The Guardian World News

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• SAS released by Libya's rebel commanders
• NHS shakeup risks 'return to 1930s'
• Andrew's trade role downgraded
• Ivory Coast police loot cabinet homes
• Chirac lines up for court appearance
• PM: civil service 'enemy of enterprise'
• Mumbai 'encounter squad' returns
• 'Met are criminalising a generation'
• Iran leader accused of abductions
• Irish coalition government formed
• Migrants risk death to stay in Greece
• David Miliband: losing to Ed hurt
• Half of German doctors give placebos
• Most expensive painting ever sold at auction
• 'If I could say sorry I would'
• Quiz: Whose hair is this?
• No, it is not acceptable to wear Dior
• ebooks on borrowed time
• Fair Game: Free agents
• Music app offers radio on mobiles
• Television re-runs, from the start
• McQueen label denies royal dress

SAS released by Libya's rebel commanders Posted: 06 Mar 2011 05:25 PM PST The group's capture is a major embarrassment to the British government and could potentially undermine the rebels' claims that the revolution has had solely domestic roots Libya's rebel commanders have freed two MI6 officers and six SAS soldiers captured by farm guards on Thursday morning, after the British government vouched for their identities. The group was immediately flown to the frigate HMS Cumberland, which remains stationed off the coast of Libya. Seven of the group had been inserted by helicopter into farmland near the rebel capital Benghazi on a mission to establish contact with anti-regime forces. The eight Britons had been detained and questioned since Thursday by rebel leaders who had suspected they were mercenaries. Challenged by guards at a wheat farm, they were forced to open bags containing weapons, reconnaissance equipment, and multiple passports, then herded into a dormitory before they were handed over to the rebels. William Hague confirmed the "diplomatic team" had left Libya after experiencing "difficulties". He said another team would be sent in after consultation with the opposition leadership. The group's capture is a major embarrassment to the British government and could potentially undermine the rebels' claims that the revolution, which has rippled through Libya for the past fortnight, has had solely domestic roots. Officials in Benghazi's organising committee, which is trying to organise civilian and military affairs, criticised the British team's decision to make a clandestine entry to the country, claiming it had fuelled doubts about their intentions. "We don't want new enemies, but this is no way to make contact," said a senior member of the committee, Essam Gheriani. "Dropping in in the dead of night with espionage equipment, recording devices, multiple weapons and passports. In Dubai the Israelis used British passports to kill that man, [Hamas commander Mahmoud] al-Mabhouh. It's a matter of verification. At a time of revolution, suspicion is greater than trust." A recording of a telephone conversation between the UK's ambassador to Libya, Richard Northern, and a senior rebel leader has been leaked by Libyan authorities. Northern suggested the SAS team had been detained due to a "misunderstanding". The rebel leader responded: "They made a big mistake, coming with a helicopter in an open area. I didn't know how they were coming." The Guardian can reveal that the helicopter group's contact was a British national named Tom, who is believed to be an MI6 officer. He had worked for the past five months as an administrator in the Al-Khadra Farm Company, 18 miles south-west of Benghazi. The group's cover was blown by suspicious guards as soon as they arrived at their staging point inside the farm courtyard, which was adjacent to Tom's living quarters. "This could play into Gaddafi's hands," said Ahmed al-Bira, the director of the Al-Khadra Farm Company. "From the beginning this has been from the people here. It is not about foreigners." The British government had last week indicated it was prepared to send advisers to link up with the rebels in an attempt to intensify pressure on Colonel Gaddafi, who has fought to remain in power after being routed from the east of the country during a violent three-day revolt. "I can confirm that a small British diplomatic team has been in Benghazi," Hague said in a statement. "The team went to Libya to initiate contacts with the opposition. They experienced difficulties, which have now been satisfactorily resolved. They have now left Libya. "We intend, in consultation with the opposition, to send a further team to strengthen our dialogue in due course," the foreign secretary added. "This diplomatic effort is part of the UK's wider work on Libya, including our ongoing humanitarian support. Gaddafi has blamed the uprising on al-Qaida and foreign powers who he says are after Libya's oil. Rebel attempts to move towards western Libya and the capital, Tripoli, have so far been stymied by forces loyal to the dictator, who were battling rebel units west of the oil town of Ras Lanuf, about 250 miles from Benghazi. Gaddafi's air force jets have been the scourge of the rebels and a key reason for their willingness to seek foreign help. On Sunday, jets intensified their attacks bombing rebel positions in the centre of the country and causing dozens of casualties. One of the guards who arrested the Britons described their clandestine arrival and the mysterious Briton who had worked at the farm. "His name was Tom and he worked in administration," said the guard, named Rafah. "At 3am on Thursday he said he was going to Benghazi and drove out the gate." A second foreign national drove another car. The guards heard helicopters landing in a nearby field and soon after, both cars returned to the farm, driving through a gate and into a large gravel staging yard, near Tom's living quarters. "They were taking large bags into the house and we walked over to them," said Rafah. "We fired one shot into the air and told them they were under arrest." Rafah and several other guards said they cooked the Britons eggs for breakfast and gave them bread and coffee. Soon after, the director Mr al-Bira arrived and phoned the rebel leadership asking what to do with the men. He was told to bring them to Benghazi.Rebel leaders said they were anxious to put the rocky start to the liaison behind them and secure supply lines for their forces, which they claim are ill-equipped to fight Gaddafi loyalists in any protracted campaign. Libya MI6 Military Middle East Martin Chulov guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

NHS shakeup risks 'return to 1930s' Posted: 06 Mar 2011 01:32 PM PST Reforms means service will be 'tattered safety net' for patients with complex illnesses, says Dr Mark Porter The government's deliberate dismantling of parts of the NHS risks returning healthcare provision back to the grim and unfair days of the 1930s and 40s, one of Britain's leading doctors has warned. The sweeping reforms are in danger of turning the service into "an increasingly tattered safety net" for those with complex illnesses such as diabetes and obesity because private healthcare firms will "cherry-pick" patients who are easy to treat, said Dr Mark Porter, the chairman of the British Medical Association's hospital consultants committee. Its ability to provide a comprehensive and universal service could be lost because of health secretary Andrew Lansley's plan to force hospitals to compete with independent, profit-driven providers for patients, Porter told the Guardian. Opening up NHS care in England to "any willing provider" could also lead to local hospitals closing down and patients being denied care by private providers because they cost too much to treat, said Porter. "Very deliberately the government wishes to turn back the clock to the 1930s and 1940s, when there were private, charitable and co-operative providers of healthcare. "But that system failed to provide comprehensive and universal service for the citizens of this country. That's why health was nationalised. But they're proposing to go back to the days before the NHS," Porter told the Guardian. Allowing private companies to compete for NHS contracts carries huge risks, Porter added, in remarks that increase pressure on ministers over the health and social care bill going through the Commons. "It's not that passing the bill will instantly destroy what we have," he added. "But it brings the risk that in some parts of the country, and for some patients, we go back to what we thought we had left behind when we founded the NHS in 1948." He added: "We fear that one unintended but inevitable effect of the bill will be to reintroduce the patchwork provision that marked services in this country before the NHS, where many people did not get the care they needed because while many hospitals gave good service, you didn't get the good service we have today [across the NHS]." NHS services in some parts of England could be "destabilised" by private firms taking advantage of the controversial introduction of "any willing provider" to win contracts for patients with easy-to-treat conditions. This could lead to some hospitals no longer offering a full range of services and ultimately having to close. The worst-hit patients would include those with chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes and heart failure, Porter added. They would have to travel longer distances for treatment. The government is taking unnecessary risks by imposing market measures on the NHS, as competitive healthcare cannot deliver high quality treatment to everyone. The NHS could become "a provider of last resort" for patients whose illnesses are of no interest to private firms, added Porterhe said. Once independent providers have signed contracts with the consortiums of GPs they could deny care to patients who would be costly to treat, Porter warned. The return of unequal healthcare could even see provision starting to resemble that of the US, "where there are quite big geographical disparities in care and tens of millions of people can't get access to high-quality treatment". Lansley performed his first big U-turn on his plans last week when he agreed to scrap plans to let hospitals undercut the prices they charged for treating patients, which has caused huge alarm in the medical establishment. The BMA, many other medical organisations and Labour are fiercely opposed to "any willing provider" and hospitals having to compete for NHS work, but Lansley is unlikely to give ground on what he sees as central tenets of the reforms. The Department of Health responded to Porter's attack by criticising the BMA and insisting that healthcare standards would not suffer. "We are modernising the NHS so we can offer patients high-quality care and improved health outcomes. Doing nothing is not an option", said the health minister Simon Burns. "We expected some opposition to our modernisation plans from the unions. The BMA have historically opposed giving patients a choice of voluntary, independent and public sector services. But it is not in the interests of patients to bow to their demands. "We want patients to choose the best care to suit them, but that does not mean a compromise in quality. Only those who meet rigorous quality standards will be able to provide services," he added. Health policy David Cameron NHS Healthcare industry Health insurance Health Denis Campbell guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Andrew's trade role downgraded Posted: 06 Mar 2011 12:59 PM PST Amid growing unease in Downing Street at the conduct of the Queen's second son, a review will be used to lower his profile Prince Andrew's role as Britain's special trade representative is to be downgraded as ministers seek to distance themselves from his controversial dealings with discredited business figures. Amid growing unease in Downing Street and ministerial circles at the conduct of the Queen's second son, ministers indicated over the weekend that a review of the Duke of York's role would be used to lower his profile. One cabinet minister said a hard-headed assessment would be made during a "tasking review", which is held every six months to assess the prince's work as Britain's special trade representative. "The gas can be turned up and the gas can be turned down," the minister said, but stressed there was no question of removing the prince. "The royals go on, that is