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Ugandans make their mark in Sheffield

Football, cricket, technology and public speaking all came up during a packed visit to Sheffield by pupils and teachers from in and around Katine, Uganda, as part of a British Council partnership programme
From L-R Winifed Apeso,  Rachael Otwao, Safina Kamanyire, Patrick Ocen, Moses Ewoyu, from Katine, and Paskwale Obutu during their trip to the UK as part of the British Council Connecting Classrooms programme
From Uganda to Sheffield: (l-r) Winifred Apeso, Rachael Otwao, Safina Kamanyire, Patrick Ocen, Moses Ewoyu and Paskwale Obutu during their trip to the UK as part of the British Council's Connecting Classrooms programme. Photo: Liz Ford

It may have been his first time holding a cricket bat, but 17-year-old Moses Ewoyu played some good shots with it when he took part in a PE lesson at All Saints Catholic high school in Sheffield last month.

The primary school pupil from Katine, in north-east Uganda, who was in the UK as part of the British Council Connecting Classrooms programme, enjoyed the chance to try a new sport but admitted, as captain of his school football team, that his heart still belonged to soccer. When asked, three days into the visit, what he'd enjoyed the most so far, playing football at Sheffield University topped the list.

Moses travelled to the UK with three pupils from Soroti secondary school in Uganda - Safina Kamanyire, Rachael Otwao and Patrick Ocen - their teacher, Paskwale Obutu, and Winifred Apeso, a teacher from St Francis school for the blind in Madera. Their visit followed a trip by pupils and teachers from All Saints to Soroti district last year to cement the British Council partnership.

The three-year Connecting Classrooms programme aims to challenge stereotypical attitudes among young people in Africa and the UK, broaden the international view of young people in both continents and develop the skills of pupils and teachers. Among the schools involved in the partnership are Katine primary and secondary schools, Soroti secondary, St Francis school, Madera girls school and Serere secondary school in Uganda, and All Saints and St John Fisher school in Sheffield. District education officers from each country are also involved.

The schools have drawn up their own objectives for the project. As well as encouraging dialogue between the pupils, through exchange visits and working together on various curriculum activities, they see professional development for teachers as a priority. The schools are looking at ways of using technology, such as online portals and video, to share best teaching practices. The involvement of St Francis school for the blind in Uganda, and the decision to relocate a school that caters for children with physical and learning difficulties - Seven Hills - to the grounds of All Saints in Sheffield, means special education needs will also feature in programme activities.

An opportunity of a lifetime

Moses, who is due to sit his primary leaving exams later this year, is the oldest in his family of eight brothers and sisters. He lives in Samuku village in Olwelai parish in Katine, a sub-county where the Guardian is monitoring a development project being implemented by the African Medical and Research Foundation (Amref). He hopes to start at Soroti secondary next year.

The chance to visit the UK was, he said, the opportunity of a lifetime. "I kept on pinching myself inside the plane as soon as we boarded just to be sure that I was not dreaming," he said. "I was very happy."

He said he had enjoyed some wonderful moments with the young people he met in the UK. "The first thing I learned there was time management ─ those people are too good in time keeping, contrary to our country. Hygiene was another thing that struck my mind. The place is clean. Everybody there cares about hygiene. I was very impressed."

Safina, a confident 17-year-old in her third year at Soroti secondary, said she was particularly struck by the different teaching methods. "We're taught using a chalk board, but here teachers teach using computers. It's a good environment. I like it."

Safina, who wants become a driver for a large organisation, such as the UN, when she finishes school, also praised the class discussions – something she said happens only occasionally in Soroti.

Over lunch, All Saints pupils asked their Ugandan friends to outline a typical day. Safina, who lives in Soroti town, said that as a Muslim she woke up at 4am to pray. At 6.30am she left for school, which began at 7am and, for her, finished at midday. Due to rising student numbers, pupils at Soroti secondary either attend classes in the morning or afternoon. After school, Safina, the youngest in a family of 11 children, likes to watch movies, listen to music and read novels.

Rachael, 17, who is in her second year at Soroti secondary and lives in Otucopi village, outside Soroti, told the pupils that she was "liking everything" about her visit to the UK. She said she lived with her brother (both her parents had died) and woke at 7am to fetch water. After cleaning and cooking, at 11am she began the two-hour walk to school, where she attends afternoon classes.

She has to make the return journey at night. "Some people stay in hostels but I can't afford it," she said. When she has the time she says she likes dancing. She expects to leave school after her fourth year, once she has sat her O-levels, because she will need to earn money for her family.

For the teachers, the UK visit was a chance to compare teaching methods. Paskwale Obutu told the pupils: "I want to assure you there is some correlation between our methodologies." There was also clear similarities between the subjects taught in both schools, he said.

Winifred Apeso was particularly impressed by the interactive nature of classroom life. "The teaching methods are so different in many ways. It's more interactive. In English students act out Romeo and Juliet – that was really awesome. It gives them confidence in public speaking – that's missing in Uganda. Students don't try it. I think the syllabus [in Uganda] focuses on theory rather than practical."

She said in Uganda schools have to cram in "too much in the shortest time", so "there is no time to act out books".

For Moses, the week he spent in the UK was too short. When the time came for him to return, some of his new friends urged him to stay. He couldn't do it this time, but on the journey home he wondered how he could possibly return to the the UK. The answer came to him - education.

"My going to the UK has multiplied my impetus to study. I'm going to study until I return to the UK," he told the Guardian on his return. "I have learned that it is only through education that I would have everything good in life."

Moses has now decided he wants to become an engineer to realise his dreams. Meanwhile, he is busy sharing his experiences with his teachers and classmates in the hope fellow students will be encouraged to study hard, and get the same chance to travel as he did.

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All made up

Black eyeliners

Like the return of some dormant sea monster, Grown Up Glamour has reared her chignoned head, and suddenly we're all expected to spend half an hour brow-grooming and cheek-rougeing of a morning. Bah. Thankfully, a swish of eyeliner remains the simplest route to glamourpussdom. We've always been deeply suspicious of liquid eyeliners, and while we'll make an exception for Chanel's Liquid Eye Lines, our love of kohl liners, particularly Laura Mercier's, prevails. The brilliant thing about kohl is its willingness to smudge. But it's a fine line between recalling some sultry-eyed heyday Elizabeth Taylor and looking like you've just stepped out of a warlock convention. If you're the kind of mucky pup who's always pawing at her face, stick to liquid. Or sit on your hands.

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Wintershall Nativity Play, Surrey

Imagine picking your way across several dark and muddy fields in search of a lantern-lit barn where Mary and Joseph and their (real, live) newborn are waiting with an assortment of shepherds, wise men, cattle and angels. Enough to soften the hardest heart, but wrap up warm. (; 01483 892167), tickets available for the Dec 18 performance at 7.30pm

Wheel of Manchester

They had a ferris wheel in Manchester last year for Christmas, but this year's is higher (60m) and better (lit by 60,000 light bulbs) - you can see the snow-capped Pennines from the top.

Santa's Grotto at Wookey Hole Caves

See Santa in the biggest grotto in Europe, in the Somerset caves where human beings first lived 50,000 years ago. Wookey Hole is a magical place to meet Santa - there are even real reindeer. And it's a real day out, with the wizard playbarn, a toddler play area and clown shows as well as the caves to explore., 01749 672243

Somerset House ice wall

London's biggest thrill for teenagers (12 and over). This year is the city's first outdoor ice wall at Somerset House (also home to a scenic ice rink). Being an urban mountaineer doesn't come cheap, at £40 for a one-hour session, but it'll give them something to tell granny about over Christmas lunch. 0870 166 0423, until Jan 29

Torchlight weekend in Haworth

The weekend of December 11 will be celebrated with a range of festivities in the Brontë village of Haworth in West Yorkshire. Morris men, brass bands, carols and the village children in Victorian costumes make for plenty to do and see. The culmination is a torchlight procession on the Sunday night.

The lights at Mousehole

Dancing reindeer, Christmas puddings, angels and Santa Clauses are among the illuminations that light the Cornish village from December 17 till early January, from 5pm to 11pm. The legend behind the display has it that Tom Bawcock, who caught fish to keep the village from starvation, was saved one stormy night when the villagers lit the harbour to guide him home.

Birmingham reindeer parade

New for 2005 is a reindeer and lantern parade through the city centre. Santa will be joined by 30 reindeer, sleighs, a marching band and lantern-carrying children for his tour., Dec 11

Santa's motorbike tour of the Christmas lights, Cardiff

Santa (in his biking gear, naturally) leads a 45-minute tour. Suitable for six-year-olds and up, who will get to scoff mince pies and chocolate logs as they see the best light displays in town., 07840 760394

Christmas workshops at Science Oxford

Hands On is a brand-new area of Science Oxford, and has an exciting workshop-based events programme. Children aged five to 12 are invited to take part in a K'Nex workshop to build a motorised Santa's sleigh, or a giant crane to put a star on the centre's Christmas tree.; 01865 728953

Christmas quiz and activities at Castle Fraser, Aberdeenshire

Carol singing, animals in the stable, a quiz, storytelling and the chance to make Christmas decorations are among the delights on offer at Castle Fraser., 01330 833463, Dec 10-11

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This article will change your life

I lose things frequently and, as a result, am often exposed to the single most infuriating attempt at helpfulness in the history of civilisation: "Can you remember where you had it last?" The answer is no, of course; this is pretty much the definition of losing something. You wouldn't try to help a bankrupt person by suggesting they consider not spending all their money in the first place. And yet we people who lose things - "losers", if you will - must endure it all the time.

