Top Tips for Tuesday

John Smeaton announces the launch of a new short film about abortion, containing interviews with both pro-life and pro-choice activists. Watch that space.

Addiction Today, the blog (and magazine) of the Addiction Recovery Foundation, focuses on the closure of an abstinence-based alcohol recovery course which has triggered the threat of a judicial review by activists, in the context of the NHS increasingly withdrawing opportunities for private/third sector companies to apply for tenders relating to addiction recovery services.

You can run...David Appletree of the Jewish Internet Defence Force on the withdrawal from Twitter of an antisemite called Rachel Oetting who works for Walmart - a result from an excellent peice of detective work on his part; her Facebook profile is here, and her Myspace page here. Note to Brits: Walmart owns the Asda chain of stores - perhaps we need to keep an eye on them.

Over at Republic of Mathematics, Gary Davis tells us that mathematics is more than a language: does that mean I'm more than illiterate? This article brought back cherished memories of Professor Calculus expatiating on Euler's proof on the relationship between the faces and vertices of a polyhedron.

Into the present furore about privacy and organisations' obligations to respect it, Scottish Labour activist Yapping Yousuf throws his opinion on why Labour should retain email addresses of people who contact elected representatives online for the purposes of electoral advertising.

At Suite 101, singer Terry Mike Jeffrey remembers Elvis upon the release of his fifth album in tribute to the King.

Tory Historian reexamines the works of Agatha Christie.

And finally...over on Totally Top Ten, we rediscover that there's one born every day with a list of 10 wacky ideas to save our planet.

breakfast, clarinets and God's jukebox

Chris Evans has taken over Terry Wogan's place at the helm of the BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show slot, and very well he did too on his first day. It was small change that he defied the bookies to start the programme with All You Need is Love, but far more significant that the show was preceeded by veteran newsreader Moira Stewart, who had previously been progressively sidelined by the BBC until she left in October 2007 in a row about ageism.

But for me the best part was when the mother of a girl called Emilia Copp texted in to ask for a request for her daughter, who had given up a hired clarinet for a bought one as a birthday present, the delivery having been delayed due to our sudden attack of winter: Evans got her on the phone and arranged for Philip Mercer, accomplished clarinet player and teacher, to play "happy birthday" to her.

However, Sir Terry's retirement and Evans' occupancy of the keystone breakfast slot has eclipsed an arguably more momentous event: the return of Mark Lamarr.

Perhaps a little recent history is germane here.

In October 2008, unstable shock-jocks Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand were due to interview actor Andrew Sachs on the latter's show. When he failed to answer and an answerphone kicked in, Ross shouted "He's [expletive deleted] your grand-daughter!" and various rephrasings thereof down the phone. (The grandchild in question being Georgina Baillie, a burlesque performer also known as Voluptua.)

Over the next couple of weeks the BBC went into lockdown and even resorted to telling the lie that Sachs had not made a complaint, until Daily Mail columnist Melanie Philips penned an explosive article that blew the whole affair open.

Where Lamarr comes in is that when controller Lesley Thomas was fired for giving the pre-recorded Ross-Brand show her approval despite not having listened to it, Bob Shennan - whose strength lay in talk radio - replaced her at the helm of this specialist music station. One of his first acts was to axe the inoffensive Lamarr's three shows, which covered rockabilly, alternative 60's music and a show comprised of his pick of the last 70 years of popular music called God's Jukebox. He is a dedicated hunter-gatherer of the best not-well-known sounds and, as one music blogger says, expends a vast amount of time and effort hunting down music that is not heard anywhere else. The only complaint I ever heard about him was that he played too much reggae.

And there's the irony of the diversity-ridden alternative universe in which the BBC lives, moves and has its being. Lamarr, like DJ legend Alan Freed, is a white enthusiast for black musical culture, although unlike Freed his favoured ground is ska/rocksteady/reggae as opposed to rhythm'n'blues. He seems to have come under the same suspicion as Madness, a ska/rocksteady band (and favourite of Maxima's) who were accused of being racists because they were all-white, a charge not levelled at the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Queen, Oasis and all the other white bands who reap fields sown by Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, Chuck Berry et al. When Mark Lamarr was sent packing, Radio 2 lost a whole lot of its black music output, probably over half, while the chances that you'd get two white blokes talking when tuning into this specialist music station rose exponentially.

