best graduates have been coming into teaching for years, succeeding in the classroom and gaining leadership positions. Enhanced training in schools in partnership with universities, and entitlement to study for higher degrees, with opportunities for development and research, are the best guarantees of quality.
By highlighting future applicants, Cameron also ignored all current teachers and the thousands of valuable support staff. He couldn't bring himself to acknowledge their achievements. His view that "half of pupils do not get five good GCSEs including English and maths", while technically accurate - the figure is 49.7 per cent - was a miserly critique from Mr Sunshine. Moreover, the figure was 35.6 per cent when his party left office - a dramatic 14 per cent lower. We've had over a decade of remarkable progress, so why not tell the true story?
The second big policy, cutting waste, was a detail-free zone. The bold warrior chose not to say where his axe would fall. Instead of reducing waste, the Tory policy of creating a massive number of surplus places to meet parental choice would increase it. I challenge him to spice up his dull story by naming the cuts.
To be helpful, here's a proposal for him to reduce waste. Time is always a limiting factor, so why not double the number of training days each year? The savings to the supply budgets would be enormous as schools wouldn't pay twice, once for teachers and again for their cover. The cost to the Exchequer would be zero. Shadow Chancellor George Osborne could put that in his waste pipe and smoke it.
Freeing schools from Whitehall interference, the third policy, was reflected in his plan to give headteachers the "power to use their budgets to pay bonuses to the best teachers". Sound familiar? That's because we already have those powers: they're called recruitment and retention points. If teachers don't see them used very often, it's because of budgetary constraints. It's not the power heads lack; it's the funding. As for "Obama-style" financial incentives to attract more science graduates into teaching, we got there before the Americans with our "golden hellos" and bursaries for shortage subjects. It's already happening, Sunshine.
There was nothing new in the proposal to make it easier for heads to "fire poorly performing teachers". Welcome to the new Tory fantasy land. Even Ryan Bingham, George Clooney's character in the film Up in the Air, whose job is to tell employees that their company is "letting them go", doesn't ever use the "f" word. No head would want to do a Bingham or behave like Alan Sugar on The Apprentice. We can move quickly to help an under-performing colleague improve their teaching or, with the support of their union, reach a compromise agreement. Even Sir Alan fires only when he's been properly briefed and can prove that an apprentice has failed.
Maddest of all was Cameron's freedom-loving commitment to introduce Swedish-style self-assembly schools by allowing "anyone with a passion for giving children the best to set up a new school". Now, I can predict that's a tale that won't have a happy ending.
You know, I really do think it's David's bedtime now, everybody. So let's thank him for a lovely story and hope he has a credible script next time he gives a speech.
Ray Tarleton
Teacher status should have been an easy one for him, but his vision of a "new, noble profession" battling a "broken society" was more Harry Potter than Harry at Agincourt. Has he been reading too many fairytales to his children? Doesn't he know that the present generation of teachers is the best trained and most skilled we've ever had?
When observing lessons, I'm frequently inspired by the preparation, shared assessment with students, innovative use of technology and engagement in learning. The buzz lifts me for days. It's happening like this in schools around the country and it wasn't like this when I started teaching. I'd struggle now as a newly qualified teacher.
Like a playground bully, Cameron took a cheap shot at those with third-class degrees, promising to be "brazenly elitist" and stop our taxes from funding their training. While degree classification might influence the selection of candidates at appointment, I'm more likely to be swayed by A-level grades and the university they attended. But I know, to my shame, that this kind of elitism is deeply flawed: one of the finest teachers I ever appointed, who went on to transform the standards in the subject as head of department, had weak A-levels and a degree from the equivalent of Grimsby Polytechnic.
In any case, in 2006/07, 92.6 per cent of first-year trainee teachers had a 2:2 or above, so why the fuss? The best graduates have been coming into teaching for years, succeeding in the classroom and gaining leadership positions. Enhanced training in schools in partnership with universities, and entitlement to study for higher degrees, with opportunities for development and research, are the best guarantees of quality.
By highlighting future applicants, Cameron also ignored all current teachers and the thousands of valuable support staff. He couldn't bring himself to acknowledge their achievements. His view that "half of pupils do not get five good GCSEs including English and maths", while technically accurate - the figure is 49.7 per cent - was a miserly critique from Mr Sunshine. Moreover, the figure was 35.6 per cent when his party left office - a dramatic 14 per cent lower. We've had over a decade of remarkable progress, so why not tell the true story?
The second big policy, cutting waste, was a detail-free zone. The bold warrior chose not to say where his axe would fall. Instead of reducing waste, the Tory policy of creating a massive number of surplus places to meet parental choice would increase it. I challenge him to spice up his dull story by naming the cuts.
To be helpful, here's a proposal for him to reduce waste. Time is always a limiting factor, so why not double the number of training days each year? The savings to the supply budgets would be enormous as schools wouldn't pay twice, once for teachers and again for their cover. The cost to the Exchequer would be zero. Shadow Chancellor George Osborne could put that in his waste pipe and smoke it.
Freeing schools from Whitehall interference, the third policy, was reflected in his plan to give headteachers the "power to use their budgets to pay bonuses to the best teachers". Sound familiar? That's because we already have those powers: they're called recruitment and retention points. If teachers don't see them used very often, it's because of budgetary constraints. It's not the power heads lack; it's the funding. As for "Obama-style" financial incentives to attract more science graduates into teaching, we got there before the Americans with our "golden hellos" and bursaries for shortage subjects. It's already happening, Sunshine.