Freud thought we lose things for subconscious reasons - that loss is "welcome at least to the secret intention of the loser". He recounts the tale of a man whose brother-in-law gave him a steel pencil which he treasured; when he fell out with his brother-in-law, he lost the pencil. As so often with Freud, this is a) fascinating, but b) pure speculation, and c) of no use whatsoever when it comes to figuring out what to do about the problem. How can I avoid losing my mobile phone for the third time since October? And how can I find it when I do?

In answer to the second question, I give you Professor Solomon, whose book, How To Find Lost Objects, sets out what he describes as an "AMAZING METHOD" for doing exactly that. It is a 12-step plan, summarised on his website, follow it, and you'll find what you've lost, or failing that, achieve serenity about losing it. True, one of the steps involves remembering where you last had the item. But that's compensated for by the useful notion of the "eureka zone" - the observation that ordinary lost objects "tend to travel no more than 18 inches from their original location". I scoffed. And then, weeks later, I found a lost debit card this way. The trick is to demarcate a small area, then search it exhaustively, when what our brains seem to want to do instead is look only in "logical" places or, alternatively, to search the whole house from top to bottom.

Not losing things to begin with is a different matter. Counterintuitively, getting older might help: misplacing things is a problem for 43% of younger adults (aged 20-36), but only 22% of older ones (56-80), according to research at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Either we get better at not losing things, or better at not being bothered by it.

The Georgia researchers proposed a comically hi-tech solution, involving a camera attached to a pair of glasses, recording your entire experience, then making it computer-searchable. The low-tech alternative is depressingly familiar: a place for everything, and everything in its place.

Note, however, that this doesn't mean you have to become a neat freak. Instead, embrace the principle of constrained mess: chuck utility bills into a cardboard box; chuck the kids' toys into a crate in the corner; chuck your keys into a tray by the door. No tidying's involved, no filing, no sorting - in other words, no effort.

This works. Take it from a loser.

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Oliver Burkeman investigates routes to mental wellbeing


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The measure

The measure

Going up

Grace Jones We await her imminent musical comeback with a dramatic headpiece to hand

Cricket jumpers Boys and girls, ahead of the new Brideshead movie, make this your cover-up knit of choice

Marilynne Robinson's Home Just lovely

David Milliband We know we shouldn't...

Long-sleeved mini-dresses So fabulously 80s and so everywhere next season. Aim for Stella McCartney, settle for M&S

Fantastic Man Never seen it? Well, sort it out!

Going down

String bracelets on men As seen on the sadly now reviled Matthew Broderick. Boys, grow up

Star prints So over they're... no, they're still over

Any toenail polish other than clear or red It all just looks fungal, people

Heinz Salad Cream For daring to use the gorgeous Ladybugs' Picnic song in its advert. Wrong, wrong, wrong

The Bond theme We thought we were getting Amy - now it's Alicia. So unfair

Penny Smith's upcoming novel Just what the world needed

Loafers Bored - next!

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running blog with legs logo

On the bench: how to keep training when you're recovering from an injury

Cross-training options like swimming, cycling or walking can be a healthy alternative while knees or tendons are healing. But how do they measure up to pounding the pavement, and which is the best for recovering runners?
Outdoor swimming
Swimming can be a good alternative to running because it is easy on the joints.

During injury or rehabilitation periods, many runners are resigned to cross-training. But which activities are best? The short answer is anything that doesn't exacerbate your problem or cause pain. But while your heart and lungs don't have a clue what type of exercise you are doing, your neuromuscular system certainly does, which is why the more similar an activity is to running – in terms of movement patterns and muscle recruitment – the greater the "transfer of training" (that is, the crossover benefit to your running). So, how do the options stack up?

(Note: calorie expenditure below is based on standardised metabolic equivalent tasks – METs – an estimate of the energy requirement for a given activity compared to being at rest, for a person weighing 140lbs, or 10st. Expect individual variation, influenced by gender, age and body composition.)

Water running or "aqua-jogging" is one of the most running-specific cross-training options there is. It entails exactly what it says on the tin – running in water, usually with a flotation belt around the hips to help keep you upright and afloat. It's a great choice for impact-related injuries like stress fractures and shin splints.

Muscle usage: A Japanese study found no difference in muscle activity in the hamstrings, quads and shins compared to running on dry land, but lower levels of calf activity mean this could be a good option for those suffering calf or achilles tendon issues. But you may have to work a bit harder – a study from the University of Nevada found that exercisers needed to reach a higher rate of perceived exertion (RPE) to achieve the same overall magnitude of muscle activation as normal running. An RPE of 15 (rated "hard") in water running elicited a similar level of muscular activity as a rating of 11 (fairly light) on a treadmill.

Calorie expenditure: High-intensity water running will burn around 570 calories an hour. If your efforts are more akin to treading water, it's around 350 calories.

Make it count: Monitor your effort level, not heart rate, to ascertain intensity – heart rate is always lower in water-based activity. Focus your aqua efforts on interval training to make sessions shorter and curb boredom. And don't try to achieve the same cadence (steps per minute) as you would on dry land – researchers from the Auckland University of Technology say cadence is significantly slower at an equivalent intensity.

This is a low-impact option which mimics the alternate-leg action of running. A study from Trinity College Dublin found that the stepper and elliptical trainer (see below) compared well to running in terms of fitness gains. In a 12-week study, improvements in maximal oxygen uptake (V02 max) made by a group of women assigned to one of the three modes of training for the same duration and at the same intensity were equally good.

Muscle usage: The entire lower body musculature is used – particularly the quads, glutes and calves. In a comparison study from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse of the stepper and an elliptical trainer, hip flexion was significantly greater on the stepper, so perhaps it is not the best choice for those with hip injuries. Texas A&M University recommends the stair-climber as a good adjunct or alternative to cycling for those rehabbing anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries.

Calorie expenditure: Around 382 calories per hour for moderate intensity stepping.

Make it count: Don't slump forward over the control panel. Stand upright and if possible, go hands-free. Use a relatively swift cadence and don't pile on too much resistance, which makes the action less similar to running.

There's no doubt that cycling is a great complementary activity for runners – a study in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise found that when runners added interval training on a bike to their usual running regime, they improved their 5km times by an average of 30 seconds within six weeks. That's not to say they wouldn't have done so by adding running interval sessions – but doing so might have tipped the balance of intensity a little too far.

Muscle usage: Cycling is heavy on the thighs, with 39% of the total work performed by the quadriceps. The hip extensors (glutes) also play a big role, contributing 27% and the calves, 20%. The Scandinavian researchers who calculated these muscular usage contributions recommend cycling for the rehabilitation of knee ligament and achilles tendon problems.

Calorie usage: It all lies in the speed and terrain. A leisurely 12mph would burn 509 cals per hour. A racier 18mph would take you closer to 763 calories (the equivalent of a running pace of 8.15 per mile for our 140lb person). An hour-long spin class comes in at 540 calories.

Make it count: Ride at whatever cadence (revolutions per minute) feels best to you. In recent years, it's been popular to suggest trying to "match" your cycling and running cadence (for example, 90 steps or revs per minute per leg) but a recent study from the University of Western Australia (pdf) found no evidence to support this, while other research in the Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance (pdf) found that attempting to maintain a high cycle cadence during low-to-moderate intensity riding was uneconomical and fatiguing.

The obvious distinction (apart from the fact that your body position is horizontal) is that your body weight is supported by the water when swimming, which can be a great way of unloading injured joints or soft tissue.

Muscle usage: Varies according to stroke. As much as 80% of the work in crawl is done by the back, shoulders and arm muscles which can make it the best option for those with leg injuries, while in breast stroke, the lower body musculature does the lion's share (best avoided if you have knee problems). Backstroke offers more of a balance between upper and lower body.

Calorie expenditure: Again, it differs according to stroke, and also efficiency (thrashing around in the water burns more calories than slicing through it). As a snapshot, swimming front crawl laps at a moderate to vigorous pace burns 528-623 calories per hour (9.8 METs). More sedate swimming, or slower strokes such as backstroke and breaststroke, approximately 445 calories per hour.

Make it count: Learn proper technique for every stroke. Don't swim with your head out the water, which puts extra stress through your neck and spine.

Elliptical trainer

As mentioned above, research showed that the elliptical trainer (or cross-trainer) matched up to the treadmill very well in terms of fitness gains, but the kinematics are subtly different.

Muscle usage: Of course, it's low impact, but joint flexion angles at the knee, hip and ankle are greater, which, say researchers in the journal Medicine & Science in Sport & Exercise, may not be beneficial in the case of injuries to these areas (they specifically mention the knee). However, a study of muscle activation in Physical Therapy (Feb 2010) found lower activation of both major calf muscles, even compared to walking, so it could be a good bet for runners with calf or achilles problems. Calorie expenditure: 318 calories per hour for moderate effort

Make it count: To make the action more running-specific, ditch the arm poles – a study published in Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport noted a higher rate of perceived exertion but not higher heart rate, when using the arm poles compared to legs only. In other words, it feels harder but it isn't.

Travelling over ground by putting one foot in front of the other, walking is very similar to running all but for the absence of a "flight" phase, when both feet are off the ground simultaneously. The forces exerted on the joints are consequently much lower during walking than running (approximately 1x body weight compared with 2-3x body weight) which can make it kinder on the joints. The problem is getting the intensity high enough to challenge the cardiovascular system. For runners, adding hills is more effective than increasing speed.

Muscle usage: A study from the University of Texas at Austin (pdf) found that muscle usage between running and walking at the same pace differed surprisingly little after monitoring activity in 10 muscle groups, including all the major muscles of the legs. Power output was lower in walking, however.