what they do," he said. Ministers have been alarmed by the prince's links with Jeffrey Epstein, a billionaire US financier who served a prison sentence for soliciting an underage girl for prostitution. The Mail on Sunday reported that the FBI is to reopen its investigation into Epstein over allegations of his involvement with underage girls. A picture was released last week of the prince with his arm round Virginia Roberts, then aged 17, who claims she was sexually exploited by Epstein and his friends. The teenager said she met the prince who allegedly enjoyed regular massages at Epstein's home. The prince categorically denies any wrongdoing or impropriety. The prince also faced embarrassment over the weekend when the Guardian reported that he hosted a leading member of the deposed Tunisian dictatorship at Buckingham Palace three months before the regime collapsed. Sakher el-Materi, the son-in-law of Tunisia's deposed president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, attended a lunch with more than a dozen executives from British multinationals hoping to win business in Tunisia. Materi, 29, fled Tunisia after his father-in-law was ousted. It was also reported that Epstein helped to pay off debts owed by Sarah Ferguson after an alleged intervention from the prince, her former husband. Epstein is said to have given £15,000 to a former assistant of Feguson's after the prince allegedly made an appeal as part of efforts to help her avoid bankruptcy. As unease grew at senior levels in Whitehall about the prince's links with a convicted paedophile, the prince held talks last week with Sir John Cunliffe, the prime minister's most senior adviser on overseas business and Europe. The meeting was used to assess his future as part of the six month "tasking review". There were suggestions over the weekend that Prince Andrew could be given more of a ceremonial role rather than his official position as trade envoy on behalf of the government body, UK Trade & Investment. Government sources indicated that they would be relieved to see the back of the prince as special trade representative. "It really is up to him," one senior source said. "Will many people be shedding tears if he decided to go? I doubt it." William Hague, the foreign secretary, said the government remained fully supportive of the prince. "I've seen a lot of benefits that he has brought in countries that I have visited where he's been performing that role," Hague told the Politics Show on BBC1. Asked about the prince's embarrassments, Hague said: "I'm not an expert on what you say are the embarrassments, I haven't had time, with everything going on in the Middle East, to look at those things. But certainly I've seen around the world a lot of good that he has done for this country." Other Tories were privately less supportive of the prince, reflecting unease in Downing Street about his conduct. One senior Tory source said: "There appears to be no discernible mental activity upstairs as far as the duke is concerned. I feel sorry for him. He has no friends and so is surrounded by these vile people." But Ed Perkins, the prince's press secretary, had pleaded with Whitehall in an email to show some support. In an email, leaked to the Telegraph, Perkins said of the disclosure that the prince had hosted a relative of the then Tunisian president: "[I] am deploying the line that he [Materi] was vice-chairman of the chamber of commerce. Will UKTI stand behind him? We need some government backing here." Alastair Watson, the prince's private secretary, also took the unusual step of commenting in public to defend his reputation. In a letter to the Times, Watson wrote: "The duke has known Mr Epstein since being introduced to him in the early 1990s. The insinuations and innuendos that have been made in relation to the duke are without foundation." Prince Andrew Monarchy Conservatives Foreign policy International trade Economics Global economy Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Ivory Coast police loot cabinet homes Posted: 06 Mar 2011 11:16 AM PST Government-in-waiting targeted amid fears of civil war over rival claims to presidency Police backed by gangs of youths have ransacked at least 10 houses belonging to ministers and other allies of the internationally recognised president of Ivory Coast, according to witnesses. The raids came amid worsening tensions between Alassane Ouattara and the sitting president, Laurent Gbagbo, whose refusal to step down has pushed the west African country to the brink of civil war. As Ouattara and his cabinet-in-waiting remained under UN guard at a luxury hotel, their homes were reportedly targeted by Gbagbo's elite paramilitary police force, Cecos. A Cecos truck carrying a fridge left the house of Ouattara's finance minister, Charles Koffi Diby, later returning for a large safe, said a witness. Dozens of teenagers smashed the doors and windows of the house and left wearing suits and robes, and carrying dishes and other valuables, according to the witness, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. The looted houses belong to ministers and mayors in Ouattara's Rassemblement des Républicains (RDR) party, as well as to their family members and businessmen perceived as being pro-Ouattara. Ami Toungara, Ouattara's women's issues adviser, said her house was looted and burned on Friday, and that the police are targeting people they know to be at the Golf hotel, where Ouattara has been besieged by troops, and unable to protect their houses. Toungara said that after the valuables were taken from her house, the raiders made off with tanks of cooking gas and bags of rice. "They stole a back massager and we later found it in the garden," she said. Amadou Coulibaly, another Ouattara adviser, said that police had recruited youths to participate in the raids. "They're trying to instil an atmosphere of terror," he said. "But you can't do more than what they've already done, firing on unarmed women. They're getting desperate." Coulibaly was referring to an incident last week in which Gbagbo's security forces opened fire with machine guns on unarmed women taking part in a political demonstration. Six were killed on the spot, and a seventh died in hospital. US state department spokesman Philip Crowley denounced the killings as "morally bankrupt". Analysts fear that Ivory Coast's crisis will spill over into all-out civil war. Nearly 400 people have been killed since November's election, according to the UN. It also says more than 200,000 people have fled fighting in Abidjan in the last week, and more than 70,000 have crossed into Liberia. In an attempt to restore order, the UN received two helicopter gunships last week and is awaiting the arrival of peacekeepers to bolster its force of 9,000. Jacques Franquin, head of the UN's refugee agency, told the BBC: "Certain areas of Abidjan are truly in a situation of war with the population fleeing ... The situation is deteriorating rapidly." Charles Ble Goude, a minister in Gbagbo's government who is also the leader of the hardline Young Patriots, last week called on "real" Ivorians to protect their neighborhoods, block all UN vehicles, and denounce foreigners. Hundreds of barricades have sprung up in neighbourhoods across Abidjan. Meanwhile, fighters loyal to Ouattara said they captured the western town of Toulepleu, but Gbagbo's military said fighting continued. "Since 14.10, the town of Toulepleu has been under the control of the New Forces [anti-Gbagbo rebels]. We managed to seize some arms," Mara Lassine, military spokesman for the rebels in the western zone, told Reuters by telephone. "The combat continues, and it's difficult to know the toll," said an Ivorian army captain loyal to Gdagbo, who could not be named. "There are a lot of displaced. But the town is not yet taken. There is still fighting going on." The fighting started on Saturday in one town in western Ivory Coast reputed to be a pro-Gbagbo stronghold, sources said. "It is true that many young people from the border towns were recruited by both forces in Ivory Coast," a resident in the Liberian town of Dialah was quoted as saying. Ivory Coast David Smith guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Chirac lines up for court appearance Posted: 06 Mar 2011 10:46 AM PST Former French president to face questions over role in bogus jobs scandal while mayor of Paris in 1990s He was known as the "untouchable" or the "bulldozer": an affable rogue who sailed through one of the longest political careers in Europe dodging sleaze allegations stacked up against him. But the former French president Jacques Chirac could finally appear in the dock this week in a historic corruption trial in the same courtroom which saw Marie-Antoinette sentenced to the guillotine. A Paris court will on Monday begin examining the case of the "bogus jobs", a party-funding corruption scandal dating back to Chirac's time as mayor of Paris in the 1990s. Chirac is accused of masterminding a scheme in which cronies who worked for his political party, the RPR, were on the Paris City Hall payroll, receiving salaries for jobs that never existed. Chirac is expected to take the stand on Tuesday. But a legal argument to be raised by one of the other nine defendants could see the trial postponed before the frail former president is due to be smuggled in via a side-door to avoid the cameras. Chirac will be the first former French head of state to stand trial since Marshal Philippe Petain, the leader of France's Nazi collaborationist regime, was convicted of treason and shipped into exile after the second world war. The 78-year-old, who boasts one of the longest continuous political careers in Europe – twice president, twice prime minister and 18 years mayor of Paris – enjoyed immunity from prosecution as head of state. For decades, lawyers have unsuccessfully tried to bring him to justice over several alleged sleaze affairs including misuse of public funds, scandals over free-flights and expenses. The only charges now left against him concern the scheme to illegally use Paris City Hall funds for work benefiting the party political machine that ensured his election as president in 1995. Two cases over fake jobs have been brought together for this trial. In the first, concerning 21 contract staff, Chirac faces charges of embezzlement and breach of trust. Nine other defendants include a grandson of Charles de Gaulle and a former leftwing labour union leader. In the second case, concerning seven jobs improperly paid for by Paris City Hall, Chirac is accused of illegal conflict of interest. A prison term is unlikely, but in theory Chirac risks 10 years in jail and a fine of €150,000. The trial is a test of French attitudes to party-funding corruption, which has plagued the political system on both left and right for decades. For years, the unspoken rule was that if money was not being siphoned directly into politicians' own pockets, the system would look the other way. Alain Juppé, a close Chirac ally, was convicted over the fake jobs scandal in 2004 and received a 14-month suspended prison sentence and a year's ban from politics. Yet he has just been appointed Nicolas Sarkozy's new foreign minister and de facto "deputy-president" tasked with making Sarkozy look more respectable in the run up to a difficult re-election. While not acknowledging wrongdoing, Chirac and his party struck a deal last year with Socialist-run Paris City Hall to pay back €2.2m for the jobs in question. As a result, the City Hall will not be among Chirac's accusers in court. The Paris state prosecutor argues there is not enough evidence for a prosecution. The trial has done little to dent Chirac's popularity. Despite the drift of his last years as president, Chirac's poll ratings have soared since he left office. A charmer and man of the people, famous for his incessant handshaking, patting of cows and shaking of dogs' paws on his tours round France, he is about to publish the sequel to his surprise bestselling first volume of memoirs. But Paris is rife with rumours about his health. He was believed to have suffered from depression after leaving the Elysee. His wife Bernardette recently denied reports that he was suffering from Alzheimers but confessed: "He has difficulties walking and hearing, and sometimes has trouble with his memory." He is known to take long afternoon naps and has recently been seen looking frail and holding onto people's shoulders for support in public, despite making a point of drinking beer at a recent agricultural show. His spokeswoman said simply that the trial was "an ordeal". Chirac told French radio on Sunday: "I'm doing as well as possible." Jacques Chirac France Europe Angelique Chrisafis guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