Two of those blokes are musician and DJ Mark Radcliffe and music journalist-turned-DJ Stuart Maconie, who jointly present a 2-hour show on four weekday evenings per week. Great things were promised and great things delivered, initially; now, apart from the odd coup like a recent interview with Danny Thompson, bass-player for Nick Drake, they play ping-pong with memories for longer and longer, and one wonders at what point they will find the cupboard empty.

Lamarr is returning, and not a moment too soon, and in another twist of irony is placed as favourite to take over from Jonathan Ross on his Saturday morning talk-show, whose contract involving astronomical amounts of license-payers' money is not being renewed. I wonder if, given Lamarr's already-proven prowess at interviewing (he's covered Ross's absences more than once), Lamarr's departure was insisted on by Ross? It fits the timescale at both ends.

Whatever, I will enjoy listening to Mark Lamarr, and hope that this specialist music station gives us the rest of our music back.

And I also hope that Emilia gets her clarinet.

top ten songs about Elvis

Click here to access this post formatted for 56k modems.

If you put on a general music radio station at any point in the day, the chance is that if you listen for long enough you'll hear a song by the Beatles, and a song by Elvis Presley.

I was a belated Beatlemaniac while my Mum liked strictly Elvis; they both had 17 #1's in the UK - until A Little Less Conversation took the top spot in 2002, by which time Mum, please God, had gone to meet her idol as well as her God. But Elvis' musical influence extends far beyond his own corpus - hence nods to his vocal style in John Lennon's (Just Like) Starting Over, released barely a month beofre his own death, REM's Man in the Moon and countless others between and beyond.

We've recently had the 75th anniversary of Elvis' birth, so I decided I'd like to look at songs that might not be by Elvis but, given the the adulation accorded to him only grows as the years go by, I thought I'd do a top ten about Elvis.

10 - Real Good Lookin' Boy

This is the Who's guitarist Pete Townshend eulogising vocalist Roger Daltrey's 11-year-old epiphany upon seeing Elvis perform live. Already showing the rebellious streak that would hake him a perfect frontman for the band, , Songfacts quotes him as saying: "I loved him because everybody under the age of 20 thought they were Elvis and dressed like him. Everybody over 20 hated them and that was good enough for me."






9 - King's Call

Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott enlists Mark Knopfler's help to put into words the desolation shared by many upon hearing of the death of Elvis. Listen out for the excerpt from Are you lonesome tonight.





8 - Boy from Tupelo

Here Emmy Lou Harris sings about the legend who originated from this Mississippi town before his family moved to Memphis in Tennessee when he'd just achieved double figures.





7 - Move it

Cliff Richard performs one of his first hits with the Shadows. I don't think I need gild the lily as to the influence of Elvis on this quintessentially Engish pop star, just watch!





6 - Walking in Memphis

Cher perfectly covers Mark Cohn's salute to the culture of Memphis, prominently featuring the city's prodigious Beale St, and also WC Handy, "Father of the Blues". Elvis would make both internationally famous.





5 - Plaisir d'Amour

Writing Can't Help Falling in Love, which was a huge hit for Elvis, George Weiss, Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatori put English words to Jean Paul Egide Martini's (right) 1780 song Plaisir d'Amour (The Joy of Love). Here's Nana Mouscouri singing the bittersweet words in their original French.





4- Always on my Mind

When in 1987 camp band the Pet Shop Boys recorded a video - not always perfectly lip-synched - of the classic made famous by Elvis (among many others, notably Willie Nelson - there was a degree of scepticism if not consternation at their electronica treatment. But due to the unexpected level of interest it was then released as a single which reached the top ten in the US and Australia, and reached the pole position in the UK, Canada and Germany. Suddenly, renewed interest in Elvis was injected into this decade that maistream music and fashion forgot.




3 - Elvis Presley Boulevard

I'd tried to find Billy Joel singing Chris Trapper's 2002 song as the two men are linked by the drummer Ronnie Tutt, who played for the King from 1969 on, but most prominently with the Aloha from Hawaii concert; Tutt also played on Joel's 1973 Piano Man album. Here's Illinois singer-songwriter Tommy Neal performing the song, warning those who would seek a sort of salvation in the minutiae of Elvis' life, with his wife Breann.