Calorie expenditure: At a comfortable 3mph pace, you'd burn around 210 calories. A brisker 4mph clip? 255 calories.

Make it count: Be prepared to walk for longer than you would run for to get the same benefits. A study earlier this year from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California estimates that a 4.3-mile walk at a brisk pace would be needed to substitute a 3-mile run.

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Monday's media briefing

Sign up here to get the Media Briefing emailed to you by 9am. If you have any difficulty subscribing or unsubscribing, please click here for help

Four BBC journalists held in Irish anti-terror operation. P6
Radio 1 blamed after country house trashed by partygoers. P8
Marcel Berlins: Court TV? Let's forget it. P16 Paolo Nutini in ad campaign for Puma. P28
The readers' editor on new opportunities to put the record straight online. P35
Letters: Delia Smith's frozen mash. P35
Martin Kelner on Channel 4's Cheltenham Gold Cup coverage. Sport, P20
Daniel Fulvio on doorstepping celebrities as editor of US showbiz mag, In Touch Weekly. G2, P5
Interview: former culture secretary, James Purnell. G2, P13
Prosthetics expert Sarah Deans on ITV2's Bionic Woman. G2, P25

Why do all our best web start-ups head Stateside? P1
The future of Channel 4 - where will all the money come from? P2, 3
Emily Bell: if the bubble bursts, the web 2.0 crowd are in the best position. P4
Media Monkey's diary. P4
Letters, including Wayne Garvie on BBC Worldwide. P4
Interview: Saga editor Katy Bravery. P5
Rageh Omaar on reporting the war in Iraq. P6
A federal court decision to fine a journalist for refusing to reveal sources sets a worrying precedent. P6
Peter Wilby on the press: the future of subeditors. P7
Question of the week: When can you use 'off the record' quotes? P7
What's behind the trend for nostalgic adverts? P9
My media: Alex Godfrey, controller of video-sharing site P9
Lucy Barrett on alcohol advertising. P9

Interview: actress Sophie Winkleman. P5
BBC journalists arrested in Irish probe into dissident republicans. P6
Birthday party trashed after 'shout-out' on Pete Tong's Radio 1 show. P9

Media diary. P3
My week in media: Sharon Horgan, writer and co-star of BBC3's Pulling. P3
Interview: Greg Dyke. P4
The man behind CBBC's groundbreaking cartoon series, Freefonix. P6
Donald Trelford on the press: it's not always right for the press to put police chiefs under investigation. P7
A history of the PG Tips chimps. P8 Heathrow's Terminal 5 has adland in a state of breathless anticipation. P10
Tim Marlow on TV arts programmes. P11
Ray Snoddy: Channel 4's vision sounds great but who exactly will pay for it? P12
A new online interview archive launched by Rob McGibbon. P13
Claire Beale on advertising: there's nothing to touch the telly for mass appeal. P14
My life in media: Elle editor in chief Lorraine Candy. P16

Birthday party trashed after 'shout-out' on Pete Tong's Radio 1 show. P3
Man puts his entire life up for auction on eBay. P7
Police investigate claims that a Basil Brush show on the CBBC channel contained racist comments about gipsies. P11
A bricklayer from Romania wins a Spanish TV music competition for immigrants. P18

Tim Teeman on the final of ITV1's Dancing on Ice. P5
BBC journalists held by Irish police. P26
BBC2's Later ... with Jools Holland goes live. P31
Media buying group Aegis is expected to report a 9 per cent rise in pre-tax profits. P44
Centaur Media to call in advisers to carry out strategic review. P44

BBC journalists held in Ireland. P4
Rupert Murdoch faces battle with Silvio Berlusconi over football broadcasting rights. P7
Directory business Yell and the threat from online search advertising groups. P19
Advertisers welcome prospect of stronger rival to Google. P24
Media buyer Carat cuts its advertising forecasts for this year. P24

ITV1's Dancing on Ice - the grand final. P3
Partygoers trash mansion after 'shout-out' by Radio 1 DJ Pete Tong. P10
Man puts his life up for sale on eBay. P30
Basil Brush investigated by police for allegedly making racist comments about a gipsy selling pegs and heather. P37
Peter Sissons says many current newsreaders have not 'earned the right' to do the job. P39
Sponsors line up for new England rugby star, Danny Cipriani. P85
BBC puts up more cash for Champions League football than ITV. P85

Suzanne Shaw wins ITV1's Dancing on Ice. P5
Humphrey Lyttelton leaves Radio 2. P14
Party girl's mansion is trashed after 'shout-out' on Radio 1. P16

BBC team held by cops. P2
Partygoers trash mansion after 'shout-out' by Radio 1 DJ Pete Tong. P17
Man sells life on eBay. P19
Rupert Penry-Jones to leave Spooks. P21
Gemma Arterton to star in BBC1's Tess of the d'Urbervilles. P21
Paul O'Grady says Amy Winehouse is an indulgent idiot. P21
Britain is in the grip of an internet sex epidemic. P26

Suzanne Shaw wins Dancing on Ice. P3
New BBC2 chef is 'the Russell Brand of the kitchen'. P3
A mystery donor gave 5.5 million pounds to BBC1's Sport Relief. P17
Charley Boorman gets a solo TV travel show. P25

Alan Carr says women think he's a sex symbol. P3
Goodbye, Dancing on Ice. P9
Basil Brush investigated by police for alleged racist comments. P19
Fed-up hubby puts his life up for sale on eBay. P29

Four BBC journalists arrested in Ireland in connection with investigation into paramilitary activity. P1
Microsoft plans to buy Rapt, a provider of advertising yield management systems for digital media publishers. P6

Farewell then, Dancing on Ice. The ITV1 show will be particularly missed by the tabloids who have devoted countless pages to co-presenter Holly Willoughby's choice of outfit. A lot of them are quite low cut, you see. Yesterday's final did not disappoint, at least not if you are the Sun, Mirror, Daily Star, Daily Mail or Daily Express, which devoted yet more column inches to her wardrobe selection.The Mirror gave her final outfit a "dare rating" of nine out of 10. Cold baths all round. Daily Mirror, P3

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Profits down at Richard Desmond's RCD1 Ltd

Holding company for Northern & Shell group – which includes Daily Express and OK – hit by 25% fall in profits
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Profits at Richard Desmond's RCD1 Ltd, the holding company for his Northern & Shell publishing empire, which includes Daily Express and OK! magazine, dipped 25% to £41.6m last year as the recession took hold.

Profits at the private company, RCD1, which also owns the Daily Star, a group of adult TV channels and West Ferry Printers, fell from £55.4m in 2007, according to a directors' report filed with Companies House. RCD1 paid no dividend.

The accounts revealed that the highest paid director, presumed to be Desmond, was paid a salary of £641,000, an increase of £10,000 on 2007.

Revenue at the group, including shares from joint ventures, was £483.9m last year, down from £485m in 2007.

The group revealed that it had bought out the Telegraph Media Group from its joint printing joint venture earlier this year and that heavy losses at its OK! USA were continuing.

RCD1 was hit by continuing start-up losses from the wholly owned US edition of celebrity magazine OK!, which launched in 2005. Last year losses were £20.6m, down from £24.3m in 2007.

Northern & Shell's West Ferry Printers incurred extra charges of £17.1m in 2008. Northern & Shell jointly owned the printing plant with Telegraph Media Group until it bought out the TMG stake in March.

The price was to be determined by an agreed settlement or arbitration, the directors' report said.

"In newspapers a value-for-money concept has been pursued through pricing and product quality and in television added value offerings have been provided to customers," the report said.

The pricing strategy included dropping the Daily Star to 20p in November last year and offering discount vouchers in the Daily Express and Sunday Express. The vouchers, started in October 2008, cost the company £6.5m but increased the Express titles' market share, the directors' report said.

Publishing and printing, excluding the US, made a pre-tax profit of £45.1m last year, down from £71.2m the year before.

The US division lost £14.2m, an improvement on the £18m loss in 2007. The TV division made £5.8m, down from £8.2m year on year.

OK! USA and the Australian version of OK! made good progress, but OK! in Spain, home of arch-rival Hello!, closed in March after its joint venture partner dropped out.

The company has 17 overseas editions OK! published under licence and 21 in total.

RCD1 said that it reduced its pensions liability to £31m from £48.4m in 2007 and last year made charitable donations of £554,000.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

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Kiss owner Bauer Media is leading contender to buy Planet Rock

Bauer leads charge for loss-making digital radio station, which was put up for sale by its owner, Malcolm Bluemel, last year
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Def Leppard's Joe Elliott
Def Leppard's Joe Elliott, a DJ on Planet Rock. Photograph: Michael D Amici/AP

Bauer Media, the owner of the Kiss and Magic radio networks, is the leading contender to buy Planet Rock.

The loss-making digital radio station was put up for sale by its owner, Malcolm Bluemel, last year.

Bauer is also believed to have eyed up a possible purchase of Absolute Radio and its valuable London FM licence, which was put back on the market by its owner, the Times of India group, late last year.

The German-owned private company already owns rock station Kerrang!, which broadcasts on FM in the West Midlands and in various parts of the country on digital audio broadcasting (DAB) radio.

Several interested parties were said to be in the running to buy Planet Rock, including a possible management buyout. Another potential bidder, TalkSport owner UTV, is understood no longer to be interested.

A purchase of the digital station would allow Bauer to put all of its rock stations under the Planet Rock banner.

A buy-up of the Absolute Radio assets would enable it to put Planet Rock on FM in London if it decided to rebrand the national music station formerly known as Virgin Radio.

Former Virgin Radio chief executive John Pearson is also bidding to buy Absolute, backed by Time Out investor, Peter Dubens.