There was nothing new in the proposal to make it easier for heads to "fire poorly performing teachers". Welcome to the new Tory fantasy land. Even Ryan Bingham, George Clooney's character in the film Up in the Air, whose job is to tell employees that their company is "letting them go", doesn't ever use the "f" word. No head would want to do a Bingham or behave like Alan Sugar on The Apprentice. We can move quickly to help an under-performing colleague improve their teaching or, with the support of their union, reach a compromise agreement. Even Sir Alan fires only when he's been properly briefed and can prove that an apprentice has failed.
Maddest of all was Cameron's freedom-loving commitment to introduce Swedish-style self-assembly schools by allowing "anyone with a passion for giving children the best to set up a new school". Now, I can predict that's a tale that won't have a happy ending.
You know, I really do think it's David's bedtime now, everybody. So let's thank him for a lovely story and hope he has a credible script next time he gives a speech.
Ray Tarleton
Tune in, switch off - Have a wail of a time
My subject is opera. I know, you are thinking dumpy divas, Wagnerian vibrato and staccato surtitles, or more probably by now, Match of the Day. But it may change your life: my wife was just like everyone else until she discovered opera.
So there was no fighting over the remote control when ITV1's new reality offering, Popstar to Operastar, an incestuous child of The X Factor, made its debut. And with mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins and tenor Rolando Villazon as mentors and judges, there seemed plenty to keep us both happy.
Eight chart-topping singers attempted to perform well-known operatic arias, accompanied by a live orchestra. The idea of extending people by developing new skills is admirable. It's called education and we do it every day.
Behind the scenes, we had glimpses of the coaching. "It's just like singing in a foreign language, really," observed one contestant, recognising an aria from the Stella advert. Even the presenters were out of their comfort zone. Alan Titchmarsh looked in need of his gardening gloves while Myleene Klass was squeezed into a dress so tight she gave the impression she'd had an out-of-body experience.
Blur's Alex James stuck the right note - his only one of the evening, though - when he described opera as the musical equivalent of the pyramids. Villazon, who at least knew what he was talking about, reminded us that opera is like being alive: "The souls of the performers touch the souls of the receivers." I sat back to wait for radio contact. Come in, Katherine Jenkins.
Jimmy Osmond's karaoke-kitsch performance was silk purse music turned into sow's ear singing. Vanessa White had potential but, despite Katherine's coaching, there was still plenty of woozy, whooshy breathing. She could have been performing in a force nine gale.
Meat Loaf, mercifully judging not singing, stood to offer corny comments, fuelled by his own pizzazz. He felt Bernie Nolan was singing to the sky, so he offered to be her sky. Marcella Detroit's song was a prayer so Mr Loaf was "gonna be there to answer it". He could write soundbites for politicians.
It was about as true to real opera as a cheap plastic cloth is to fine dining, as close to Covent Garden as table tennis is to Wimbledon. This was a party game with a studio audience, like a rowdy class without a teacher; opera as pop, rather than the other way round. Waiting for the winners to be announced had all the suspense of bingo and about as much logic. The loser was Alex, who had sung like a miscast lead in a school musical.
The next night I went to watch Carmen at the cinema, beamed live from the Met in New York, and finally I experienced what Villazon meant about souls touching. If you are still not convinced, perhaps you should go back to the football
Ray Tarleton
So there was no fighting over the remote control when ITV1's new reality offering, Popstar to Operastar, an incestuous child of The X Factor, made its debut. And with mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins and tenor Rolando Villazon as mentors and judges, there seemed plenty to keep us both happy.
Eight chart-topping singers attempted to perform well-known operatic arias, accompanied by a live orchestra. The idea of extending people by developing new skills is admirable. It's called education and we do it every day.
Behind the scenes, we had glimpses of the coaching. "It's just like singing in a foreign language, really," observed one contestant, recognising an aria from the Stella advert. Even the presenters were out of their comfort zone. Alan Titchmarsh looked in need of his gardening gloves while Myleene Klass was squeezed into a dress so tight she gave the impression she'd had an out-of-body experience.
Blur's Alex James stuck the right note - his only one of the evening, though - when he described opera as the musical equivalent of the pyramids. Villazon, who at least knew what he was talking about, reminded us that opera is like being alive: "The souls of the performers touch the souls of the receivers." I sat back to wait for radio contact. Come in, Katherine Jenkins.
Jimmy Osmond's karaoke-kitsch performance was silk purse music turned into sow's ear singing. Vanessa White had potential but, despite Katherine's coaching, there was still plenty of woozy, whooshy breathing. She could have been performing in a force nine gale.
Meat Loaf, mercifully judging not singing, stood to offer corny comments, fuelled by his own pizzazz. He felt Bernie Nolan was singing to the sky, so he offered to be her sky. Marcella Detroit's song was a prayer so Mr Loaf was "gonna be there to answer it". He could write soundbites for politicians.
It was about as true to real opera as a cheap plastic cloth is to fine dining, as close to Covent Garden as table tennis is to Wimbledon. This was a party game with a studio audience, like a rowdy class without a teacher; opera as pop, rather than the other way round. Waiting for the winners to be announced had all the suspense of bingo and about as much logic. The loser was Alex, who had sung like a miscast lead in a school musical.
The next night I went to watch Carmen at the cinema, beamed live from the Met in New York, and finally I experienced what Villazon meant about souls touching. If you are still not convinced, perhaps you should go back to the football
Ray Tarleton
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