PM: civil service 'enemy of enterprise' Posted: 06 Mar 2011 11:33 AM PST • PM in strongly worded attack on bureaucracy • Small firms invited to bid for major public contracts David Cameron has pledged to confront the "enemies of enterprise" in Whitehall and town halls across the country, attacking what he called the "mad" bureaucracy that holds back entrepreneurs. The prime minister, who was criticised for failing to outline economic growth plans after last year's autumn spending review, moved to recover ground by promising to place the promotion of enterprise at the heart of the budget on 23 March. In one of the strongest attacks by a prime minister on the civil service, Cameron yesterday made clear he shared the frustration of Tony Blair, who famously claimed in 1999 that he bore "scars on my back" from those opposed to his reforms. The prime minister, who said that enterprise was about morals as well as markets, listed three "enemies of enterprise' in a speech at the Conservative spring forum in Cardiff: • "The bureaucrats in government departments who concoct those ridiculous rules and regulations that make life impossible, particularly for small firms." • "The town hall officials who take for ever with those planning decisions that can be make or break for a business – and the investment and jobs that go with it." • "The public sector procurement managers who think that the answer to everything is a big contract with a big business and who shut out millions of Britain's small- and medium-sized companies from a massive potential market." The prime minister added: "Every regulator, every official, every bureaucrat in government has got to understand that we cannot afford to keep loading costs on to business because frankly they cannot take any more. And if I have to pull these people into my office to argue this out myself and get them off the backs of business then believe me, I will do it." The chancellor, George Osborne, who used his speech on Saturday to announce the creation of 10 enterprise zones, will unveil changes in the budget to give small- and medium- sized firms opportunities to bid for large government contracts. "We're throwing open the bidding process to every single business in our country – a massive boost for small businesses, because we want them to win at least a quarter of these deals," Cameron said. The speech showed the influence of Andrew Cooper, Downing Street's new director of strategy, who starts his new job on Monday. Cooper is said to be drawing up a vision for the future to show that the government has plans that go beyond spending cuts. The prime minister said he was optimistic about the future because Britain is the home of innovative entrepreneurs. He then launched a staunch defence of his recent trip to the Gulf, on which he was accompanied by 36 British business leaders, including eight from the defence and aerospace sector. "I know some people are disdainful about [selling Britain to the world]," he said. "They see me loading up a plane with businesspeople and say: 'That's not statesmanship, that's salesmanship'. I say this: attack all you want, but do you think the Germans and the French and the Americans are all sitting at home waiting for business to fall into their lap?" David Cameron Conservatives Civil service Tax and spending Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Mumbai 'encounter squad' returns Posted: 06 Mar 2011 10:32 AM PST Team of elite policemen notorious for killing criminals in shoot-outs in the 90s say rising crime means squad is needed They were known as "the encounter squad", a team of elite policemen who left a trail of hundreds of dead criminals behind them. Heroes to the local media, notorious as extra-judicial killers to others, the 12 best-known among them became celebrities. But when their brand of rough justice was no longer seen as useful or desirable, they underwent a spectacular fall from grace. Few if any were charged with murder, but most were suspended over allegations of corruption, and some left the force for good. Now, with violent crime on the rise again in India's commercial capital, they are hoping for a comeback. Little other than his biceps and the .45 pistol in his jeans waistband distinguishes Daya Nayak from the other clients of a popular coffee bar in a wealthy suburb of north Mumbai. But Nayak was one of the best-known of the "encounter specialists", killing 83 people in an eight-year period. In his first interview since being suspended on suspicion of corruption in 2006, Nayak told the Guardian that the men he shot were "all guilty criminals" who themselves had murdered many. He has now been cleared of all the charges against him and is looking forward to resuming his career. "Now I am just waiting for them to decide what to do with me. I am keeping my old network alive. I am getting information. I am ready for when they need me again. I am waiting to bounce back," says Nayak. Another veteran of the encounter squad is Sachin Waze, 39, who killed 63 people. "I don't think about it ever. Every one of them deserved to go and they went," he says. "In my blood I am a policeman. I didn't do it for money. It was for fame, recognition and to serve the public." According to Waze, he and his colleagues were responsible for "cleaning up" Mumbai. "Before we started, there were 33 extortion attempts a day. You could not drive a Mercedes without getting a call. When it ended there were none. Now [police] are scared to draw their weapons and the level of extortion is going back up again and there are weekly shoot-outs," Waze adds. The encounter squad was formed – with the tacit assent of local political and police authorities – in the late 1990s, when heavily armed gangsters threatened to turn Mumbai into a conflict zone. One of the reasons for the squad's creation was the weakness of the criminal justice system. Slow, corrupt and ineffective, the creaking court process meant that securing convictions against organised criminals was virtually impossible. By contrast, the encounter squad offered an efficient – if bloody and controversial – solution: over a seven-year period, more than a thousand criminals died at the hands of the police. Critics said they were little more than extra-judicial killings. Of the original "Mumbai's Dirty Harrys" as the press dubbed them, few have survived in service. Inspector Pradeep Sharma – whose catchline to reporters was "criminals are filth and I'm the cleaner" – is fighting charges of murder and corruption. He logged 103 killings, boasting of being addicted to "encounters", before being suspended. Another well-known member of the squad, Vijay Salaskar, was killed by Islamic militants in the November 2008 attack on luxury hotels and a range of other targets in Mumbai. Three major Bollywood films have already been made about Nayak's rags to riches story and more are planned, but beyond the best-known names, dozens of other police officers have also been investigated for their part in the killings. "They are almost all in bad circumstances," says Waze, who has since built up a successful security business. "Most just want to go back to doing what they do best: their jobs." Now the police force is quietly allowing some of the encounter specialists to wear uniform once again. Waze, Nayak and the others cite the example of one former colleague, an officer with 90 killings to his name, who has now rejoined the 40,000-strong Mumbai police after a five-year suspension. Three other lower ranking policemen were readmitted with him. Another top "encounter specialist" refused to talk to the Guardian, as his suspension too has been lifted. A press campaign is beginning to build up steam. Sympathetic journalists in the city's sensationalist and widely read tabloid newspapers have written that a new wave of gang leaders are taking the place of those who once terrorised the city. Last summer saw a spate of killings by associates of major criminals, leading local crime reporters to compare the situation to 1998, when, after laws were passed banning the use of lethal force other than as a last resort, there were more than 100 shoot-outs. Yet it may well be that the time of the encounter specialists has definitively passed. The chaos of the 1990s has given way to the marginally better-ordered economic boom of today. Mumbai is the richest city in India and the idea of gunning down criminals on its streets, where expensive foreign cars now compete with rickshaws and overcrowded buses for space, seems almost unimaginable. "It was a totally wrong approach. They got information from one gang to kill their competitors. They were thugs in uniform," says Julio Ribeiro, a former Mumbai police commissioner. "Mumbai has moved on. It is a different place. It's a very good thing that they have gone. They should stay gone." A colonial style of policing If India has modernised rapidly in some areas, policing remains largely unchanged since the days of British rule. Underpaid, undermanned and under-equipped, those charged with enforcing law and order in the seething cities and poverty-stricken countryside have a well-deserved reputation for corruption – on a small and grand scale – and systematic brutality. No accountability, a lack of training, almost no capacity to conduct forensic analysis and a criminal justice system that is so slow that it can take years for a case to reach court have together encouraged policemen to rely on "confessions" to resolve investigations. Beatings with the lathi – a thick bamboo stave tipped with metal – are so common as to go unremarked by the media. "A bit of lathi does no harm," said one retired policeman in Mumbai. By some estimates, around 800 prisoners die in custody in India each year. About four people died or were killed in police custody every day in India between 2002 and 2007, the Asian Centre for Human Rights said in a report. Crowd control training and non-lethal equipment is rare, so officers routinely open fire on protestors – whether farmers demonstrating against the forced sale of their land or teenagers throwing stones in Kashmir. Lower ranking Indian policemen do not normally carry arms. Significant political pressure to achieve results as well as poor living conditions, long hours and low salaries for policemen exacerbates the problem, a 2009 report by the campaign group Human Rights Watch claimed. Many hundreds of policemen are killed or injured each year. Medical care is poor and support for families limited. Most police belong to state forces. Many states have taken steps to improve conduct, conditions and crime-fighting tactics in recent years. India Mumbai terror attacks Jason Burke guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