Family-run Bauer, Europe's largest privately owned publishing group, also has a UK magazine business with titles including Heat, Grazia and Take a Break.

It is the second-biggest commercial radio operator in the country, after Ashley Tabor's Global Radio, and already broadcasts a number of digital-only stations including Smash Hits, The Hits, Q and Heat.

Bluemel, a millionaire entrepreneur and rock music fan, bought Planet Rock from GCap Media in 2008.

He has invested around £3m of his own money in the station, which is believed to be losing between £200,000 and £300,000 a year.

Planet Rock, with a line-up of DJs including Alice Cooper, Nicky Horne and Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott, is the oldest-surviving commercial digital-only radio station, launched as part of the original line-up on national commercial platform, Digital One, in 1999.

Speaking last year, Bluemel said the most important issue in any discussion about a possible sale was securing the future of Planet Rock.

Bluemel headed up the consortium that bought Planet Rock from former Classic FM and Capital parent GCap Media (now part of Global Radio) in 2008. It beat rival bidders including a consortium led by Queen guitarist Brian May.

Planet Rock has twice won digital radio station of the year at the Sony awards, in 2008 and 2010, and had 864,000 weekly listeners on average in the third quarter of last year.

A spokesman for Bauer Media said: "We do not comment on speculation around commercial matters."

Bluemel declined to comment.

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Channel 4 weathers advertising 'tsunami' – at a price

It won acclaim for its Paralympics coverage, but can it return to the black after spending its way through the ad slump?
Fresh Meat
Fresh Meat: cited as one of Channel 4's recent successes. Photograph: Channel 4

Channel 4 won widespread acclaim for its coverage of the Paralympics but the plaudits came at a price. The broadcaster, which surprisingly beat the BBC's Olympics programming to the sport and live event prize at the Bafta TV awards last week, sank £29m into the red last year – a £70m swing from its operating profit of £41m in 2011.

C4 pointed to extra investment in content and technology, including the Paralympics and the launch of its new digital catch-up channel, 4Seven. But putting money into "creative renewal" (AKA finding popular new shows) was unable to stop a further dip in ratings last year, albeit marginal.

Total content spend of £608m was up 3% on 2011, according to its annual results last week, but the core C4 network saw its audience fall to 6.6% in 2012 from 6.8% the previous year, missing its self-imposed target of between 6.8% and 7.1%. The broadcaster's portfolio of channels, including E4, More4 and Film4, was also down, to 11.5% from 11.6%. This despite the one-off ratings boost of the Paralympics; the opening ceremony peaked with more than 11 million viewers.

Executives partly blamed the summer of live events they were up against on BBC1 – described as a "tsunami" by C4's chief creative officer, Jay Hunt – including the Olympics, the Queen's diamond jubilee and the Euro 2012 football tournament (which was also on ITV). Strip out the extra investment, said C4's chief executive, David Abraham, and "we would probably not have weathered the jubilee and the Olympics as well as we did".

But it has been a tough start to 2013, with C4's peaktime share down 9% and its all-day share down 12% to 6%, hit by a strong daytime performance by BBC1 after it moved its children's shows to digital channel CBBC. The all-channel portfolio has fared better, down 1% to 11.2% with gains among 16- to 34-year-olds and ABC1 viewers.

Chris Locke, trading director at media buying agency Starcom Media Group, says: "One of the issues is that C4's digital channels are doing great but that the main channel isn't, and it's meant to be the hero brand. I don't think they are competing as much as they should be, and the quality of programmes is not as good as it should be. Maybe it is a phase, but you can't afford a phase, you have to always be on."

C4 chairman Lord Burns last week highlighted successes such as Jack Whitehall comedy Fresh Meat, the documentary Plane Crash, Homeland and a resurgent Channel 4 News. But three years after it axed Big Brother, the main channel is still struggling to adequately fill the 200-hour hole it left behind, with Bedtime Live and The Intern, fronted by former Dragons' Den star Hilary Devey, recent high-profile flops.

Abraham predicts the channel will make another loss in 2013 before returning to breakeven the year after. The channel bankrolled this year's deficit from reserves of £290m at the beginning of last year, boosted by an extra £78m built up in the bountiful years of 2010 and 2011.

The full scale of the main channel's losses is not clear, as its financial performance was not stripped out in the latest results. Subsidised by more commercially-orientated channels such as E4, C4 racked up losses of nearly £42m in 2011, a deficit which presumably would have been even more severe last year.

Abraham attributed the change in reporting to the impact of the Digital Economy Act. "Just as Sky and ITV choose to represent their numbers in certain ways, we do the same," he saidWhile C4 missed its audience targets (which didn't stop Abraham, Hunt and sales director Jonathan Allan picking up six-figure bonuses), it "blasted through" (Abraham's words) its registered users target and now has 7.2 million, including one in three of all 15- to 24-year-olds in the UK.

Abraham said registered users watch more content on its on-demand service 4oD, and that allows the broadcaster to communicate directly with viewers and tailor its advertising to reflect their interests. "It is a powerful relationship and one that can be mutually beneficial," he added. The targeted ad packages initiative on 4oD announced its first partners last week, including Microsoft, McDonald's and O2.

C4 will build further on its relationship with its viewers in July with the launch of a new "second-screen experience". Abraham said this will "explore how viewers interact with a range of shows in real time" and is a "really innovative [model of] how a conventional linear TV channel will evolve in the context of connected TVs and social media".

It will also launch what it describes as the "first ever Twitter play-along game" for the new David Mitchell panel show, Was It Something I Said?.

There were 450m full-length programme views on 4oD in 2012 – up 5% on the previous year (for comparison, the BBC's iPlayer had programme requests of 2.3bn). Non-linear revenues grew 50% to £36m.

C4 has suffered two recent disputes – with independent producers unhappy at the way it commissions and allegedly "micro-manages" some programmes – and with Sir Martin Sorrell's Group M media buying arm, which threatened to pull £300m in advertising – a third of C4's annual revenue. The Group M standoff was resolved in January and is not expected to have an impact on its full-year figures for 2013.

Total revenues were down £16m to £925m last year, a drop almost entirely due to the contribution in 2011 of the record-breaking The Inbetweeners Movie, the most successful British comedy of all time. A sequel is in the offing, possibly set in Australia, but is not expected to go into production until next year. In the meantime, 2013 may be an in-between year for C4.

The numbers

Figures for 2012

Revenue: £925m (2011: £941m)

Pre-tax loss: £27m (2011: profit of £45m)

Staff: 795 (2011: 763)

Total audience share: 11.5% (2011: 11.6%)

David Abraham's total remuneration: £744,000 (2011: £701,000)

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Bolloré enters the stage as La Tribune awaits fate

Vincent Bolloré, the French investor, says he might bid for La Tribune, the French financial newspaper, if it was put up for sale by LVMH. The future of the loss-making title has come into question since LVMH began talks to buy La Tribune's profitable rival, Les Echos, from the Financial Times group. Journalists at Les Echos are campaigning against a sale to LVMH - which is controlled by Bernard Arnault, France's richest man - claiming that the paper's independence and reputation would be compromised. (Via

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'Bigger, ballsier' Daily Star shows some things don't change

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Daily Star: Neil 'Razor' Ruddock gets his back waxed

It's a "new bumper" Daily Star this week, "brighter, bigger and ballsier every day of the week", according to the paper's front page. But it is reassuring to know that some things don't change, not least the paper's penchant for all things (Celebrity) Big Brother, whether it's an X-rated romp or Neil "Razor" Ruddock having his back waxed. That's not all, reports the paper. "Tricia claimed she saw a UFO in the sky on Saturday night." Celebrity Extra Terrestrial, anyone?

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London Twestival: Wigs, beer and hotpants at a very real world meet-up

Almost 700 people queued in the snow and freezing wind last night outside a warehouse in London's east end to claim their place at Twestival, a global charity event that has become the Live Aid of the tech world.

Twestival 700 people gathered for London Twestival. Photograph: Jon Cartwright/Flickr/Some rights reserved - used with permission

Organisers had hoped to raise more than $1m by holding parties in multiples cities, but had so much demand for new Twestivals that more than 175 parties were organised in just a few weeks.

In London - the founding city for the Twestival movement - the audience of twenty and thirty somethings danced, drank and chatted in the cavernous venue but there was also a crafts table for those who wanted to make a small, Twitteresque bird brooch, free burgers and a stall selling small 'Poken' pandas that would 'zap' your contact details to someone else.

Jemima Kiss speaks to the Twitterati at the London Twestival Link to this audio

Co-organiser Tom Malcolm, a PR by day, said they had been amazed by the turnout. "On Facebook people tend to know someone else before adding them as a friend," he said. "On Twitter you meet people you wouldn't necessarily meet in real life."

Hundreds more volunteers and sponsors contributed to Twestivals around the world, including DJs, photographers and bar staff. The donations from ticket sales and a prize raffle would be totted up today; that's likely to spark some furious competition as donors register their contributions against their own local Twestival. It's 'act local, think global' in action.

And with surprisingly few people actually using Twitter while they were there, the event seemed to disprove the assumption that people use social networks instead of real live communication. Twestival gave Twitter users the chance to meet up with people they have come to know online, like-minded because of their interest in talking and sharing ideas.

London Twestival at Shoreditch Studios. Photograph: Jon Cartwright/Flickr/Some rights reserved - used with permission

Marketing strategist Katy Lindemann started going to geek events in 2000 when blogging took off, and says these kind of events are now much more acceptable. "Is Twitter mainstream? It's being mentioned in the Daily Mail, the One Show and on every chat show. It's not Facebook yet, but it's on the way."