2 - Black Velvet

Elvis' face depicted on velvet, often black, is so widespread that evangelist preacher and writer Rob Bell called his book on "repainting the Christian faith" Velvet Elvis. Likewise, David Tyson and Christopher Ward's paean to influences (like Jimmy Rogers) upon Elvis when he was growing up in Mississippi and Tennessee is called Black Velvet. Here's the best-known version by Allanah Miles.



1 - If I can dream

Elvis was always a deeply religious person and read many books on the subject while on tour or at Vegas. Upon his passing there was a rumour of a deathbed conversion to Catholicism, but unfortunately I can't find any info proving this or otherwise. One of my favourite of his songs is If I can dream, whose powerful lyrics both referenced Martin Luther King, who had been assassinated shortly before the release, and posed the question asked by many religious people abuot why God gives us the ability to wish for something better when those wishes come true at best slowly - the conclusion being that he trusts "somehow things are gonne be alright". Enjoy.




If you enjoyed this, click here for more Top ten songs about...

top ten songs about Elvis for 56k modems

Click here to access "Top ten songs about Elvis" for broadband.

My good online pal Pam from Texas pointed out that if you have a 56k modem (or, I guess, a slow broadband connection) you have to wait for all the videos to load on one of these top tens before you can listen to any, which was something that hadn't occured to me. So in a spirit of contrition I offer the Top Ten songs about Elvis for bloggees with a 56k modem!

If you put on a general music radio station at any point in the day, the chance is that if you listen for long enough you'll hear a song by the Beatles, and a song by Elvis Presley.

I was a belated Beatlemaniac while my Mum liked strictly Elvis; they both had 17 #1's in the UK - until A Little Less Conversation took the top spot in 2002, by which time Mum, please God, had gone to meet her idol as well as her God. But Elvis' musical influence extends far beyond his own corpus - hence nods to his vocal style in John Lennon's (Just Like) Starting Over, released barely a month beofre his own death, REM's Man in the Moon and countless others between and beyond.

We've recently had the 75th anniversary of Elvis' birth, so I decided I'd like to look at songs that might not be by Elvis but, given the the adulation accorded to him only grows as the years go by, I thought I'd do a top ten about Elvis.

10 - Real Good Lookin' Boy

This is the Who's guitarist Pete Townshend eulogising vocalist Roger Daltrey's 11-year-old epiphany upon seeing Elvis perform live. Already showing the rebellious streak that would hake him a perfect frontman for the band, , Songfacts quotes him as saying: "I loved him because everybody under the age of 20 thought they were Elvis and dressed like him. Everybody over 20 hated them and that was good enough for me."



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT1NZK1cazw&feature=player_embedded

9 - King's Call

Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott enlists Mark Knopfler's help to put into words the desolation shared by many upon hearing of the death of Elvis. Listen out for the excerpt from Are you lonesome tonight.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yxu1nVbHes&feature=player_embedded

8 - Boy from Tupelo

Here Emmy Lou Harris sings about the legend who originated from this Mississippi town before his family moved to Memphis in Tennessee when he'd just achieved double figures.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93lQxAFcdwM&feature=player_embedded

7 - Move it

Cliff Richard performs one of his first hits with the Shadows. I don't think I need gild the lily as to the influence of Elvis on this quintessentially Engish pop star, just watch!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4IA7DR1jK0&feature=player_embedded

6 - Walking in Memphis

Cher perfectly covers Mark Cohn's salute to the culture of Memphis, prominently featuring the city's prodigious Beale St, and also WC Handy, "Father of the Blues". Elvis would make both internationally famous.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0mL2gzy8dE&feature=player_embedded

5 - Plaisir d'Amour

Writing Can't Help Falling in Love, which was a huge hit for Elvis, George Weiss, Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatori put English words to Jean Paul Egide Martini's (right) 1780 song Plaisir d'Amour (The Joy of Love). Here's Nana Mouscouri singing the bittersweet words in their original French.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WvXpgLtTwY&feature=player_embedded