'Met are criminalising a generation' Posted: 06 Mar 2011 11:41 AM PST Hodge Jones & Allen says Met has handed out excessive number of cautions for aggravated trespass to students A leading legal aid firm has accused the Metropolitan police of criminalising a generation of students for taking part in the protests against tuition fees. Hodge Jones & Allen, which specialises in protest litigation, argues that the Met has handed out an excessive number of cautions for the offence of aggravated trespass to students. The offence is committed when someone trespasses on open land and causes disruption or intimidates. It results in a criminal record. The Met said it had issued 26 cautions for aggravated trespass after the 10 November protest against higher tuition fees. It said that no one else had been issued with a caution for this offence after subsequent protests, on 24 and 30 November and 9 December. However, up to 150 people were arrested in total at the four protests and lawyers say most of these are still awaiting a police decision and could still be issued with a caution for aggravated trespass. Lawyers at the London firm said they were acting for a "significant number" of students arrested after the November and December protests. They argue that the offence of aggravated trespass is easily committed and is "being used by the Met to criminalise people for exercising their right to protest". They warn that students with cautions for the offence could be turned down by future employers. "Conduct falling within the category of aggravated trespass can literally be anything that is potentially disruptive, such as playing a musical instrument," said Ruth Hamann, one of the firm's criminal lawyers. Cautions are formally recorded on the police's national computer database as an admission of guilt to a relatively minor criminal offence. It would be unlikely for someone with a caution on their record to be given another if they re-offended, Hamann said. Instead, they would be treated more harshly. "This may dissuade some young people from attending subsequent protests for fear that they might be charged with an offence and required to attend court," she said. She warned that students had to disclose any cautions when applying for jobs in teaching, law and medicine, among other professions. "While aggravated trespass might not be the sort of offence that would automatically make a person ineligible for a job, it may encourage an employer to favour another candidate over the candidate with a caution. Our concern is that, by using these wide discretionary powers, the Met are criminalising a generation of political activists." Hamann said she thought further arrests would be likely after a major protest, being organised by the TUC, against cuts to education and public services in central London on 26 March. Tens of thousands of protesters are expected to take part. Last week Scotland Yard announced that it had employed a "kettling manager" before the 26 March protest. The Met has been working on plans to avoid the violence that marred student protests last year and is poised to request assistance from neighbouring forces. The TUC is working with Scotland Yard, and both insist they expect the protest to be peaceful. A spokesman for the Met said decisions to caution people had not been made lightly. "To be cautioned, you have to admit the offence. We would not normally release someone who had admitted an offence without any action. We would, of course, follow any national guidelines on how to deal with young offenders." Rees Johnson, a 20-year-old student from Newcastle who was issued with a caution after the 10 November a protest in central London last November said he would not be going to any further demonstrations out of fear that he might be arrested again. "It seemed as if the police could arrest people for just being there," he said. "If I found myself in trouble again, I wouldn't be entitled to a caution, so I won't be going to any more protests." Police Student politics Higher education Students Jessica Shepherd guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Iran leader accused of abductions Posted: 06 Mar 2011 10:27 AM PST Ayatollah Ali Khamenei 'directly involved' in disappearance of Green movement's Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was directly involved in the disappearance of the two main leaders of the Green movement, an opposition website has claimed. Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi have not been seen in public since being put under house arrest following renewed street protests in mid-February when thousands of Iranians, inspired by the uprisings in the Arab region, took to the streets in defiance of warnings from the regime. They are believed to have been arrested on 26 February. Karroubi's official website, Sahamnews.net, said Khamenei had ordered what it described as "the abduction of Karroubi and his wife, Fatemeh". The site said Khamenei's administrative adviser, Vahid Haghanian, commanded the security forces which raided Karroubi's house in north Tehran and confiscated his belongings. "On the night of the kidnapping, Vahid, a top official in the supreme leader's office, was present in Mr Karroubi's house and he personally commanded the whole operation of evicting Mr Karroubi and his wife from their own house and taking them to an unknown location," the website said. "We believe that the supreme leader himself is responsible for this kidnapping and Vahid was appointed by him to carry out the operation." The website said Haghanian advises the supreme leader on internal affairs. Since the disappearances, Iranian officials have given vague and often contradictory statements about Karroubi, Mousavi and their wives. A spokesman for Iran's judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Ejei, confirmed initially that restrictions had been imposed on opposition leaders but later denied they had been arrested. "Reports ... about the transfer of Karroubi and Mousavi to a prison are not correct and are rejected," he said on Tuesday last week. Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said talk of imprisonment was a "sheer lie" and added: "Mr Mousavi and Karroubi, along with their wives, are in their homes." Meanwhile, Mousavi's daughters wrote on opposition website Kaleme.org that they cannot visit their parents. "We read the news that our parents are not under house arrest and they are not prisoners ... which meant that we, their children, can see them ... But this was not the case. We went to our parents' home, and from the iron gate installed at the entrance of the alley to their home we were stopped by the security, who said that 'you can't go, the news [that you can visit] is wrong'." Karroubi's sons told Sahamnews.net that they have repeatedly visited Karroubi's house but no one was there. They also said that neighbours claim they have witnessed Karroubi and his wife being taken out of their house. Ardeshir Amir-Arjomand, a spokesman for Mousavi, told the Guardian: "Their situation is worse than a prisoner because when someone is jailed, at least you know who has jailed him or where he has been taken to. But in the case of Karroubi and Mousavi, no one takes responsibility or even admits they have been arrested." Rumours were rife in recent weeks that the two had been taken to Heshmatieh prison in east Tehran. Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Mir Hossein Mousavi Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Middle East Saeed Kamali Dehghan guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Irish coalition government formed Posted: 06 Mar 2011 12:39 PM PST Two parties produce joint document outlining plans to reduce country's debt as Eamon Gilmore named deputy prime minister A compromise over how to tackle the huge national debt has enabled Fine Gael to form a coalition government with Labour in Ireland. The deal theoretically gives Ireland one of its most stable governments in postwar history with a massive majority in the Dáil. Labour persuaded Fine Gael to take an extra year to reduce the massive budget deficit as part of the price of entering into a government partnership. Ireland will now aim to drive down its national debt to 3% of GDP by 2015, from its current level of 12%. Fine Gael had originally agreed with the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank's position that the debt should be dramatically cut by 2014. Enda Kenny's party had said 30,000 jobs needed to be cut from the public sector on a voluntary basis by 2014, compared with the 18,000 advocated by Labour. The figure now agreed by the two parties is between 18,000 and 21,000 within the same period – with a further 4,000 positions to go by 2015. Fine Gael and Labour had been inching closer over the weekend to an agreement on forming the next government. Labour delegates met in Dublin on Sunday to endorse a plan that will see their party entering a coalition with Kenny's party. Eamon Gilmore, the Labour leader, has told his party that while a document outlining the agreement was not the Labour manifesto, it was driven or moderated by Labour thinking. He stressed that neither was it the Fine Gael manifesto and said he understood the risks for his party. One of Labour's key negotiators in the talks, Brendan Howlin, said there was no proposal in the agreed document to cut child benefit – as envisaged by the outgoing Fianna Fáil-led government. Howlin added that the issue of university education funding would be examined without affecting student access and that an agreement was yet to be reached on graduate tax. The 64-page programme detailing the agreement includes a proposal to establish an economic council within the cabinet to take key decisions. Cuts to the minimum wage imposed by December's budget would also be reversed by the new government in a move to placate Labour. The agreement document will commit both parties not to change tax rates. Despite winning concessions from Fine Gael, some on the Labour left have warned Gilmore that he risks becoming the Nick Clegg of Irish politics for joining a coalition with a more dominant centre-right party. With both parties backing the agreement, Kenny will be elected taoiseach on Wednesday while Gilmore becomes the tánaiste, or deputy prime minister. Gilmore's elevation to the second most powerful post in Ireland will mark a remarkable journey from his past as a student revolutionary with Official Sinn Féin (later the Marxist Workers' party) in the 70s to leading a government with the centre right Christian Democrat-aligned Fine Gael. Discussions will start later today on the allocation of cabinet posts between the two parties. Fine Gael has been the traditional partner of Labour in coalitions since the war. In 1997 Fine Gael led the so-called "Rainbow Coalition" that also comprised Labour and Gilmore's former party, Democratic Left. Ireland Europe Henry McDonald guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Migrants risk death to stay in Greece Posted: 06 Mar 2011 11:56 AM PST • Doctors warn hunger strike could end in tragedy • Ministers offer 12-month deal to stay if action stops Doctors have warned that a mass hunger strike of illegal migrants could end in tragedy after dozens of protesters attempting to win legal status in Greece were taken to hospital after five weeks without food. Three hundred mostly north African migrant workers have refused to eat until the Greek government issues them with residency permits. The stand-off has put the socialist administration of George Papandreou increasingly on the defensive as the hunger strikers vowed to continue their protest into a sixth week. "For 41 days I have gone without food and since Wednesday noon I have refused water," said Morrocan Elktif Belaid, who walked through the Sahara before hiking and hustling his way into Greece. "But what to do? Greece has treated us very badly. All we want is what we deserve, official documents and a bit of respect. To be an immigrant is not a crime. It is not forbidden. We will continue our strike until we are vindicated, or die." Holed up in a mansion on a busy Athens boulevard, Belaid is part of an unfolding drama that has not only gripped Greece but unnerved Europe as it braces for yet another wave of refugees fleeing the turmoil of north Africa and the Middle East. As Athens beefed up its sea and border patrols amid the impending chaos – highlighted by the drowning of three Bangladeshis who are thought to have jumped from ships evacuating undocumented migrant workers from Libya – the plight of the hunger strikers has come to embody the fears of governments across Europe. Nearly a third of the hunger strikers have now been admitted to hospital. With street protests from leftists and human rights groups also on the rise, pressure is mounting on the government to bow to their demand for "full legalisation". On Sunday the government offered the migrants a compromise solution of a year's residency if they stopped the strike. "We are of course very concerned about their health," said Haris Kastinides, the justice minister. "We don't want a single one to die, but at the same time this is blackmail. If we give in today, we may have 150,000 others making the same request tomorrow." In his cotton headdress and chequered slippers, Belaid is, at 45, older than most of his comrades in hunger, and more eloquent. But in attitude and resolve he is no different. "Europeans hate immigrants even though we helped build their economies," said the bearded father of three. "But Europe has to help because Europe in the past was the colonial power, it supported those dictators. Today it is reaping what it sowed." The emigres arrived in Athens