"I was intrigued to meet everyone. Twitter is very collegial, though I don't know what it will be like as it gets bigger. There's a general spirit of community with people who want to share. I don't know how long that lovely spirit will last but it's great while it does."

Alex Hoye, chief executive of digital marketing firm Latitude, said the first thing he does each day is check Twitter. "A huge part of the news, and what I think is interesting, is self selected by those people, and I follow specialist news like financial news too. My fear is that it can only go downhill because it's so good right now."

So what does happen next for Twitter? The users might move on to something else, but the phenomenon will stay on, says Lindemann.

"It's about sharing and communicating with like-minded people, and meeting new people," she said. "That behaviour won't change. Whether Twitter is the place people carry on doing it, who knows?"

Bobbie Johnson at Twestival San Francisco

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Competition: drive an SLK for the summer

Your chance to enter the fantastic Mercedes-Benz competition*
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Mercedes Benz SLK. Photograph: Piet Mall/Getty Images/STOCK4B-RF

You could win a stunning SLK for the summer. Or win one of a range of all-inclusive packages to summer events, including Glorious Goodwood (31 July), V Festival (21-22 August), The F1 British Grand Prix (11 July), Cowes Week (31 July), or the England v Pakistan Test Match at The Oval (20 August).

You could also win an exhilarating 4x4 driving experience as well as tickets to a summer concert at Mercedes-Benz World and an overnight stay at the Brooklands hotel (3 July).

To win one of these incredible experiences, simply fill out a competition entry form at a Mercedes-Benz retailer during the Summer Event (5-6 June, Northern Ireland 4-5 June).

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Identity crisis? What identity crisis?

Fears of ID theft have led to a big push for extra cover. But is the insurance worth the cost, asks Rupert Jones

You can't open a newspaper these days without being confronted with apocalyptic warnings about identity theft. It is apparently Britain's fastest-growing crime, costs the UK economy an estimated £1.7bn a year and is an invisible menace that can cause damage for months before you realise it has happened to you.

It is one of the crimes people feel most at risk of, and Britain's banks and credit card companies have been quick to convert our fears into a sales opportunity. Many of them are offering "identity theft insurance" at a cost of up to £84 a year. But are these policies the answer or simply a waste of money? Will you get your money back if you don't take out this cover? And is identity theft really such a huge threat?

The latest evidence suggests that the answer to the last of these questions is far from clear cut. This week saw the publication of official figures for UK credit and debit card fraud. These include data on levels of card identity theft - which includes crooks using a stolen or fake ID to apply for a card, or raiding dustbins to obtain personal information such as bank details to take over someone's account and run up huge debts.

The figures reveal that, rather than shooting up, losses from credit and debit card ID theft fell by 7% during the six months to June 30 this year - from £16.1m to £15m. Losses from lost and stolen cards also fell, as did those for fraud committed with cards stolen before the genuine cardholders receive them. However, some other types of criminal activity, including online banking fraud (primarily involving "phishing" scams), are on the rise.

According to the Association of Payment Clearing Services, which issued the data, the fall is due in part to the banks, police and consumers all taking steps to tackle the problem. A spokesman says the public seem to have taken on board warnings that they need to check statements regularly and shred things such as old bank statements and utility bills.

Card ID theft is only part of the identity theft package. But you can bet the banks will not be highlighting this in the letters and advertising bumf they send out to encourage people to sign up for their identity theft insurance. These mailings seem to be designed to terrify customers. The one being sent out by the Co-operative Bank to promote its £4.99 a month "Identity Protection Alert" service is a case in point. It warns that "there are many ways a thief can steal your identity ..." and that "you don't have to be rich to have your identity stolen".

These schemes tend to offer things such as alerts to let people know of any credit applications made in their name, cover towards the cost of clearing your name, and access to experts who can help. The Halifax, Lloyds TSB and Barclaycard are among the other major players that offer identity theft cover. Often, it is not cheap; the Halifax's policy costs £6.95 a month while Lloyds TSB's is £6.99 a month.

But what many people may not realise is that any money stolen from your bank account as a result of identity theft will be refunded, whether or not you have this cover, provided you have not been negligent. The British Bankers Association confirms that an innocent victim of fraud who has done nothing to compromise their security will be reimbursed fully. Perhaps not surprisingly, the BBA says people should not dismiss the insurance. "Even if the bank does reimburse you, it is still a hassle for you to have to go through. You might find that additional cover does give you added peace of mind or additional protection."

The Halifax insists its policy "offers great value" and says it could take hundreds of hours for someone to repair their credit rating following an identity theft. But the consumer organisation Which? reckons identity theft insurance is a waste of money, describing it as a "needless purchase". A spokeswoman says: "We think it is a marketing gimmick."

There are a number of cheap or free measures to protect yourself against ID theft (thanks to the Home Office's website for some of these):

· Destroy unwanted bills, receipts, bank statements and other documents containing personal details - preferably using a shredder.

· Check your bank and credit card statements carefully as soon as they arrive. If there are any transactions you don't recognise, ring your bank/card company pronto. And close any accounts you don't use.

· Check your credit file occasionally for any unusual activity. There is a way of checking whether anyone has been applying for credit under your name that costs nothing. A new online service called allows people to obtain information held on them by credit reference agencies. You need to register first.

· Never give personal or account details to anyone who contacts you out of the blue. Ask for their phone number, check it is genuine and, if so, call them back. Your bank would never ask for your pin number or for a whole security password.

· Take particular care when you move house. Tell your bank and all other companies and organisations immediately. Ask the Royal Mail to redirect any mail from your old address to your new one for at least a year.

· If you live in a property where other people could access your mail, it is worth asking if you can arrange to collect items such as new bank cards or cheque books from your local branch.

· If you are getting rid of an old computer, bear in mind that even if you delete files, a dedicated fraudster may still be able to retrieve them. Some people argue the only foolproof way to prevent data being retrieved is to take a hammer to it.

· As well as touting pricey ID theft insurance, some of the banks do offer useful free services. Barclays has been offering its online banking customers free anti-virus software and also has a free service where it will send you a text if a new online third party payment is set up on your account.

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At school he was a very studious boy and very bright- it was clear that he would go a long way

Bank of England governor in the spotlight as rate of inflation hits 15-year high

For a man who famously said setting interest rates should be boring, Mervyn King, the erudite governor of the Bank of England, is right back in the spotlight after the Bank's shock interest rate rise last week. Suddenly everyone is discussing the rate of inflation, the price of gas or flat screen TVs and the pay rise they might get as a result of inflation leaping to a 15-year high.

As a former economics professor at the London School of Economics, the 58-year-old Mr King would normally be delighted that everyone is suddenly interested in his subject.

But any satisfaction might be tempered by the fact that this week's rise in inflation was to within a whisker of the level at which he would have to write, for the first time, an open letter to Gordon Brown explaining why he and his colleagues on the monetary policy committee had let it stray more than a percentage point from its 2% target.

To think Mr King would have been embarrassed like a schoolboy caught doing his homework badly would be wrong. Throughout his time on the MPC, as deputy governor and, since 2003, as governor, he has stressed that the letter system is a key part of the Bank's accountability. He has expressed surprise that he and his predecessor Lord George never had to write one. He has predicted that the coming decade could be less benign economically than the last, and the old quill pen could be in regular use in Threadneedle Street.

Mr King's point is that low and stable inflation cannot be taken for granted as last week's surge in inflation showed.

He has a keen sense of his role in explaining the Bank's purpose and the importance of low inflation. He regularly travels round the country to speak to local businessmen in an unpompous way about the economic outlook. He describes how the MPC peers through the economic fog and tries to keep the economy on an even keel. But it can't foresee every gale, such as a rapid surge in oil prices, that might blow it off course.

His obvious intelligence was noticed early on, in his days at Wolverhampton Grammar. "He was a very studious boy and very bright. It was clear he would go a long way," says classmate and friend Stephen Lewis, now a leading City economist. He went on to Cambridge and Harvard, then taught at both as well as Birmingham university before going to the LSE in 1984. He moved to the Bank as chief economist in 1991 and was a founder member of the MPC in 1997. His knowledge of economics is legendary and he is one of a new breed of academic economists who have become central bank chiefs, with Ben Bernanke in the US and Axel Weber in Germany. He has also played a key role in trying to reorganise institutions like the International Monetary Fund in a bid to head off crises such as those in Argentina or Mexico.

You mess with Mervyn King at your peril. He told an MP on a cross-party committee who suggested he had changed his views on the economy to ensure he got the governor's job: "The cynicism of politicians is not something you should visit on everyone else. I look forward one day to an apology." He told legendary investor George Soros at the launch of the latter's latest book that it would add "nothing to the world's stock of intellectual knowledge". He does not suffer fools gladly. This has meant he has not always had a smooth path at the Bank. He has clashed with staff whose views differ to his. "He can be pretty ferocious," said a former staff member.

So is Mr King "all work no play", spending his free time buried in economics textbooks? Far from it. A big sports fan, he is as happy discussing the tactics of his beloved Aston Villa as he is the finer points of endogenous growth theory. Cricket is another passion and Mr King still plays occasionally. He is president of the Chance to Shine campaign to encourage more cricket in state schools. He often turns up at international meetings carrying a tennis racket. He used to play former Fed chief Alan Greenspan on either side of the Atlantic. He once lost to the 78-year-old Mr Greenspan, but blamed it on a lousy doubles partner.

Mr King lives in a modest flat in Notting Hill, west London. He is unmarried but has a partner. While his salary of £275,000 might seem a lot to many people, it is a fraction of what many in the City earn for far less responsible jobs.