4- Always on my Mind

When in 1987 camp band the Pet Shop Boys recorded a video - not always perfectly lip-synched - of the classic made famous by Elvis (among many others, notably Willie Nelson - there was a degree of scepticism if not consternation at their electronica treatment. But due to the unexpected level of interest it was then released as a single which reached the top ten in the US and Australia, and reached the pole position in the UK, Canada and Germany. Suddenly, renewed interest in Elvis was injected into this decade that maistream music and fashion forgot.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSaV7fP107c&feature=player_embedded

3 - Elvis Presley Boulevard

I'd tried to find Billy Joel singing Chris Trapper's 2002 song as the two men are linked by the drummer Ronnie Tutt, who played for the King from 1969 on, but most prominently with the Aloha from Hawaii concert; Tutt also played on Joel's 1973 Piano Man album. Here's Illinois singer-songwriter Tommy Neal performing the song, warning those who would seek a sort of salvation in the minutiae of Elvis' life, with his wife Breann.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE0E_yCIujk&feature=player_embedded

2 - Black Velvet

Elvis' face depicted on velvet, often black, is so widespread that evangelist preacher and writer Rob Bell called his book on "repainting the Christian faith" Velvet Elvis. Likewise, David Tyson and Christopher Ward's paean to influences (like Jimmy Rogers) upon Elvis when he was growing up in Mississippi and Tennessee is called Black Velvet. Here's the best-known version by Allanah Miles.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UTRMP1Uk1k&feature=player_embedded

1 - If I can dream

Elvis was always a deeply religious person and read many books on the subject while on tour or at Vegas. Upon his passing there was a rumour of a deathbed conversion to Catholicism, but unfortunately I can't find any info proving this or otherwise. One of my favourite of his songs is If I can dream, whose powerful lyrics both referenced Martin Luther King, who had been assassinated shortly before the release, and posed the question asked by many religious people abuot why God gives us the ability to wish for something better when those wishes come true at best slowly - the conclusion being that he trusts "somehow things are gonne be alright". Enjoy.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEO7uu1Pp8I&feature=player_embedded

If you enjoyed this, click here for more Top ten songs about...

Elvis lives in our memories

The first time I saw an Elvis impersonator was in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat when one jumped out of a Sarcophagus in the role of Pharoah to delighted screams from the crowd - he'd just been dead two or three years.

The lasting cultural impact of Elvis can't be underestimated. In Roland Emmerich's 1998 remake of Godzilla, Jean Reno, playing a French intelligent agent, gets through a US security barrier by saying the classic line "thang-you very much!", and in Men in Black, when the cvar is speeding upside-down through a tunnel to the accompaniment of Elvis singing Promised Land, Tommy Lee Jones' character remarks to Will Smith's that "Elvis didin't die, he just went home". My favourite, though, is in the film of John Grisham's novel The Firm. In the book, main character Mitchell McDeere, in fleeing, hitches a ride with a lorry-driver who is an Elvis impersonator; whereas in the firm we see Tom Cruise, playing the part, in the passenger's seat beside a driver who looks just like Elvis - a nod, no doubt, to the enduring rumours that Elvis is alive.

I remember when he died in 1977 because my Mum, a huge fan, came into my room weeping to tell me the news. She'd been hooked since she'd first heard one of his singles on Radio Luxembourg - which, by chance, was the first European station to announce his death. She related to me how the only of his songs she couldn't listen to was Teddy Bear, because when she was a young woman with TB in Mearnskirk Hospital near Glasgow, a wardmate had played it continuously on a wind-up record-player until, to the guilty relief of all those around her, the object of her infatuation decided to call things off in a letter.

I think two things in particular attracted Mum and her peers to Elvis. Firstly, living in poverty in Tupelo, Mississippi before moving to Tennessee's Memphis, he was a true working-class hero long before John Lennon coined the term in song while living in the lap of luxury, and - again unlike Lennon - he never forgot where he came from.

Secondly, his performances exuded sexuality in a "safe" way that was not only due to his distance from Scotland. The Southern laws of deference and politeness that his generation were instructed to observe almost religiously led Ed Sullivan to extemporise a paean to his decency, telling the audience at a time when Presley was being attacked with all the might of the Establishment machine that he was "a fine, decent boy" and called everybody "Sir".