from Crete. At first, with the help of local sympathisers, they occupied the law school at Athens University before being removed by riot police. A private citizen offered to house them in the mansion when they had nowhere else to go. Like Belaid, many had made long treks to Greece, sneaking into the country from Turkey before finding jobs on Crete in construction or on farms."I arrived here in 2003," said Abdullahtif Chadid, another Moroccan, his face cupped in his hands. "I am 31, but in all that time I have never returned to my homeland. I want very much to see my mother and father and I have paid my dues, insurance, stamp duties and lawyer's fees. Yet the authorities have refused us permits. "Without proper papers I know I'll never be able to enter Greece legally again." "My bones ache. My feet hurt. I can't sleep because I am so hungry and I'm so tired I can hardly walk, but I will continue because there is nothing else I can do." Noreidine Tahma said: "All of us have handed over a lot of money, around ¤2,500, to get these documents. I feel very ill, very dizzy. I've had nothing but sugar and salt and water for the past 41 days but I won't give up. Why should we be forced to be illegal?" Greek physicians have been astonished by the strikers' endurance. "Perhaps it's because they are young, but I've been surprised by their stamina," said Dr Thanassis Karambelis, examining the men in makeshift tents in the mansion's garden. "Most are suffering from exhaustion, hypertension, and more and more are refusing to take water. Forty days is a very long time to go on hunger strike and this is the most dangerous phase." "Take note," said Belaid. "We are desperate people and we won't give in. Migrants have rights, too, and we will fight for them." Porous border Greece has become the main route for migrants trying to reach the EU, with some 128,000 people entering the country illegally last year – about 90% of the EU total. The Greek government has sharply stepped up patrols along the country's 9,300-mile coastline amid concerns that unrest in north Africa could cause a fresh influx. Last week the EU border control agency, Frontex, announced it will extend its six-month operation guarding Greece's porous land border with Turkey. Record numbers of immigrants from Asia, Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan have entered Greece illegally over the past year. Officials say concerns of a renewed wave will expedite the debt-stricken country's determination to build a wall across the border with Turkey. Athens has also aired the idea of creating floating detention centres. At an emergency meeting of EU interior ministers in Rome last week it appealed for funds and equipment to deal with the potential crisis. "Greece is in the midst of economic and social crisis and cannot accept any more migrants," said the citizen protection minister, Christos Papoutsis, who has ruled out giving legal status to the hunger strikers. Greece Europe Protest Helena Smith guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

David Miliband: losing to Ed hurt Posted: 06 Mar 2011 09:50 AM PST Former foreign secretary has given his most revealing interview to date about losing to brother Ed last summer If you've ever wondered how it feels to be tipped for success over many years and name-checked internationally as a future prime minister, only to be beaten to your dream job by your younger, less experienced brother, David Miliband can tell you: "Sometimes it hurts". The former foreign secretary, who narrowly missed out in the Labour leadership election to younger brother Ed, has given his most revealing interview to date about the emotional fallout of last summer's family psychodrama that dominated the party for months. He told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show: "The truth is, life never goes according to plan. Actually there isn't a plan. You've got a series of circumstances and you try and make the best of it. Sometimes it hurts. It's worth saying that – sometimes it hurts. But you've got to get up afterwards and make the best of it. "I'm not leader of the Labour party but I still want to help change the world. I still believe passionately in the causes that got me involved in politics. I hope that being 45 and being a relative veteran doesn't mean that it's all downhill from here." Miliband is still MP for South Shields and he cemented his role there earlier this year by announcing that he was to become vice chairman of Sunderland football club. He is also discussing some media jobs but said he would not be following Vince Cable and Ann Widdecombe on to Strictly Come Dancing. There were signs of a formal rapprochement between the brothers after it was announced last month that they are to work together to create a 10,000-strong "army" of community organisers to reinvigorate civil society. But he acknowledged that, for now at least, his influence is diminished. "And I think there's a world out there. And it's a world of enormous interest and it's a world that needs to be changed and – in smaller ways perhaps that I had once hoped – I'll try and make a difference," he said. Asked about his relationship with his brother now, he said: "You're brothers for life and you're politicians for a parliament at a time. The other thing about brothers is what's brotherly is private. "I think he's really touched a chord, Ed, with what he's said about the squeezed middle. It raises difficult issues about the balance between tax and spending, about interest rates, a whole lot of issues. But the left has to reclaim ground on the economy." Pressed on whether he would join the cabinet if Labour won the next general election, Miliband said: "I'm taking this one parliament at a time. What's important is that the Labour party makes itself a fighting force ready to provide a real alternative to the government." He brushed off questions about whether he would like to be British ambassador to the US:, a job Miliband, who is married to an American violinist, has been tipped for "A big house, a nice house, but that's not the test of whether or not you want to do a job." David Miliband Labour party leadership Ed Miliband Labour Polly Curtis guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Half of German doctors give placebos Posted: 06 Mar 2011 11:54 AM PST Placebo cures shown to help with depression and stomach complaints – in Bavaria, 88% of doctors have prescribed them Half of German doctors prescribe placebos, according to a new study for the German Medical Association. The report says placebos, from vitamin pills to homeopathic remedies or even sham surgery, can prove highly effective in various treatments. In Bavaria, it found, 88% of GPs have sent patients home with prescriptions for placebo drugs. The German Medical Association (BÄK), which commissioned the report, Placebos in Medicine, admitted that it doesn't fully understand how placebos work, but welcomed the report's findings. "Placebos have a stronger impact and are more complex than we realised. They are hugely important in medicine today," says Christoph Fuchs, the managing director of the BÄK. The report recommends that students and doctors should be taught about placebos and their usage. "Placebos can maximise the effect of medication," says Robert Jütte, author of the study and a BÄK board member. "They can reduce undesirable side-effects and are a more efficient usage of our healthcare budget." Recent research, he said, showed that placebos had helped 59% of patients who had been suffering from an upset stomach. Used to treat depression, placebos have the same effect as antidepressants in about a third of cases. The efficacy of a placebo depends on many factors, according to the report, including the size and colour of a pill. The more expensive the placebo, the higher the success rate, the study found, and intravenous injections are shown to be more effective than oral medication. It's also a question of trust. Placebos produce better results if a patient feels their doctor understands their concerns, and believes they are being taken seriously, the study says. Ethically, however, placebos are still a grey area. Few doctors knew whether they could legally administer placebos. The study advises doctors to only prescribe placebos if the patient has a minor illness and if it seems likely that a placebo treatment will be successful. Patients should not be denied the use of standard medication if there is a possibility of their condition getting worse, says the report. To create a clear framework for the use of placebos, the BÄK is now calling for internationally recognised guidelines. Placebo effect Health Doctors Health Germany Europe guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Most expensive painting ever sold at auction Posted: 06 Mar 2011 04:01 PM PST Painting that was sold to a mystery bidder for £66m last year to go on display in gallery's new Pablo Picasso room Nude, Green Leaves and Bust – the Picasso painting that last year became the most expensive art work ever sold at auction – is to be publicly displayed in the UK for the first time. Tate Modern said it would be seen in a new Pablo Picasso room following a loan by its anonymous owner. Tate's director, Sir Nicholas Serota, welcomed the loan. He said: "This is an outstanding painting by Picasso and I am delighted that through the generosity of the lender we are able to bring it to the British public for the first time." The painting is seen as a seminal work. Created on a single day in 1932, it is one of a sequence of works showing the artist's then love, his muse and mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter. Serota said the paintings were "widely regarded as amongst his greatest achievements of the interwar period". Nude, Green Leaves and Bust went into the record books last May when it sold at Christie's in New York for $106.5m (£66m). The last time it changed hands before that was in 1951, when it sold for $19,800 to Los Angeles-based collectors Sidney and Frances Brody. During that time they hardly let it out of their sight and it was exhibited in public only once – in 1961, to mark the artist's 80th birthday. Nude, Green Leaves and Bust was painted at the height of Picasso's lustful ardour for Walter, a young woman whom the married middle-aged artist first encountered in 1927 when she was 17 – he spotted her leaving a Paris Metro station and accosted her. Walter later recalled that he took her by the arm and said: "I am Picasso! You and I are going to do great things together." They went on to have a passionate affair that ended in 1935 when Picasso took on a new mistress – Dora Maar. It is undoubtedly a feted painting, although its depiction of feminine sexual submissiveness is not to every taste. The new owner of the painting remains a mystery, although the fact that it has been offered to Tate suggests a UK connection. One name mentioned as a bidder in the New York Times was Chelsea FC's Russian owner, Roman Abramovich. Pablo Picasso Tate Modern Art Mark Brown guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

