Dispatches: Train Journeys from Hell or The Great Rail Swindle

I live in a part of the country that is pretty much cut off from the rail networks i.e. we don't have trains. We used to and the countryside is marked with the old rail lines, abandoned stations and viaducts. The idea of travelling by train for me is still, therefore, a romantic notion deeply routed in nostalgia for my home town when it was thriving with mills and cinemas and local shops. I soon discovered, however that my image of rail travel, mostly coloured by the Railway Children, is a loada rubbish. In January I travelled from Edinburgh to London along the beautiful east coast in the dark with a drunken rage strutting up and down the aisles singing Kasabian or some other generic lad-indie shite. I was no happy, it was fairly unpleasant. But after watching Dispatches: Train Journeys from Hell tonight it seems that I got off lightly.

Presented by one of my favourite people, Richard Wilson (you know, Victor Meldrew), whose own hellish journeys were interspersed with amateur footage of everyday passenger experiences. Dispatches were investigating why the British rail network has the highest fares in Europe while having the biggest government subsides. Bizarre, no? Overcrowding is also a massive problem (amazing fact coming up, get ready) worse in fact than when troops were demobbed and sent home after WWII. Mental.

The real shocker is the fares. The extortionate, ridiculous, a figure plucked from the air, fares. They're so ludicrous that there's no logic to them. Because the train companies are privately owned the fares aren't regulated. One woman tells Wilson that her season ticket was 4 grand. 4 FUCKING GRAND. The stations and tracks are publicly owned so our taxes are paying for the railways as well as our massive fares. I mean, what's it all about, Alfie?

The situation is so daft that a lot of the moments with Wilson are just funny. Like the automated booking service which requires some bizarre RP accent in order for you to book any tickets. 'No oiks on our trains please!' Wilson also resorts to sitting in the loo for one journey as he says, 'it's better than nothing.' He's an excellent host and he even throws in his famous catch phrase a few times (calm down, I'm saving it till the end) which just makes me love him even more.

On top of everything, once the extortionate fares are paid a lot of the stations and trains are ancient and dilapidated, so not only is your journey miserable because you're significantly poorer and the you can't sit down for your two hour commute, the train also stinks like a tramps musty sock. But hey! It's OK! At least the trains are on time, even when they're late(?) It's a swindle. A con. A jip, I tells ye! I mean I DON'T BELIIIIIEEEEVE IT!

Riches to Rags: A Normal Life for Lily?

From Riches to Rags opens on Lily Allen's final Brits in 2010. She's quitting music because she wants to start a normal life. She's going to open a shop with her sister that rents out designer clothes to those who couldn't afford to buy them normally. And she's using her own money to start the business.

OK so first of all a normal life is sadly unlikely for Lily Allen because she's Lilly Allen and she will always be Lily Allen. Secondly, she and her sister Sarah both admit that their relationship is a turbulent one so it's not exactly the best idea for a business partnership. Also, Lilly is no stranger to shopping for clothes but as she admits, she doesn't know what it's like for the average girl out shopping on a budget. So Lilly gets loads of proper high end designer gear which she will rent for maybe, £300... EH WHAT???? If I'm paying £300 for a dress I am keeping it forever, wearing it every day, even to the Co-op to get some loo roll, 'yeah, it's a Chanel, what of it?' I'm getting my monies worth, for real.

However, the business might be OK because look! It's Mary Portas! She's the Queen of Mystery Shops or something! And, as with the Beanie, amateurs! You must LISTEN! Will they listen? We shall see. Another thing that is good about her business is the name, 'Lucy in Disguise', it's catchy, it's clever, it's essentially a posh pun. Love it.