The CV

Born March 30 1948

Family Son of Eric King and Kathleen Passingham

Education Wolverhampton Grammar School; King's College, Cambridge; Kennedy scholarship, Harvard

Career Academic spells at St John's College, Cambridge (1972-77), University of Birmingham (1977-84) and LSE (1984-95). Bank of England non-executive director (1990-91), chief economist (1991-98), deputy governor (1998-2003), and governor from 2003. Founder member of monetary policy committee in 1997, chairman since 2003

Clubs/interests Athenaeum, Brooks, Garrick, All England lawn tennis and croquet. Former vice-president of Aston Villa football club


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Outerindia Presents Susheela Raman

O2 Academy, London

4 / 5

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Saturday 13 June 2009.

A review of Outerindia Presents Susheela Raman at O2 Academy, London, referred to "human beatbox" and poet JC100. The artist has asked us to make it clear that he has always been known as JC001.

It has always been a mystery why Susheela Raman hasn't built up a larger following. The London-based singer, who fuses south Indian classical music and rock, has a new band and a new project, in which Asian music of all kinds is brought together. If this impressively varied show is anything to go by, it could become India's answer to Africa Express.

It started with an experimental, classy set from the poet and "human beatbox" JC100 and the bassist and flautist Shri, which sounded like a contemporary Indian update of the poetry and jazz experiments of the late 1950s. This was followed, in startling contrast, by two south Indian classical players, who perched on tables in front of the stage for a noisy demonstration of the thavil temple drum and the nadeswaram, a rousing reed instrument.

Then came Raman, who brought the two styles together as she switched between drifting, chanting passages and stomping songs. The furious violin work of Kumar Raghunathan and vocals from his brother Kartik spurred her on, while Sam Mills provided delicate guitar passages or furious riffs. Raman was at her best singing in Hindi or Tamil - the slower, English-language songs were the least original - and she ended with a frantic Indian treatment of Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Chile.

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Bartók: The Piano Concertos

Bavouzet/BBC PO/Noseda
4 out of 5 4
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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet certainly likes to avoid any risk of being pigeonholed. After a survey of Debussy's complete piano music, and another devoted to Haydn's sonatas, he turns his attention to Bartók's piano concertos. Both Bavouzet and the BBC Philharmonic with Gianandrea Noseda are outstanding in the First Concerto, capturing its epic scale and mixture of formality and barbarism. They are not always quite as crisp in the Second, while Bavouzet's presentation of the opening theme of the Third is moulded just a bit too artfully. But those are minor criticisms of performances that generally have all the sweep, intensity and precision that these works demand.

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Seth Lakeman: Hearts and Minds

2 out of 5 2
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  5. Relentless
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Seth Lakeman has become a victim of his own success. He brought folk to a new audience and notched up a top 10 album with Poor Man's Heaven, thanks to his technique of mixing stomping, attacking ballads with impressive violin work and furious strumming backing. But now he seems to be running out of ideas. When he started out, he was remarkable for his storytelling, and the way he could write about tragedies from the West Country, or the English civil war, with an easygoing urgency that made them sound like contemporary events. Now he has begun to treat far too many of his songs with an overblown sense of drama, and the result is a set that often sounds as if it was written to appeal to a boozy festival crowd punching their fists in the air. Simplistic lyrics and predictable riffs don't help. But there is thankfully some escape when he slows down for the thoughtful Spinning Days and Stepping Over You (which features good banjo work from Benji Kirkpatrick), while Preacher's Ghost is a reminder that he can still tell a good story and sound exciting.

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The Damnation of Faust; Reverberations: The Influence of Steve Reich; Clemency; Arditti Quartet – review

Coliseum; Barbican; Linbury Studio; Queen Elizabeth Hall, all London
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L-r: Peter Hoare, Christopher Purves and Christine Rice in Terry Gilliam's ‘ingenious’ production of The Damnation of Faust for ENO. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Based on column inches and lurid images alone, never mind the incalculable online torrent, the big event this week was Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust at English National Opera. After squawks over the company's recent choice of directors from outside opera, it was a pleasure to witness a superbly staged, ingenious production from opera novice Terry Gilliam, best known as a Hollywood director and genius ex-Python animator. If you want to use film in opera, and most now do, Gilliam shows you how.

Musical standards, with Edward Gardner in the pit, were secure though not vintage, and Berlioz's infinitely delicate score survived just about intact despite being zipped into an all-in-one concept and tumbling out wittily for a choreographic Treaty of Versailles and a dance of the gas masks. The iconography – the 1936 Olympics, Kristallnacht, a glimpse of the Obersalzberg – pinned us firmly at the centre of a wildly spinning wheel of modern German history, with Nazism at the hub.

Berlioz was French, and his view of Goethe, whose magisterial verse drama is his source, is decidedly Gallic but never mind. Unfortunately we owe it to Berlioz to mind. In Gilliam's hands the work becomes brilliant, zany and entertaining, as this opera-cum-oratorio rarely is in the theatre. This approach ultimately perverts the work itself. It does not, and cannot, support the music. Gilliam's two mantras, expressed with his irresistible and big-hearted glee in various interviews, are "make it a good show" and "when in doubt, use irony".

The second of these credos is where the problem lies. It's hard to think of a work less ironic than Damnation, or Goethe's original transcendent treatment of the Faust myth. Yes, both have sharp humour, especially in the figure of Mephistopheles, played here by Christopher Purves with wonderfully oily fluency and panache. But if you pile irony on to a romantic text it cumulatively destroys what words and music strive to illuminate.

Love, and a passionate quest for answers to life's most searching questions, lose sincerity when pushed on to the easier terrain of satire. Berlioz gives us several melting moments, yet their impact is undermined. For Marguerite to address the tender ballad of the king of Thule to a billboard poster of a smiling Aryan soldier who looks like a golden-haired Tony Blair is almost feasible. But to make her Jewish and deport her to a death camp is to turn the plot into a servant of the director's staging.

This opera is not robust enough to withstand such treatment. Nazis are currently, for better or worse, the height of directorial fashion on the European, and specifically German, stage. You can hardly move for Leni Riefenstahl film clips or views from the Berchtesgaden. A recent Parsifal, and a Rienzi, have tackled the German nation's own troubled sense of its recent history to shocking effect. Wagner can, and probably should, be beaten into conceptual submission. This is not to admonish Gilliam. Few in the audience will have seen these productions. But it may explain my own sense of a fatal mismatch. Gilliam needs a proper opera on which to lavish his virtuosity. Rossini, for a start, would suit him to perfection, and not necessarily a comedy. How about the neglected tragedy Maometto II?

As Faust, Peter Hoare, a Malcolm McLaren lookalike, overstretched himself a little in the first half but will pace himself as the run continues, with Christine Rice a sympathetic and vocally impressive Marguerite. Hildegard Bechtler's designs, lit by Peter Mumford and spanning Caspar David Friedrich to art deco, were faultless.

An even more remarkable event in musical terms was the panoply of outstanding contemporary works jostling for attention in the past seven days. Leading the lineup was Reverberations: The Influence of Steve Reich at the Barbican and LSO St Luke's, an astounding weekend marking the iconic – and never ironic – American composer's 75th birthday.

Some 5,000 people attended, spanning all generations and with artists, including Reich himself, conspicuously present at each other's concerts and enjoying the celebratory atmosphere. Twenty ensembles performed, including Bang on a Can All-Stars and Eighth Blackbird, notching up 24 hours of music (being something of a slouch I only heard 10 hours); 16,000 people listened to the Barbican's Reverberations podcast on iTunes. These figures are sufficiently extraordinary to itemise.

The UK premiere of Reich's WTC 9/11, played by the Kronos Quartet, was an unshowy, heartfelt composition of simple intensity, making haunting use of taped voices. Anna Clyne's ambitious Rewind, played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conducted by an indefatigable André de Ridder, stays in the memory despite so much competition.

Of many highlights I must single out Tyondai Braxton's fabulously inventive Central Market played by the BBCSO, Guildhall School students and Braxton himself. Equally enthralling, coming from the terrain of "baroque rock" was Owen Pallett, whose bewitching singing, violin playing and synthesised-loop magic, accompanied by the Britten Sinfonia, was like encountering a youthful Orpheus. In an otherwise united audience, Pallett and Braxton made some traditional, older audiences impatient, and rude too, with one woman shouting "We want Reich". "Why can't they just try to listen, as we did to their kind of music?" a student asked, in a voice of wise despair. As Stephen Fry observed this week, debating at the Cambridge Union, most divisions in music are the result of an accident of labelling.

Space is too short to celebrate in full the week's other premieres, each singular in style but abundant in rewards. James MacMillan's chamber opera Clemency, played by the expert and busy Britten Sinfonia strings, conducted by Clark Rundell, was as densely coloured and detailed as the Russian Orthodox icon which in part prompted it. Its starting point is the Old Testament story of Sarah and Abraham before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. One can imagine that MacMillan and his librettist, Michael Symmons Roberts, wrote in a white heat of intensity.

The mood never lets up for the work's 50-minute duration. It ends too soon – scarcely a typical response to new opera. It's the best MacMillan score I have heard, full of muezzin-like chromaticism and, in the string style, a touch of Bartók, but firmly his own. Katie Mitchell's direction, Alex Eales's designs and the cast led by Janis Kelly and Grant Doyle were all excellent.

String writing was also the medium for a world premiere by Robert Saxton. His String Quartet No 3 was played with exquisite refinement, as this beautifully crafted work deserves, by its dedicatees, the Arditti Quartet. They also gave the London premiere of Harrison's Birtwistle's The Tree of Strings (2008), in which myriad ideas gleam like tesserae to form a lyrical yet wholly unpredictable mosaic. Both should rush into the quartet repertoire.