'If I could say sorry I would' Posted: 06 Mar 2011 02:26 PM PST Jim Davidson has written a play about a bigoted, middle-aged comedian – and it's only loosely based on himself The young black comedian fixes Jim Davidson with a contemptuous glare. "I grew up feeling inadequate because of your comedy," he says. "You old-school guys got laughs from feeding people's prejudices." Davidson, chunkier than we remember him, bespectacled and grey-haired, listens on as the comedian continues to berate him. "Has it ever occurred to you that all the stereotyping you do is negative? You just don't get it – you're such a fucking prick." It is an extraordinarily dramatic moment, rendered even more remarkable when one learns that the entire encounter is in fact a scene from a new stage play written by the target of the abuse: Jim Davidson. The play Stand Up and Be Counted sees Davidson playing a bigoted, middle-aged comedian who envies and despises the new generation of politically correct comedians who dismiss him in turn as a hateful dinosaur. "So this Eddie Pierce character you play – he's basically you, isn't he?" I ask during a pause in the run-through, which takes place in a basement under a large church on London's Tottenham Court Road. Davidson peers down his glasses, pauses and says, "This guy is a racist, homophobic bigot – how could it be based on me?" There's an uncomfortable silence before he bursts out laughing. We think we know Jim Davidson; the south London, Page 3 girl-dating, Thatcher-loving, Our Boys-supporting, gay-baiting, hard-drinking, racist standup comedian. In the 80s his routine was infamous for his depictions of the character Chalky – a slow-witted and stereotypical black character with a weed habit and Jamaican accent. Watching him as a child, to my eyes Davidson didn't seem a hardcore bigot like Bernard Manning. With his breezy manner and cheeky-chappy air, Davidson reminded me of a weak-minded schoolboy who goes along with the bullying as he knows it will make him popular. In the 90s, Davidson reinvented himself as the BBC's Mr Saturday Night, with Big Break and The Generation Game. Both programmes were eventually cancelled and Davidson found himself out of fashion. He hasn't been on television since, apart from a disastrous appearance on ITV reality show Hell's Kitchen, which he was thrown off for referring to "shirt-lifters" in front of the gay former Big Brother contestant Brian Dowling. That appearance confirmed to his critics that Davidson was an unreconstructed bigot and it is that public perception he explores in Stand Up and Be Counted. "I dipped into the perception of me and thought, let's write about it," he says. "It was like having a conversation with myself." The origins of the play go back to the winter of 2005, when Davidson was performing in Southend and decided to venture to a tiny comedy venue where a black comedian was playing to a small audience. "I really liked the guy's material," Davidson recalls, "so I went up to him and introduced myself. He looked at me and said it was because of me and my racist jokes that he had been tormented at school." The black comedian was 41-year-old Matt Blaize and the pair ended up talking about the impact Davidson's comedy – specifically Chalky – had had on a generation of black and Asian people. Inspired by the conversation, Davidson wrote the play and offered the part of Earl T Richards – a hip young black comedian who is one of Eddie Pierce's nemeses – to Blaize. "The play is about how the old-school comedians – guys like myself – resent the new school because they think they are successful without being funny," says Davidson, "and the new school look at the old school as representing everything they want to overturn." So how much of Jim Davidson is in Eddie Pierce? Davidson says Pierce is more from the Bernard Manning school of comedy. "I have never classed myself as a racist comedian," he says. "Bernard didn't understand racism – I do. For Bernard, if a joke made people laugh that was enough. He didn't think a joke could have consequences. I'm not like that. I talk about racist issues and I make fun of black people but I've never wanted to make it racist." However, both Eddie Pierce and Davidson share a disdain of modern comedians. "Ricky Gervais? Fucking hell – he is not funny at all!" he splutters. Michael McIntyre, meanwhile, is "posh – sounds like Ronnie Corbett on speed". As for Jimmy Carr, "he professes to write his own material but I've seen Laurel and Hardy do some of his jokes". The crucial difference between Eddie and Jim is that Davidson is far more self-aware than his fictional creation. Audiences have become used to stars playing thinly disguised versions of themselves. Some, such as Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm, do it in search of laughs. Others, such as Les Dennis in Extras – another old-school comic – do it to reinvent themselves. What makes Stand Up and Be Counted so compelling is that it is not Ricky Gervais (who on stage jokes, "one false move and I'm Jim Davidson") writing the dialogue but Davidson himself. During the course of the play, every character – the sharp black comedian, the gay television presenter, the talent-show celebrity – find their prejudices challenged. Earl, the black comedian, is forced to concede that his comedy also has victims, and the audience is asked to judge whether it is more acceptable to make fun of white people and Americans than black people and Asians. The taxman's taken all his homes In person, Davidson is hugely likable and far more thoughtful than his reputation suggests. He doesn't seem bitter that he's no longer on television: "I miss the money, but you have a shelf-life." He launches a predictable attack on new comedians as an "awful, jealous, socialist bunch of cunts" but also rails against "the fat, white Oldham boys who sit on their arses and say, 'Send them home because they've all got our jobs,' but when you ask what job they do they say, 'I've never had a job – I've had a bad back for six years.''' He thinks political correctness fuels bigotry but speaks fondly of hearing the call to prayer from the mosque down the street from where he lived in Dubai. He returned to Britain seven months ago, having lived in Dubai for six years. "I ran out of money," he says, and it was Lord Ashcroft who made me think of coming back to Britain when he said to me, 'Don't you have to be rich to be a tax exile?'" Davidson now lives in Hampshire with his fifth wife and two dogs. The need to generate income coupled with the fact that television is no longer an option were both factors in writing the play. Having surrendered his last seven homes to the taxman, he is financing and directing the new play on his own, and he admits to many sleepless nights ahead of its opening. "I have put myself out there to be shot down," he says, "and there will be some people who will come to see the play just to see Jim Davidson get his comeuppance on stage." In the flesh, it's clear that Davidson has regrets about his past, but racist jokes, he says, were "the norm back then. If I could apologise to every black person who was offended I would, but I doubt it would make any difference." The fact is it shouldn't only be Davidson who ought to apologise: the television bosses who put him on and the millions who laughed at him are surely as culpable as the comedians. Stand Up and Be Counted ends with Eddie Pierce realising that his comedy does have consequences and that if he wants a career he is going to have to adapt to the new world. "In the play, my character is made to realise that he can't just carry on as he was," Davidson says, "but the question is whether he is genuinely remorseful or just faking it to be famous." I wonder whether this was Davidson acknowledging and apologising for his past and seeking some kind of rehabilitation: has he turned from hateful bigot to soft liberal? He laughs. "Well, by the end of the play," he says, "it's the Guardian one, the Sun nil." • Stand Up and Be Counted is at the Mayflower, Southampton (02380 711811) until Saturday. Then touring. Details at jimdavidson.org.uk Comedy Theatre Television Race issues Sarfraz Manzoor guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Quiz: Whose hair is this? Posted: 06 Mar 2011 12:00 PM PST A new book has illustrations of the hair of some famous people. See if you can guess some of them … Michael Cragg

No, it is not acceptable to wear Dior Posted: 06 Mar 2011 01:00 PM PST Is it OK to buy Dior? No, it's not acceptable to wear clothes designed by a person who has expressed love for Hitler Email sartorial dilemmas to ask.hadley@guardian.co.uk Now that it is official that John Galliano made antisemitic remarks, is it acceptable to buy Dior clothes and accessories he designed? Lucinda, by email Simply, no no no. Simplicity is paramount on this topic because some people – such as Nicole Kidman (who wore a Dior dress to the Oscars) and stylist Patricia Field (who has insisted that Galliano wasn't being antisemitic when he expressed the opinion that all Jews should have been gassed, he was being "theatrical") – find it difficult to understand why they should let a few expressions of love for Hitler get in the way of wearing Galliano's work. I mean, his tailoring is amazing – makes one look so thin and dramatic. Plus, he's always been, you know, so generous. Even some dear fashion-writer colleagues have attempted to conjure up pity for Galliano claiming that he'd always been encouraged to be "controversial" by his bosses and, golly gosh, it's so lonely at the top where all one can do for entertainment is spout hate speech. Bless. If Field, Kidman and the rest of the fashion corps took their heads out of their butts for a few minutes and read a book, they would doubtless cite what is known as The TS Eliot Defence, which is that Eliot's distasteful views of Jews haven't stopped people reading his work. The answer to this is, quite obviously: 1. While antisemitism is always abhorrent, Eliot did live in a different era and some adjustments of expectations must be made, and, in any case: 2. Eliot, to my knowledge, never said all Jews should have been gassed. If reading feels like too much of a trial, perhaps they could cite The Coco Chanel Defence, which argues that Chanel herself was not averse to having some sexy time with top-level Nazis during the war but people are not condemned for wearing the Chanel label today. Again, two simple replies: 1. Chanel was punished for her treacherous behaviour and her business suffered (because Parisians in the 1940s understood that wearing clothes by someone who expresses love for a Nazi is not such a good look), and: 2. The clothes are no longer designed by Coco Chanel as she is, in fact, dead. Yes, the designer for the label these days, Karl Lagerfeld, is German but, come on, we've all moved on. Well, all of us except Galliano. While we all wait with bated breath to see how rehab cures Galliano's antisemitism problem (and how, pray tell, does antisemitic rehab work? Is he force-fed matzo-ball soup? Made to watch Annie Hall on loop? Taught the ways of hypochondria? Gosh, sounds kinda like my childhood), let us muse on how the answer to Lucinda's question is in fashion patois. The fancy term in fashion land for wearing a designer's clothes is "showing support", eg: "Tom Ford's such a dear friend so I always try to show support for him." Ergo, perhaps now is not the time to "show support" for Galliano. Even more galling for Galliano, one suspects, is just how behind on the antisemitism trend he is. Come on, John, aren't you supposed to be a trendsetter? No wonder you got the sack, following so pathetically on the unfashionable heels of Charlie Sheen, Mel Gibson and Jesse James, aka the ex Mrs Sandra Bullock, who was photographed in Nazi regalia (he denied being antisemitic). (Incidentally, a word about Sheen: he has professed difficulty in understanding why him referring to his producer, Chuck Lorre, as "Chaim Levine" is any more offensive that someone calling him "Carlos Estevez". The difference, my dear tiger-blooded tweeter, is that your name is Carlos Estevez and Chuck Lorre's real name is not "Chaim Levine", it is Charles Levine. Not all Jews, Carlos, sound like extras in Fiddler on the Roof. And while I am glad CBS has accepted that antisemitism, like all forms of bigotry, is unacceptable, I can't help but wonder why the repeated allegations of violence against women perpetrated by Sheen never got in the way of his career, but the antisemitic bullying of his producer did. The Jew in me cheers his comeuppance but the woman in me fumes. Julian Assange might – according to allegations published in Private Eye, which he has denied – use this as proof of the "Jewish conspiracy". All I'd say to Assange is, if we really are in the upcoming WikiLeaks movie, I'll make sure you're played by Justin Bieber.) It's interesting that even the cast of The Hangover can understand why they shouldn't allow Mel Gibson (who allegedly once referred to Winona Ryder as "an oven dodger") to appear in their sequel, even if they were too stupid to understand why convicted rapist Mike Tyson shouldn't have appeared in the first film. Thus, one is left with the unarguable conclusion that some fashion folk are stupider than The Hangover. C'est impressive, non? John Galliano Fashion designers Fashion Judaism Race issues Religion Hadley Freeman guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