Sarah, the business partner and sister is a self confessed party girl, working mostly in nightclubs, presumably so she can party on the cheap. She doesn't seem hugely reliable, nipping off to New York to source some clothes and coming back having spent a ton of cash on what appear to be MC Hammers rejects. Lil ain't happy and her mood doesn't lift when Portas sets up a market research group that Lil and her sister both sit in on. The girls questioned said the rental price of the clothes was too expensive, obvs, and then when asked if it made a difference knowing the shop was Lily's venture, one girl said she was a bit put off. Lily's heard enough. She's off.

The above scene gives an insight into why she decided to leave her music career behind. The negative press she's received has clearly become too much for her and her career change seems to be a way for her to shift the focus from her as a person to the business she's hoping to create. Yeah, she comes across as a bit obnoxious and somewhat out of touch with the average girl on the street but she is ultimately quite sweet and likable. I really hope it works out for her and so I have some advice, LISTEN TO THE PORTAS LILY!

Wonders of the Universe: Science Gets Sexy.

'Why are we here? Where do we come from?' Two big questions asked by Professor Brian Cox as the opener to his new series, Wonders of the Universe. Yeah, we're all about the UNIVERSE this time. Hey, Solar System, fuck off! We're done with you, we're moving on to bigger things and you don't get much bigger than the entire Universe. And you don't get much sexier than Prof Cox. The opening shots of Wonders could (and should) be captured as still photographs and packaged as a calender. March: Prof Cox pensively gazing out over a glorious Arctic tundra landscape as if he is commander of the entire Universe. In aviators. Hot.

Seriously though, a bit of Cox perving (tee hee) is to be expected but it definitely shouldn't detract from his excellent presenting and professing. He manages to explain complicated scientific laws and theories, such as entropy (which I totally got, by the way. Ask me anything, go on), without patronising or overwhelming his audience. Although I am fundamentally a creature of art and literature, my skepticism and atheism mean that an understanding of science is the only way to add order to my universe. The concepts are so huge, they can at times be overwhelming so it's refreshing to have a balance in Prof Cox's no bullshit explanations.

The first programme is called 'Destiny' and unsurprisingly we look at where our universe is heading and how we know it will eventually fade away to nothing and I mean EVENTUALLY. Seriously, it's going to take aaaages. We begin in Peru, in the ruins of a temple built two and a half thousand years ago. The towers of the temple were built as 'an ancient solar calender' using the Sun's position to measure time. Already my mind is blown. That is completely AMAZING that such an ancient civilisation had an instrument with which to measure time. Prof Cox says he wants to build one in his garden. I've already drawn me up some blueprints.

Throughout the episode, Prof Cox uses often breath-taking locations to demonstrate the principles of time; a great Argentinian glacier illustrating the Arrow of Time; an abandoned mining town in the Namibian desert illustrating the laws of entropy; the Costa Rica coast by night to witness Sea Turtles nesting on the beaches, demonstrating that changes have happened around these creatures who have been around for ONE HUNDRED MILLION YEARS. Impressive. There are a lot of massive numbers like this, like properly massive, like we can't even imagine how massive, for instance, the death of the Universe is so far into the future, the number particles in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE doesn't come close to the number of years it will be until it dies, there were a lot of 'trillions' in there. Shit. AND life can and will only exist for the tiniest fraction of the life of the Universe. SHIT. So what's the point then, Prof Cox? 'We are the cosmos made conscious.' In other words we make the universe aware of its existence by exploring it. WE ARE AWESOME.

It seems the ultimate 'Destiny' of the Universe is to die, but don't get bummed out guys, Prof Cox says it'll be well ages till that happens and in the mean time we might as well have a look around.

It seems Prof Cox's science needs almost poetic language to really describe these big ideas. So we are presented with phrases such as 'deep time' and in reference to the end of the universe, 'Nothing happens and it keeps not happening forever.' This poetic language, together with the sumptuous imagery and no bullshit science, marries art with scientific fact making Wonders near perfect. And seeing Prof Cox striding around in various types of outdoor clothing, his indie hair streaked with distinguished grey blowing in the breeze and his handsome face turned toward the heavens, ain't bad either.