While that was happening, yet another string quartet, Brian Ferneyhough's Sixth, was announced as chamber composition winner at the annual Royal Philharmonic Society awards taking place at the Dorchester. The Southbank Centre carried off a prize for its Helmut Lachenmann weekend and George Benjamin was awarded the distinguished RPS honorary membership. So a rich and serious week indeed, with one monster attention-grabbing event but a herd of others, equally elephantine in importance, creating their own thrilling stampede. Now that really is a big event.

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Various: Note of Hope – review

4 out of 5 4
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  4. Note of Hope: A Celebration of Woody Guthrie
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  6. 2011

2012's Woody Guthrie centenary opens early with this outstanding tribute to the great American troubadour. Bassist-cum-producer Rob Wasserman provides crisp, jazzy settings for extracts from Guthrie's journal, while the array of voices includes a sultry Madeleine Peyroux, an in-form Jackson Browne, rapper Michael Franti with an ode to sticky sex and the late Studs Terkel narrating an encounter with a stock market profiteer. It's an evocative, intimate portrait of both Woody and postwar America, and shifts the view of Guthrie from dust bowl balladeer to Orwellesque commentator and chronicler.

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  • 1 Girls and Boys
  • 2 Tracy Jacks
  • 3 End Of A Century
  • 4 Parklife
  • 5 Bank Holiday
  • 6 Bad Head
  • 7 The Debt Collector
  • 8 Far Out
  • 9 To The End
  • 10 London Loves
  • 11 Trouble in the Message Centre
  • 12 Clover Over Dover
  • 13 Magic America
  • 14 Jubilee
  • 15 This Is A Low
  • 16 Lot 105

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Parklife is the third studio album by the English band Blur, released on 25 April on Food Records. After disappointing sales for their previous album Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993), Parklife returned Blur to prominence in the UK, helped by its four hit singles: Girls & Boys, End Of A Century, Parklife and To The End. The album was certified quadruple platinum in the United Kingdom. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.

Guardian and Observer reviews of Parklife

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Total 6 reviews

  • Toppermost of the Populist

    I'm a huge fan of almost everything Blur recorded. As a fan it's usually your duty to know more than the man on the street about your given subject. If you were to ask a pub music quiz team, a festival crowd or that man on that street about Blur's greatest record they would almost undoubtedly all respond in tune. PARK! LIFE! And they'd do the accent on the following verse.

    And they'd be right. Parklife is a thrilling British rock record and enduring pop moment and most importantly, it's totally accessible to all. Parklife is a coach trip through the best of British pop music.

    Cheesy electro pop like Boys And Girls is the gate way element, the swooning croon of To The End assures serious attention gets paid. Retro 60's style incidental music like The Debt Collector & the chest swelling anthem End Of A Century cement the album in key places. This ensures there are varied sights along the musical road from London to Dover. On route the band take in punk fury on Jubilee & Bank Holiday, a Kinks-ian portrait of little Britain in Bad Head and they nail the sounds of their era on Tracy Jacks & Park Life.

    The listener's destination is reached when all previous tracks are bested with the hidden gem near the end This Is A Low. An epic slow burn which has grown in reputation to become their comeback set closer. There's even a little end credits muzak tagged on the end while you gather up your things.

    Parklife is like a tourist attraction. It's as much a British classic as a red phone box, the underground map or a Dr. Marten boot.

  • Britpop at its finest

    People portray blur as trying to be too 'cockney' but I think that this album is just the correct balance of britpop, would it be singing about a derranged middle aged woman named 'Tracy Jacks' or recieving vocals from Phil Daniels in 'Parklife', this album really shows London life at its full. It also has its share in mellow tracks such as 'To the end' and 'This is a Low', it is an album which isn't the slightest repetitive and is highly enjoyable time after time, One of my favourite blur albums by far.

  • A New Beginning.

    I should start by telling you that I'm from Glasgow.

    To begin with, in 1994 as a fifteen year old there were really two main types of music that were coming at me :

    The first was grunge, as far as I was concerned this was not appealing.
    I didnt really belong to the black clad doc martened long haired crowd. I was into football, drinking, smoking weed, and trying to get into nightclubs. This was clearly not the time for hating myself, and wanting to die.

    The other popular music craze was rave and hardcore techno.

    This had its place, in the clubs, but was becoming music for neds, and considering myself sightly more refined at that time, was beginning to lose interest.

    Then two schoolfriends took me to the Barras (market, not venue) and persuaded me to part with £3.99 (now the price of the album) for a photocopied covered pirate cd, called Parklife. Blur.

    The first thing that struck me was , sixteen tracks!

    The next thing that struck me was the quality of the songs.

    From the obvious title track, to the catchy Tracy Jacks, through to End of a Century, the hooks and melodies were there, but the songwriting was fantastic. Every song described a character, or a situation. Which I hadn't heard up until that point. I would later listen to The Beatles and The Kinks , and hear the origins, but in 1994, this was where it was at.

    So, all that was left to do was buy a replica Brazil 1970s top, some adidas gazelles, persuade my Dad to dig out his 70's leather jacket. And I was a mod. Or at least I thought I was. I was neither a grunger, or a ned, I went out to pubs with my mates, started going to see bands, formed a band, went to festivals, and had the f****g time of my life.

    Now this is not a detailed and structured review of one of the best English albums of all time.

    But Parklife wasn't really about being serious.

    Not for me anyway,

  • Post A-level lads' holiday

    Seventeen years old, about to flunk A-levels, with a father on the verge of work induced breakdown and a barely functioning relationship with myself let alone anyone else. To say 1994 was not going well for me would have been putting it mildly.

    Musically uninspired, I was dithering between shoegazing and anthemic stadium fillers, growing impatient with them and building up a collection of classic vinyl to try and collect every song I ever loved. I had no idea that in a matter of years I'd be binning those same records but doing so more musically in touch than I could ever dream.

    And part of that musical awakening was Parklife. An album with vigour, stories, tunes, oozing cool, sex and, best of all: soul. Because of Blur I got into so many more bands. A door opened on Suede, The Stone Roses' second coming, Super Furry Animals, Pulp.... My appetite for old vinyl disapated and I trawled for CD back catalogues of The Pixies, Jesus and Mary Chain, Joy Division, The Smiths, New Order....

    But I'm getting ahead of myself. What of the actual album that I claim started all this, that gave me the first whiff of something, something else?

    I'd be lying if I wasn't first ensnared by Girls and Boys. Who wouldn't be? It is important to remember that a world existed before that intro, I like to think of it the same way as a world pre The Beach Boys' Good Vibrations. So anthemic, so instantly recognisable, so.....part of you that you cannot contemplate it not being there.

    I could go track by track, but you all know the listing. Just as the last note plays on End of a Century and you're done singing along about it being "nothing special!", you clear your throat ready to launch into Parklife. I dont need to tell you that the moment Trouble in the Message Centre starts it ISN'T the cue to fast forward (it DOES grow on you, bruv, just listen!). Jubilee was a big fave of mine, the story, the shouting, the angst and the fun, bouncing around in clubs, happy days. This is a Low was long fantasised as what I would have at my funeral and at 17-18 years old you can imagine how often those morbid fascinations would occur. Again, narratively engaging but, crucial for an end track (Lot 105 doesn't count, does it?), large and anthemic. I remember them closing a set or two with this live.

    But overall, this album for me was such an improvement on the two-fingered assault that was Modern Life: angry and at best sympathetic. Parklife was EMpathetic: it got down there with you and said, "Life is shit, but let's just draw a few caricatures, poke a bit of fun and be a bit more knowing about it before, inevitably, getting pissed?"

    As an impressionable 17 year old, how could I refuse?

  • 1994 didn’t seem that much of a musical turning point at the time. Up until that point I was involved in a Male- Female -Male threesome that involved the Manchester Scene , Shoe Gazing and my new angst ridden mate Grunge. I was 20, I’d being playing about in various dubiously amateurish bands and quite frankly, in an age before postmodern cross genre acceptability, I didn’t have a Scooby as to whether I was coming or going. Like my soon to become idols Blur (at the time my 20 year old ego considered them to be peers) I too was from Essex (Actually from the depths of deepest Basildon AKA Depeche Mode fame). It wasn’t so much dangerous, as advertised by its neighbouring geographical brethren, rather bloody mundane in a working class nothing much happens here sort of way.

    Parklife came out just as I hooked up with a new song writing collaboration of my own. To be honest we weren’t very good but that didn’t matter, we had found a genre and perhaps (with no intention of irony intended) a philosophical way of life. We were inspired by Damon and co. What was so beautifully constructed in Parklife was the re-idealisation of what it is to go to work from Monday to Friday and then spend the next two days trying to live out some Quadraphenia style escapism. The choice to use its leading dramatic proponent in Phil Daniels is not only sublime but also demonstrates the sophisticated understanding of genre creation that Parklife so effortlessly espouses.

    It’s no coincidence that this lot were journeying through the conceptual art machine of Goldsmiths College when they first met. Parklife was their first successful attempt at a concept album. When I say ‘concept album’ I’m not talking about the double gatefold prog-rock-jazz-impro of the 70’s. This lot wanted something more authentic. The concept wasn’t just for the album, they congruently attempted to adopt the short term gratification of the class picture that they beautifully painted in Parklife.