ebooks on borrowed time Posted: 06 Mar 2011 12:00 PM PST HarperCollins says US libraries can lend its ebooks only 26 times as print books have to be replaced after that Ebooks were supposed to be indestructible. Where you had disk-space, you had literature – in perpetuity. Which is bad news for publishers now deprived of that extra round of sales revenue engendered by books being dropped in baths. HarperCollins has got wise to this: it has announced that US libraries will be allowed to lend ebooks only up to 26 times. Its sales president, Josh Marwell, believes that's only fair: 26, he claims, is the average number of loans a print book would survive before having to be replaced. HarperCollins UK won't rule out applying this ebook strategy to British libraries - and should it do so, it can expect a frustrated reaction. "Clearly, printed books last a lot longer than 26 loans," says Philip Bradley, vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. His claim seems to stand up: in a YouTube video, two librarians from Oklahoma took a random selection of five HarperCollins bestsellers from their shelves and showed they were all in perfectly readable condition. A pristine copy of Neil Gaiman's Coraline, borrowed 48 times, would have been needlessly re-bought, while Stuart Woods's Swimming to Catalina, still going at 120 loans, would be on its fifth, pointless reincarnation. Ebooks Publishing United States Patrick Kingsley guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Fair Game: Free agents Posted: 06 Mar 2011 02:30 PM PST Valerie Plame's CIA cover was blown after her ex-ambassador husband criticised the Iraq invasion. Joe Wilson talks to Stephen Moss about how the film Fair Game depicts their fight with the Bush administration I expected to be less than diverted by Fair Game, an insidery tale of US politics, but it not only really grabbed me, it also, worryingly, made me want to join the CIA: all those square-jawed men in blue shirts strutting determinedly round their humming offices, the world's secrets locked in their bullet heads. The film draws on the book of the same name by Valerie Plame, who was in the CIA but is not a bullet-headed, square-jawed man. She is a glamorous blond woman, played by Naomi Watts, who worked at a senior level for the intelligence agency until, in 2003, the Bush administration decided to blow her cover to undermine her husband, Joe Wilson, a former US ambassador in Africa. Wilson had written an article in the New York Times rubbishing President Bush's claim in his state of the union address that Saddam Hussein had been trying to buy enriched uranium from Niger to produce nuclear weapons. The administration, desperate to change the story from the unravelling case for war, had decided Plame was "fair game". As well as leaking her identity to journalists, one of whom printed her name in the Washington Post, officials in vice-president Dick Cheney's office spread the story that Wilson had made the information-gathering trip to Niger in 2002 on which his New York Times article was based because his wife had sent him. According to the vice-president's men, it was a "boondoggle", a pointless task that wastes time and money, mainly designed to keep the ex-ambassador busy. Wilson's reputation was called into question; his wife's career wrecked; their lives turned upside down. Old friends were shocked to discover she was a CIA agent; new enemies accused them of being traitors; their marriage came close to collapse. The film neatly combines the political and the personal: the shocking fact that the public was misled over weapons of mass destruction and the impact that taking on the administration had on one family. Directed by Doug Liman, who made The Bourne Identity, it is a slick thriller, but also a reminder that the US administration fabricated the case for war against Iraq in 2003, and that the human cost of the deception was huge. Unmasking Plame may have had deadly consequences. In a sequence, the veracity of which has been disputed, the film shows her running agents in Iraq who are murdered when her identity is revealed. Wilson, Plame and their 11-year-old twins have now moved from the Washington hothouse to the more relaxed atmosphere of Santa Fe in New Mexico, from where he calls me for a long conversation about what seeing their lives put on screen has meant to them. "We knew that it would be very difficult to cram a six-year battle into an hour and 45 minutes," he says, "but they did a remarkable job and within the constraints of a Hollywood motion picture. It is an accurate story of our time and the fight that we went through." Critics of the film say it overstates Plame's seniority within the CIA – a long-running canard introduced in 2003, when supporters of the administration painted her as little more than a secretary – but Wilson says it accurately reflects her responsibilities, which principally concerned combating the proliferation of WMD. Scriptwriters Jez and John-Henry Butterworth tell me that what appealed to them about the story was that the couple were both "completely central to the case for war". Wilson had investigated Saddam's alleged pursuit of enriched uranium, and Plame had been tracking aluminium tubes that were supposedly bought by Iraq as part of its nuclear weapons programme. Wilson, played by Sean Penn, is shown as quick-tempered, voluble, egoistical. Did they get him right? "I think perhaps the character of Joe Wilson is shown as being a bit angrier than I am," he says. "I don't think my temper is quite that short, but I understand the need to reduce the character to one or two dimensions. The portrayal of Valerie also perhaps didn't capture her warmth, but it captured her cool and her ability to operate in stressful circumstances." The film makes great play of Plame's coolness under pressure – the quality that got her into the CIA. "You can't break me. I don't have a breaking point," she tells her husband in the film. She uses the line to reassure herself as her life is falling apart and, exhausted and depressed, she fears that maybe she does have a breaking point. The temperamental differences between her and her husband are clear: Wilson is up for the fight; Plame has to be cajoled into it. Wilson says that once he had decided to go head to head with the people trying to wreck his reputation and career, he knew he had to give it everything. "I took a strategic decision early on that the only way to deal with these attacks was to be very confrontational. Anybody who knows of my history the last time I was in the public eye, which was when I was in charge of the embassy siege in Baghdad, knows the effect of the strategy we adopted there in getting hostages released." In 1990, in the stand-off provoked by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, Saddam had threatened to execute anyone, including staff at embassies, who harboured foreigners. Wilson, second-in-command at the US embassy in Baghdad but in charge while the ambassador was out of the country, appeared at a press conference with an improvised noose around his neck. "If the choice is to allow American citizens to be taken hostage, or [for me] to be executed, I will bring my own fucking rope," he told journalists. The irony of him being rubbished by the administration in 2003 was that, 13 years earlier, he had been lionised by Bush the elder. Initially, Wilson went through official channels to get the administration to admit the president had been mistaken in his address. "I had no interest in airing my dirty laundry in public." But when that failed, he went public. As the film makes clear, Wilson was not a professional agitator, or even ill-disposed towards the administration. He had worked for President Clinton as an adviser on Africa in the 90s, but came from a "proud Republican family" in California. He was an establishment man, but with a subversive streak – he likes to say he studied "history, volleyball and surfing" at university. Above all, reflecting his forebears' politics, he was a constitutionalist, suspicious of overarching executive power and horrified that the president could make false claims which, even when they had been exposed as bogus, were left on the record. He believes he knows why his wife was targeted. "It became clear to me early on they wanted to send a signal to the intelligence community, which was beginning to leak stories about how they had been pressured to draw certain conclusions to back up the claims about weapons of mass destruction. The message to them was: 'If you do to us what Joe Wilson just did, we will do to you what we just did to his family.'" He says that when his wife was outed as an agent, the leaks stopped immediately. Once he began his fight, he was not prepared to back down. "It was not an act of enormous moral courage so much as an act of survival against everything they were throwing at us. At the end of the day, if you don't have your good name, what do you have?" Plame has said it is difficult for her to watch the film. How does he find it? "There are parts of the movie that are very painful," he says. John-Henry Butterworth recalls sitting next to them at a screening. "I thought, 'I wonder if they'll like it', because it touches on some really personal stuff and goes into some uncomfortable areas. I was half watching the film and half trying to gauge how it was going down with them, and there was a moment when Joe reached across and grabbed his wife's hand and she grabbed his hand, and they just sat there clasping hands watching the film for the next five minutes. It was so moving. You suddenly realised that this was real for them; this was something that happened to them." Wilson is proud he was able to withstand the firestorm that followed his article. "They didn't understand my background in fighting with assholes," he says with the self-confidence – or is it self-satisfaction? – Penn sets out to capture. Wilson has no qualms about having written the article. "It was important for Americans and historians to understand the extent to which procedures that we hold dear were just thrown aside." He is disappointed that the US has not had a broad-ranging Chilcot-style investigation into the decision to invade Iraq. The villain of the film is Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice over the investigation into the leak of Plame's identity. His 30-month prison sentence was commuted by Bush, but his career in public service was over and he was barred from practising as a lawyer, though he is still active as a lobbyist. Wilson says it "meant quite a bit" that Libby was found guilty, because it "demonstrated that there is justice in the justice system". Wilson, 61, has returned to running the international business consultancy he established when he retired from diplomatic service but which became virtually moribund after 2003 as work dried up in the wake of the administration's attacks on him. Plame, 47, is co-writing a spy novel, doing consultancy work for a scientific research institute, and campaigning against nuclear weapons. Not going back to work was, he says, never an option. "Contrary to what you may believe – or maybe we're just not very good at this – books and movies don't actually make people a lot of money. They may make some people a lot of money, but not everybody. We still work for a living." Fair Game draws a line in the sand for the couple. But Wilson accepts that it is this battle that will define his life. "I suspect that win, lose or draw, this will be how I'm remembered, unless I win the Nobel prize for physics, which is not likely because I'm not a physicist." United States CIA George Bush Iraq Middle East Film Film adaptations Stephen Moss guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Music app offers radio on mobiles Posted: 06 Mar 2011 01:46 PM PST Free service We7 allows users to store live streaming songs and play them back without requiring internet access A new service allows music fans to listen to personalised radio stations on their mobiles even when they are not online. Music service We7 is launching a free app that will let users create a personalised radio station on their mobile phones by choosing which artists they would like to hear, before the station chooses other similar artists. While users are listening to We7 in a connected area on their phones, the app will allow the phones to store songs which it can then continue playing even when the phone no longer has access to the internet, said Steve Purdham, of We7. "Music and mobiles are the ideal combination," said Purdham. "But until now when you have streamed