Another side of "Elvis the Pelvis" was a fierce love for his mother, something well understood in Celtic countries, so the rumour being disseminated in the late 1950's that he had killed her must have really hurt. The late Elaine Dundy, who wrote a book on this relationship called Elvis and Gladys, captured the more extreme devotion that still surrounds the star:

Here and now I feel sure that in the next millennium, excavations on the site of what was once Memphis, Tennessee, will uncover artifacts which lead archeologists to conclude there was once a god called Elvis who resided in the sacred temple "Graceland" where his followers gathered twice every year to worship: on the day of his birth, and on the day of his death.

Elvis popularised a "black" style of music because of the musicians he jammed with and, like them, had long(ish) hair that migrated into the "duck's tail" (to give it a more polite name) hairstyle that was sported by, for example, Chuck Berry; unlike his black co-musicians, his hair was longer because he couldn't afford to get it cut so often. So, unlike singers of sanitized pop that were being given airtime with Establishment blessings, when he burst onto the scene he was rough and ready to rock, popularising real rhythm'n'blues that let black performers start to take their rightful place in mainstream music on his coat-tails.

His ancestry was patchwork - Scottish, Irish, French, Jewish - and Native American (Cherokee ) - the latter perhaps informing his perfromance as a half-Kiowa frontiersman in Flaming Star, which was remarkably free of melting-pot fuzziness right up to its bleak conclusion. Like George Harrison, Van Morrison and Beverley Knight - andf arguably the majority of artists - he was haunted by a need to pursue a more numinous reality than that which informed his life as a touring and recording artist, dogged by the necessity of feeding the financial appetites of Colonel Parker, both who manipulated him and suppressed many of his talents in favour of what printed money.

As Elaine Dundy said, "prior to '77...it was possible to get through a day without hearing Elvis' name". At this time of year - and particularly this year, when had he lived he'd have turned 75, sometimes it seems that one hears little else. And, given the incredible generosity of this phenomenal man who gave joy to millions, that's fine with me.

top tips for Tuesday

The shouting's already starting for the British General Election; even so, Tim Montgomery, editor of ConervativeHome, still managed to use the camera he got for Christmas to capture some stunning images of London a it recovers from the festive period.

Fr Tim Finigan, as well as being a theologian, is a headmaster's son; here on The hermeneutic of continuity he shows where US President Barack Obama gave hostages to fortune while delivering a Christmas address to a group of children.

This one's just in: David Appletree runs JIDF, the Jewish Internet Force, which monitors and fights hatred of Jews on the Web - including on established sites like Facebook and YouTube which, if you're not aware of the extent of antisemitism on cyberspace, evince malevolence on a stunning level. He's just released a Bulletin of Jew Hatred for December 2009.

Interested in puzzles of all sorts? Here's the best puzzles of 2009 from puzzles.com!

Great Britain isn't the only country facing elections this year. John Smeaton, SPUC Director outlines the main points of a pro-life catechism produced by the Filipino Bishops' Conference for the country's forthcoming poll that provides pertinent points for people concerned about attacks on the value of human life everywhere.

It's easy to recognise an internet scam when you're looking at an email offering you $5m if you send your bank details to Nigeria, but it can be salutory to remind oneself of how subtle these tricks are coming. allfacebook.com sets out 5 tricks currently popular with scammers on Facebook.

Finally, the limits of "justified personal attack" in cyberspace are tested, reveals Will Heaven, as the Twitter #Kerryout campaign to oust Labour's "Twitter Tzar" Kerry McCarthy continues unabated. It will be interesting if, less than a year after the party commissioned Derek Draper and Damien McBride to smear, among others, Tory Party leader David Cameron and his wife Samantha in the shadow of the death of their infant son, the people's party appeals to morality.

beauty pageants and the scorpion's sting in Songs

Geneviève de Fontenay, septuagenarian grande-dame of Miss France, is living proof that there can be honour in the much-maligned art of appreciating the beauty of the human form.

Beauty pageants have been with us since pre-Christian Europe, when Roman and Germanic traditions independently decided that an attractive young woman be chosen to represent in comprehensible form the burgeoning spring - what became known as the May Queen, part of many a town and village ceremony, even as socialists coveted May-Day and then, as the contestants in Miss London School of Economics found, proclaimed the ceremonies like those of the day's original tenants an "objectification of women".

