I fear that someone has been having our Gallic friends across la Manche on. Somehow, they've come to believe that the pasty-faced, soap-dodging would-be troubadour that is Pete Doherty is not only cool, but that he is a sensible choice for the romantic lead in a period film.

According to the Jewish Argentinian clarinettist Gustavo Bulgach, who leads Klezmer Juice, klezmer is like a soapy pig which no one can catch; wherever it feeds, it takes on the local colour.

After a slow start, France is now flying the MBA flag high

SURELY THIS is the most useless word in English. If you look up impassionate in Chambers Dictionary you will find its meaning given as "impassioned, dispassionate" - in other words, full of passion or totally without passion.

English-Speaking Union

FRAUDULENT claims to dole money have been worrying social security chiefs, we read. The said chiefs do not, of course, generally talk about the dole. They prefer to speak of benefits. Dole got a bad name during the inter- war Depression, when the official word was assistance; the responsible body in those days was called the Unemployment Assistance Board. Any word was better than dole, so firmly identified with a tight-fisted bureaucracy which humiliated the poor.

LIKE Suzi Feay, I, too, get extremely irritated by misused apostrophes.

Dumb

From Mr H. Patroons

Beautiful Thing, the last show from director Hettie Macdonald, is the only play in the West End featuring a Thamesmead love affair and Mama Cass singing "It's gettin' better." It's a comment that could be applied to the fortunes of the production which went from the Bush to a National tour, the Donmar and finally the West End.

I WOULD guess that of all the great works of literature in the English language, James Joyce's Ulysses is the least read. Ask about among your literary friends, and I bet you will find that not one in a hundred can honestly claim to have read the work all the way through.