internet radio as soon as you lost the connection, you lost the song." The service was well suited to younger, budget-conscious music fans wary of using their mobile phone data allowance for listening to music, he added. "Even if you are on a pay-as-you-go phone you can still play music." The service will be free for the user and feature adverts. Analyst Mark Mulligan, of Forrester Research, said it was a sign that some digital services were reaching out to a mass market, rather than a niche section of dedicated music fans still willing to pay for music. "It is vitally important that it's free – there has to be a recognition that the vast majority of people don't believe in paying for digital content," he said. "If content is everywhere, you either have to make it exceptional so a small number of people will pay, or embrace the free business model – that is the only way to the mass market." Offering music fans free internet radio on the go and giving a generation of young music fans who have never paid for music an illegal mobile service that pays royalties to the artist, could only help the industry, said Purdham. Like traditional radio, it would also help music fans discover new music, he added. "The more songs are listened to, the more digital revenues go up. Like regular radio, it has real promotional value for artists plus this is a legal way for people to listen to music that they are probably not going to pay for anyway, but the artist still gets paid." Those who prefer more control and choice over their music could choose subscription services like Spotify's £10 a month unlimited streaming, mobile service or a similarly priced package for a mobile jukebox from We7, he said. "This service recognises that the vast majority of people want to be entertained, but not everybody has the tie to choose their own songs," he said. Mulligan said that although the service was not "revolutionary", it did go some way to reinventing radio for a new generation, comparing it to Pandora, a similar service in the US. "Radio has been going the way of newspapers, and it has felt like we are just waiting for it to die ," he said. "This is a way of bringing radio into the future and it gives artists a way to expose more people to more new music." Apps Digital music and audio Mobile phones Radio Alexandra Topping guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Television re-runs, from the start Posted: 06 Mar 2011 02:46 PM PST Where's the appeal in watching the likes of Friends, The Sopranos and The West Wing from the beginning again? It's more than just nostalgia, says Mark Lawson It was American television networks that introduced the weekly narrative recap: "Previously on The West Wing." This has now been adopted as standard by British dramas. Now Sky Atlantic, the UK's new dedicated network for US TV, is offering an extreme version – the chance to watch famous series including The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and ER, right from their opening episodes. These end-to-end retrospectives bring box set-style viewing to scheduled television. While not every viewer of these marathons will be rewinding from the end – they will also attract new generations of viewers, curious about the legend, and those who became addicted late – there's a particular fascination in watching a show in this way, especially within the regular flow of programmes, because the experience is so contrary to the medium's usual rules. These reruns satisfy two impulses. One is completism: the desire to experience the full shape of a complex narrative. In that sense, these start-to-end screenings have a connection with the recent trend in pop music for bands from Brian Wilson to Sonic Youth to play gigs that consist of every track from a particular album, performed in the original order. Such run-throughs make a stand for the idea of the album in a time when iPods make tracks easy to skip and shuffle. In television, the motivation is different. The majority of TV drama differs from novels, films and stage plays in that, at the outset, we frequently have no idea of when, or even if the story will end. Although soap operas are the most obvious examples of open-ended storylines – a complete rerun of Coronation Street from start to finish is unlikely ever to be possible – most serial dramas are encouraged to keep open the possibility of further instalments. The first audiences for The West Wing, The Sopranos and Six Feet Under had no idea whether they were watching a story stretching to one year or seven. A novelist or dramatist chooses when the final full-stop comes; a TV screenwriter is at the mercy of ratings, advertisers and actor availability. It's a dizzying experience, for instance, to see now the opening episode of Friends, first broadcast in 1994, in the knowledge that the central characters and actors have 10 years and 236 episodes ahead of them, although the performers are people who have signed up for a show that, like so many others, will probably come to nothing. Watching an episode that is literally introductory – sample dialogue: "Hi, everyone, this is Rachel. Rachel, this is Phoebe and Chandler and Joey, and you remember my brother, Ross" – feels peculiar: like Barack Obama wearing a name-badge. Part of the interest is the photo-album pathos that drives such TV shows as Before They Were Famous, in seeing celebrated faces before they wore the proud but wary burnish that comes from expecting to be recognised. In comparison with the red-carpet, cosmetic advert, gossip-column figure she cuts now, the Jennifer Aniston in the Friends pilot episode has the vulnerability of a baby picture, and Sky Atlantic's rescreening of ER creates the same double-take with George Clooney. But the strange sensation of these flashback seasons goes beyond the sentimental appeal of a faded snap because, in an early episode of a long-running TV drama, there are two groups of people who don't know what's coming next. Actors playing Hamlet or Hedda Gabler know that they are in a tragedy and, for all the drama-school teaching about "being in the moment", it's hard for the outcome not to foreshadow the role. When, though, we watch CJ Cregg or Leo McGarry in the first seasons of The West Wing, they have no idea that their function will ultimately be tragic. (Doubly so, in the case of the latter, because both the character and the actor, John Spencer, died.) This double degree of innocence about the outcome is impossible in film or theatre. And, with a rerun, there's the additional frisson that we do know what will happen. So the phenomenon of completism in TV is partly a response to being finally able to reflect on a story from its end. The other fascination of returning to the pilot or premiere after watching the finale, though, is that it reverses the way in which a drama normally works. The general aim of writers and directors – and even more so in an opening episode – is to create tension and intrigue, often through deliberate ambiguity about who someone is or what is happening. The pre-credits sequence of the first-ever episode of The West Wing, for example, gives a brief establishing scene to all the White House staffers – Sam, Josh, Leo, CJ, Toby – that turns on the mysterious identity of someone called Potus. It's easy to recall the sigh of satisfaction viewers had all that time ago when Sam's girlfriend (who we also now know to have been a prostitute) queried his boss's strange name and he replied: "It's not his name, it's his job: President of the United States." With that line, Aaron Sorkin had us hooked, not just through the next ad break, but down the years. When we go back to the beginning, however, a great screenwriter's careful game of intrigue and reveal is blown. This transmission is a knowing showing, in which the pleasures involve retrospective resonances. When CJ speculates about her love life, we privately flash forward to a terrible moment in a store years later; similarly, when Donna expresses the desire to get out of the office more, we mentally warn her of the mortal risk this strategy may bring. And how strange it seems that the first entrance of Martin Sheen's President Bartlett should be hobbling on a stick (after a biking accident), when we know that he will eventually leave the series similarly disabled, due to the concealed multiple sclerosis that almost led to his impeachment. As the show had changed its main writers and producers by the finale, it's unlikely that the cycle of limping to limping could have been intended, and one of the interests of re-viewing in this way is the extent to which the long-haul storylines feel organic, in the way that they would in a novel. An oddity of early West Wings, for example, is that the president is a minor character (one scene in the first episode, few in the second) because the protagonist was originally Rob Lowe's Sam. In contrast, David Chase's The Sopranos seems as certain of its future journey as a satnav: from the astonishingly confident opening moments of Tony Soprano in his shrink's office, with flashbacks to his collapse on the day that his beloved ducks left his swimming pool, this show knows what it wants to do, if – and it was a big if – it only got the chance. The final page of a novel is planned and meant; the final scene of a TV drama is often accidental and dictated by external events. The rerun screening gives viewers their equivalent of the pleasure that comes from taking a well-thumbed hardback from the shelf and opening at page one. • The From the Beginning season continues on Sky Atlantic. Sky Atlantic Television The West Wing The Sopranos Mark Lawson guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

McQueen label denies royal dress Posted: 06 Mar 2011 01:16 PM PST Clarence House refuses to comment on story claiming that creative director Sarah Burton will design dress The Alexander McQueen label has categorically denied a claim in the Sunday Times that creative director Sarah Burton is making the dress Kate Middleton will wear when she marries Prince William next month. The royal wedding dress is the most prestigious commission in British fashion for decades, and will guarantee global publicity for its designer. The design and designer have been kept a fiercely guarded secret. Clarence House responded to the story on Sunday with a statement saying: "We're not commenting on the specific designer for the dress because Catherine Middleton wishes to keep the designer a secret until the wedding day." Those who believe the story pointed out that in the event of a leak, the house of McQueen would not be at liberty to confirm the commission before Clarence House had taken the lead. The story was met with surprise and delight at Paris fashion week. To date, Kate Middleton has played her wardrobe statements demure, safe and low-key. To wear a dress by McQueen, a label as closely associated with tragedy and controversy as it is with fashion, would be a radical departure. McQueen killed himself in February last year at the age of 40, a day before the funeral of his mother, Joyce. Sarah Burton was Alexander McQueen's right-hand woman for many years before his death and played a key role in establishing the lyrically beautiful, faultlessly tailored aesthetic of the label. She is richly talented, hugely experienced and well-liked in the industry. Last October, she presented the first Alexander McQueen collection under her own name at Paris fashion week, under the critical eye of a fashion industry still pining for McQueen himself. She acquitted herself with aplomb. Her ability to produce beautiful clothes under enormous pressure would come in useful if preparing the dress that needs to wow Westminster Abbey and the world on 29 April. If Middleton has chosen Burton as her dress designer, it suggests a streak of daring which had not previously been evident in the would-be princess. The royal wedding dress will be a matter of intense interest to millions of people outside the fashion insiders' enclave. To many, the McQueen name is strongly associated with suicide and with the mischievous young designer who scrawled swear words inside Prince Charles's jackets while an apprentice on Savile Row. Alexander McQueen Kate Middleton Royal wedding Fashion designers Fashion Monarchy Jess Cartner-Morley guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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