MADONNA

Do you know what's boring? Going around, thinking before you speak, putting other people first, dressing modestly and acting humble.

That's why I always loved Madonna. We mere mortals might have to go around trying to get on with each other as best we can, but Madonna just trod on everybody and took what she wanted. And she did it wearing cool ankle boots and with her bra showing through her lacy top.

To a teenage girl, who was always being pressured by adults to be sweet and quiet and modest, she was a big fuck you. I couldn't upset my aunts by painting my lips red and dancing around in a white basque singing about feeling like a virgin, but she could do it on my behalf.

All these year later, this latest incarnation of hers as someone who gives a shit about the world, does not work for me so well. I used to care about poverty stricken children in African countries so that Madonna didn't have to. But now Madonna cares about poverty stricken African children, it's not the same.

The rot set in when she found happiness with Guy of course. She started admitting in interviews to learning how to compromise and be less selfish. What was the point in a Madonna if she wasn't wildly egotistical and self-centred?

I don't know, but I do know that there is still a point to her. I like the fact that she is still always in trouble of one sort or another and that people are still not nice about her. I think she's like the pop version of Tony Blair. People like to boo her, but she will be utterly missed when she is gone because she is unique.

I haven't yet bought her latest album, but I will. In four weeks I'm seeing her at Wembley, for the very first time.

THERE IS NO SUMMER

You know how some people go around having a general belief in a God, and then something terrible happens like their posh wedding gift service goes bankrupt or they get stuck on a jam on the M5 for four hours, then they have a sudden and terrible realisation that there is no God.

Well that's happened to me, but about the summer.

I spent last weekend playing the "trying to dry clothes on the washing line" game. I could put my clothes out to dry for so long, but then it would piss it down, and I'd rush out to bring it in. It would be slightly damp, so I'd hang it on airers in the house, but its August, and I refused to have the central heating on in the house, so in order to dry the clothes, I had to wait for the sun to come out again. Then I would hang the clothes out on the line once more and the game would start again.

By Monday night I had given up. I hung the clothes on airers and put the central heating on. It was cold enough to put the heating on anyway. I was walking around the house dressed in jumpers and socks and house boots, contemplating buying a balaclava to wear because I was so tired of my ears and nose being cold.

It was then it dawned on me. There is no summer. Not anymore. In Britain, we must learn to live with rain as never before.

I logged on and purchased on-line a heated indoor airer and an outside clothes drier that can be covered by a water-proof covering in a jiffy, so that instead of having to take clothes in when it rains, all I would have to do is cover them over for a while. One day, I will buy a tumble drier too.

I have also done a sock audit. Because it is no use wearing my slip-on flats to work anymore. My feet and ankles just get too cold. I must wear laced up pumps. With socks. Because it is not going to get warm in this country. Not anymore.

There will be rain, and there will be a few days strung together of impossible high temperatures that will completely take us by surprise and disorientate us, then there will be more rain.

Forever and ever. Amen.

THE DARK KNIGHT v MAMMA MIA

I don't like comic book films. I hate the stupid cartoony look of them and the fact that there is never a break from the score. As if the film maker thinks that when people open a comic book violins accompany the images.

But I wanted to see The Dark Knight because it promised to be a more demented and adult take on a genre which is essentially for kids.

And it was. In fact, it was sometimes so disturbing that I had to remind myself that this was a film in which the lead character wore a bat costume. How seriously could that be taken?

Actually, with a character like Heath Ledger's The Joker, very seriously. Evil at it's most terrifying, not because it is without mercy, but because it is without reason. This film was wise enough not to directly reference 9/11 or to seek to make a comment on the post 9/11 world. What it couldn't help however was to be diffuse with the fears and preoccupations of the modern age.

This thing, this hideous ugly insane thing, that has been living unseen amongst us, rises up and brings death and destruction to our cities. How do you stop a reign of chaos wrought by an enemy that does not have any rules, without changing who you are for worse?

It's not a flawless film. The tension is strung out for so long that occasionally it breaks. And I suspect that in order to bind the film to two and a half hours play, several scenes were severely shortened, which sometimes cut the sense out of them. And Christian Bale as Batman wasn't really given anything interesting to do, even when he was out of his batsuit and being Bruce Wayne.

But The Joker was always there to throw petrol on the fire just when you thought it might go out. Through a tense score and thrilling visuals, and a truly gobsmacking performance by Ledger it has to be said, the world was turned upside down and it wasn't a comfortable experience. As a portrayal of the battle between good and evil, it was better than any comic book film had the right to be.

Mamma Mia's examination of evil however was very poor. There was no violence, car chases or explosions. In fact, unless I have missed some subtle subtext, it seemed mainly seemed concerned with singing and dancing.

The film starts with three young woman bouncing joyfully through a coastal forest in Greece singing Honey Honey, then pauses for a few pieces of dialogue before bouncing onto another Abba song. And thus the film continues. Abba songs popping up to enhance the plot through the medium of song and dance. If there was any post 9/11 context then I couldn't see it.

Its most disturbing aspect was a preoccupation with humiliating Pierce Brosnan. His 'spirited' rendition of SOS should have been cut, unless the aim actually was to provoke the entire cinema audience to snorts of uncontainable laughter. It was not quite up there with the scene in The Dark Knight where we are treated to a video of the The Joker tormenting a hostage whom we know he later murders, but it was never-the-less fairly chilling in a I-can't-believe-this-is-really-happening sort of way.

At the end of watching Mamma Mia you feel sort of warm and fuzzy inside, possibly because the film lacks a destruction of the human race theme, but probably because Abba songs can cast an uber feel-good spell that is hard to defend against. They sort of seep into you and make you feel happiness like it's a thing that really exists.