Are Brilliant Mark VI

Ed Reardon's Week. You can catch it intermittently on Radios 4  and 7. By matchless serendipity last week's episode gave Ed a new girl friend played by, wait for it, Jenny Agutter. This is inspired casting since I'm pretty sure the producers must know that she has long been the favourite of the show's target audience, that is to say blokes like me. And don't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about. You know who you are.

Next up is an American, Rich Hall. I have been reminded how sagacious he is as I rewatch his documentary  How The West Was Lost on the excellent BBC4. This should be shown to film students in lieu of lectures on the western. It is partial, provocative and precise (within the first five minutes he looks straight at camera and deems George W. Bush a fuckwit) and gets you thinking. Which is a good start to the subject. Not, as others have expertly averred, that this is an area on which I am an expert, but that's not going to stop me having a go. Tough.

Ynys Mon. Or the Isle of Anglesey to us English oppressors. I'm on an extended break here because I'm going to see Derek Jacobi in King Lear at the improbable locus of Llandudno on Tuesday. Sharon and Helen were with me for the weekend but have gone home leaving me to a pile of books on Shakespeare (I counted them last night - twenty-two of them) and my supply of red wine. I have had what passes for a thrilling evening considering every reference to 'Rome' in Antony and Cleopatra. There are thirty, not to mention nine to 'Roman'. Just to prove how far into sad bookishness I have fallen, last week I spent a book voucher on my own copy of The Divine Comedy. I've even read some of it. And enjoyed it. Do I need help? No I need more book tokens and I need more shelf space, because as we all know, books do furnish a room.

This last one will cement my place on the naughty step but what the hell. Jenny Agutter. Sexy even on the radio. In a comedy. The photo is from Logan's Run which is not  a good film but I couldn't really put up a picture of the Railway Children now could I. Not without squads of social workers descending on my island strongness and embossing my name on some sort of register that Dave Cameron wants to make unamendable for ever and ever and ever.