    To me Parklife is extraordinarily constructed, it is to a working class boy from Basildon what Stevie Wonders Songs From the Key of Life must have been to a black family from Harlem in the 1970’s. Like all classic albums the song chronology is part of Parklife’s disposition. It reads like a chapter list from an Alan Sillitoe play. Now I know every body’s knows that really they were a bunch of middle class art school drop outs who never really knew what it was like to be the anti hero of a Sillitoe play but that makes the feet of their musical acumen all the more astounding. Oasis , the natural angry men of the time who were so reactive towards this incongruence (and perhaps were the authentic characters inside the world of Parklife) Could only ever manage a Slade/Beatles pastiche that hardly felt like the towering powerhouse of subtle class subversion that Blurs third and best studio album seemed to be.

    Now at this point I feel tempted is to go through the album track by track and give some sort of running commentary on each individual track and a brief interpretation. But I’m not, because apart from the fact that it seems painfully supercilious to do so, (when it comes to music I have no more expertise than you) It would be a huge injustice to a magnificent body of work that should be listened to like a symphony. It’s just not good enough to have the singles on a ‘best of’ album; If you do not own a copy of this album, as it was intended in its original track listing, I implore you to write this wrong.

  • Blur's Masterpiece

    Britpop. Mop tops, John Lennon's spectacles, (too much) drink, (mostly uninteresting) drugs and a return to 'Real Music.' Well that's the impression one gets from afar. I was two years old in 1994 and grew up with music composed in the shadow of the day indie took over the world. And I must say having heard Wonderwall et al, probably in the background at some 9th birthday party and then heard it again sung an octave lower by every crowd of teenagers imaginable, I didn't really dig Britpop. It was alright, but, well, boring. And then one morning on the way to college I listened to Parklife.

    From Girls and Boys' driving funk bass intro to the spooky charm of the Debt Collector and the repressed grunge of This is a Low, it is an album that's catchy and soulful, but most importantly, interesting. The title track, maybe Blur's most well known 'anthem,' is probably the easiest singalong on here and features Phil Daniels doing wierd cockney spoken word vocals. Alright its not exactly Captain Beefheart but at least its trying to do something different, while staying a great pop song. There is a vision to this record which belies the laddish scene which history dictates it pioneered.

    Mod influences are cetainly present in the songwriting, but dashes of XTC guitar (Tracy Jacks) and a the ample use of synths, most notably in Far Out, place the album in a distinctly post 80s landscape. The often present horn section though, which verges on orchestral at times, provides a timeless and unmistakably English atmosphere, as if some pre-Beatle brass band has turned up in the wrong decade and just decided to play along. Amongst this fusion Damon Albarn finds a personal and modern voice: His cockney drawl paints beautiful melodies warning of 'Magic Americas' and 'Badheads in the morning.'

    Lyrically as well as musically there are themes rooted in the tradition of the Kinks and the Smiths, laced with wit and sarcasm. Suburbia is bemoaned and celebrated in equal measure in tracks like Bank Holiday and Jubilee, and the tacky consumerism of what Albarn sees replacing it (and which dominates our mainstream today) is constantly challenged. However, the record never becomes whining or pretentious. The ever underrated Graham Coxon's bubblegum distortion and Alex James's popping basslines mean that at the heart of it all remains rock and roll.

    Parklife is a album that lives up to the sum of its parts. There is impossibly good songwriting, angry rockers and weird experimental pieces. Not gold all the way through admittedly, but none of it feels throwaway. As a concept and a snapshot of a creative band in their element it is complete and brilliantly realised. End of a Century, my favourite track, sums up perfectly: "end of a century its nothing special." At a time of increasingly plasticy excess when everything was trying to be 'special' (cough Oasis), this is a complex and observant work of reality. The reason Parklife is Britpop's finest album is not because it defined an era but because it so brilliantly subverted it.

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Badge Music Blog

OMM's greatest cover versions - part three

Kate Bush is rocketing ahead, in OMM's bid to find the best cover song of all time

Votes have been piling in for OMM and Audi TT's poll on the greatest cover versions ever, and the debate about who deserves the number one spot is fiercer than ever. The competition is a close run thing: the Clash's version of Lee 'Scratch' Perry's 'Police & Thieves', and Jeff Buckley's 'Hallelujah' are popular but the surprise frontrunner is Kate Bush.

With her cooing, striking vocals, the idiosyncratic chanteuse is arguably the the essence of an acquired taste. Watch an eerie live performance of her take on Elton John's 'Rocket Man' from Wogan in 1991 here to make your own mind up. And if Kate's cover doesn't float your boat, have a glance at William Shatner's smoke-veiled 'interpretation' of the same song, introduced by Bernie Taupin at the 1978 Science Fiction film awards.

If these contenders are leaving you gasping at a scandalous exclusion then there's just five days left until the poll closes, so get your vote in and support your favourite track.

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How to read a...

census return
The first four national census returns for England and Wales (1801-1831) were simple headcounts; there was no requirement for the recording of names, so they are of limited use to family historians. The original returns have, in any case, been lost.

The 1841 census is the first really useful census, even though it was less detailed than subsequent censuses. It gives the name, age and sex of every member of a particular household. It also lists their trade or profession and a simple "yes" or "no" as to whether a person was born in the county in which the census is being conducted. The address details are often vague, and ages are rounded down to the nearest five years for all people over 15. So anyone aged between 30 and 34 in this census is recorded as 30.

From 1851-1901 similar information was given though it gradually became more detailed, as this page from the 1861 census illustrates. The entries for each person now included a name and surname, identification of the head of the family, the relation of others in the census to the head, marital condition, age, occupation and place of birth.

You should be able to trace your ancestors through successive censuses. This can clear up any inconsistencies regarding age or place of birth. More intriguingly, it can throw up the unexpected - a second (and even bigamous) marriage or a child who died tragically young and was rubbed out of the family history.

Knowing the exact date of a census can sometimes be crucial - see below to check.

June 6 1841

March 30 1851

April 7 1861

April 2 1871

April 3 1881

April 5 1891

March 31 1901

By 1861, there was more detail on the locality in which the census was taken - everything from the name of the administrative county to the hamlet was included.

The census has the advantage of presenting our ancestors to us in family groups. However, high levels of illiteracy meant many people didn't fill in (and couldn't check) their own entries. Mistakes caused, for example, by misunderstood dialect, often crept in. Names and ages should therefore not be taken at face value and should be checked against other sources.

Professions and trades were often imprecise. Abbreviations such as AL (agricultural labourer), MS (male servant) and Ind (independent means) are often used. See for a glossary of old occupations.

The place of birth given ought also to be treated with caution, particularly when it fails to lead directly to a birth certificate. People were often inconsistent between censuses about birthplace, particularly when they had moved away from their original area. Some people also did not know where they were born and either guessed or submitted NK (not known).

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Kimmeridge Bay
Classification Moderate

Distance 8km (5 miles) circular

Typical duration 3 hours

Height gain 194m

Starting point Kimmeridge Quarry car park

OS grid reference SY 918 801 (Explorer map OL 15)

Walk in a nutshell

Hunt out this remarkable stretch of Dorset countryside for the chance to take in exceptional coastal views. The walk offers a wonderful combination of steady climbs and flat stints, perfect for the intermediate rambler.

Why it's so special

One of the pleasures of this walk is the way the vistas on either side slowly open up. Inland, you see right across the Purbecks to Corfe Castle, while on the other side you look out over the Jurassic Coast at Kimmeridge and beyond.

Keep your eyes peeled for

This is a great spot for nature lovers. Expect to see white and blue butterflies and a variety of cliff top plants, including thrift, sea campion and rock samphire.

But bear in mind

There is a toll charge of £3 on the road to Kimmeridge, so have some loose change ready. Clavell Tower is currently being rebuilt, brick by brick, further back from the sea; expect to see it under construction until the end of 2008.

Impress your companions

The Clavell Tower was built in 1830 as an observatory and folly. Thomas Hardy would take his first love, Eliza Nicholl here, and author PD James used the building as the setting for The Black Tower.

Recover afterwards

At the bistro-style Restaurant at Kimmeridge in the old post office. Try one of their dreamy Purbeck ice creams.

And if it's tipping down

Take cover in the Marine Centre at Kimmeridge Bay.

How to get there

By car From Wareham, follow A351 south towards Swanage. On the outskirts of Stoborough, turn right at signpost to Creech/Kimmeridge. Descend towards Steeple. After 1.6km, turn right for Kimmeridge. Park in quarry car park on the left.

By public transport The nearest rail station is Wareham (8km). From here, your best bet is to catch a cab.

Step-by-step guide
Walk ID 3738

1. Head off from quarry car park. Turn right on to road as you leave car park, then almost immediately right on to another road. After about 100m, turn right on to gravel track.

2. The track takes you to Swyre Head. Climb steadily for about 1km, then continue for another kilometre on fairly flat land. Pass through three gates to a fourth marked "Heaven's Gate".

3-4. After this, you pass a trig point to a stile marked as the start of a path, down to coastal path. Cross stile and go down steps. Take care, especially in wet weather. Proceed to stile.

5. Cross stile into field. At next stile, turn left for 3m and cross another stile to carry on along a lane. Go straight ahead, keeping close to hedge, ignoring turnings to right and left.

6-7. Cross stile on to South West Coast Path and turn right. Follow path for about 2.5km until Clavell Tower. Pass tower and descend steps. Turn right along sealed road, then left in front of small toilet block. Aim for visible marked path entering some bushes.

8. Follow path across parking area. Take road in opposite corner near Portaloos. Ignore first footpath sign on right. Pass through gate to another footpath sign.

9. Turn right, follow path close to a small stream. Ignore turnings to left and walk on footbridge over stream.

10-11. Turn right over footbridge and proceed to main road. Turn left and walk up through village. Keep on to steps leading up into churchyard. Continue through churchyard and grassy field beyond to stile, where you are almost back at the starting point.