My Week In Media: Sue Perkins

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More than half of Afghanistan’s families live in extreme poverty

Leila is watching her baby intently, as his mouth moves trying to swallow the small blob of yellow p...

Time for a new approach to alcohol

Ambulances were called and three drunk teenagers were brought to my care. One was so drunk we had to...

Bahrain: One year on

I am used to endless lies and criticism from the BNP and its favourite blogster, as well as Islamist...

Paul Volcker stands tall against the banking lobby

Why is Europe, which likes to present itself as an opponent of speculative "Anglo-Saxon" finance, li...


Last week I watched...



The Champions League final. I love football and I watched the match at home in Cornwall with my partner. She's not really that into football, but she was pretty gripped. It was all about England being on the line; can we play football with flair and fluency? But also, can football fans sit in a pub for seven hours without ripping each other's eyes out? I felt so, so sorry for John Terry. Penalties are such a knife-edge; if Terry hadn't slipped, then it would have been Ronaldo who was the bad guy. I'm also a fan of Channel 4's How To Look Good Naked, all because of Gok Wan, who I think is a wonderful human being.

Last week I listened to...

BBC Radio Four and the World Service. I drive around at night quite a lot and you can get to hear the switch-over from Radio 4 to the World Service. I always feel very parochial when I listen to the World Service. There you are, all wrapped up in the Crewe by-election and Gordon Brown and the abortion bill but on the World Service it's all about Doha and Aboriginals in Wagga Wagga. I caught two surprisingly interesting programmes this week: one about the agricultural economies of Venezuela and Brazil, and another about a woman tunnelling into an ice cap in an attempt to discover when exactly the last ice age finished.

Last week I read...

Almost everything. I inherited a magpie approach to newspaper-reading from my parents, who didn't have much of an allegiance to any one paper. I quite often commute by train from Penzance to London, which is a pretty long journey. Among the forest of detritus you get in carriages, you can usually read an entire broadsheet and three tabloids. I particularly like Armando Iannucci's Observer column, he is so endlessly wry and I laugh out loud at his writing. Observer Food Monthly is also brilliant.

Last week I surfed...

BBC News online. I'm not a big internet media enthusiast but I do look at this a lot. When I'm doing The News Quiz and I need to gen up on stories, it's really helpful it's a proper quiz, and you really don't have any idea what's going to crop up, so you need to have kept an eye on the news. I was also doing a charity quiz this week for Christian Aid in St Brides' in Fleet Street, so was doing my homework for that.

Sue Perkins can be seen in 'The Supersizers Go Restoration', BBC2, Tuesday 9pm

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