While the pagan overseers of May-Day may have had a better grasp of the procreative aspect of sex than the unitive one, the author of Song of Songs displays no such impediment as we see carnal and romantic combine to turn the marriage-bed into a gateway to the numinous:

While the king was at his table,
my perfume spread its fragrance.

My lover is to me a sachet of myrrh
resting between my breasts.

My lover is to me a cluster of henna blossoms
from the vineyards of En Gedi.

How beautiful you are, my darling!
Oh, how beautiful!
Your eyes are doves.

How handsome you are, my lover!
Oh, how charming!
And our bed is verdant.

The beams of our house are cedars;
our rafters are firs.

What's notable about Songs is that the Beloved is no beauty-queen; taking the work as an erotic poem (one of several interpretations), she initially tries to turn the Lover's eyes away from her because she has been put to work in the fields - "Do not stare at me because I am...darkened by the sun."

Andrew Jones, leader of Grace Church in London's Hackney, teases out in polemic form the tocsin rung by Songs identifying the difficult path Geneviève de Fontenay must tread if she is to keep Miss France (or any beauty pageant) above the level of a flesh-feast: "We are to read it as a celebration of and a warning about the power of sexual love."

Mme de Fontenay enforces strict rules regarding the conduct of Miss France contestants before, during and after the contest: entrants must be single, nulliparous, not have posed for nude or scantily-clad pictures; and a successful Miss France must not pose for such pictures for five years after gaining the title.

In an article about the crisis surrounding the present incumbent, First News' Gavin Mortimer revisits a controversy 2008 incumbent Valérie Bègue of Réunion, he says, "was ordered to stand down by de Fontenay on account of a series of titillating photos, one of which involved licking yogurt off a ledge. Bègue refused, saying that she was fully clothed in the photos and hadn't authorised their publication. De Fontenay was forced to back off when she was accused in some quarters of racism."

Mortimer, a class-war conspiracy theorist, is showing an aversion to traditional values in his selectivity with the facts: despite its cherished laïcité, there is a strong core of Judaeo-Christian values in France. The photo that endangered Bègue's crown did so not because she was in a swimming-pool wearing a skimpy bikini: the clinching factor was that she was in a "crucified" position, floating on a wooden cross. I refrain from posting the pic due to its blasphemy rather than any salaciousness.

The present unhappiness to dog Miss France by association is the publication of nude photos of Miss Paris 2010, Kelly Bochenko, in scandal-sheet Entrevue. The 23-year-old stated that they had been taken either by or for a former boyfriend four years ago and she'd forgotten about them.

Actually, I don't have too much of a problem swallowing the last statement. In a toxic practice called sexting, young people - predominantly females - send lewd and sometimes downright pornographic photographs of themselves to males or even to their peers by mobile phone, something that is planting a harvest of tears for the future as these photos find their way onto the internet where they await the subjects' parents or even children should the models be hubristic enough to achieve anything. Yet explicit "lads' mags" whose publishers resist every effort to relegate them to the top shelf continue to brainwash young men into moulding young women into sex-objects, as all the while feminists fix their fury on beauty contests which, while staunch guardians like Geneviève de Fontenay stand watch, are much more about a celebration of grace and elegance than that much-used misnomer into which all the varied subtleties of sexuality are crushed, "just sex".

While in Songs Lover and Beloved embrace and encircle in a double-helix dance, sex without commitment splinters us into so many shards we end up out of control and easy meat for predators who feed on the vulnerable.

Perhaps Bochenko's boyfriend was jealous of her incipient success? The wonderful passage of Songs about love being as strong as death has a scorpions' sting in the tail that Andrew Jones indicates with his point "sexual love is so powerful that it needs to be sealed": "its jealousy [is] unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame." I just wonder whether her forgetting about the skin-pix represents a genuine lapse of memory or a need for a psychological fig-leaf.

The First Post's Gavin Mortimer has a depressing prediction for Bochenko and too many women who have been softened up by the abusive phenomena of sexting and lads' mags, with an insight into their raison d'être: "the photos will do her no harm should she wish to go into the porn business". That's nothing to sing about. I hope Kelly Bochenko can put this behind her, whatever the gutter press's ambitions for her, and reaches for the heights she is capable of.