THE COMPUTER games industry is likely to face a barrage of criticism this week over games with graphic violence and sex being launched in the run-up to Christmas.

I AM delighted to report that I have found a totally legitimate excuse to drag the travel section through Bill Clinton's dirt. This is because of what the scandal has been doing to the most interesting city bus-tour on the face of the earth: the Gross National Product's Scandal Tour of Washington.

Britain is getting the American habit of blaming a little square box for all society's ills

BRITAIN'S CHIEF censor, James Ferman, is to retire shortly, with a successor expected by September. His final report for the British Board of Film Classification highlights the explosion in the market for violent pornography over recent years. Mr Ferman has come in for a great deal of criticism in his time, but he has walked the line between philosophical libertarianism and the tabloid-style bulwark of prurient disapproval for 23 years with what is, in the final analysis, a large degree of success.

BRITAIN is not heading for a consumer recession, although shoppers are reining in spending as interest rates start to bite, according to a new survey published today.

AS DAWN AIREY and her fellow programmers at Channel 5 clink glasses over improved ratings this month, they are joined, in spirit if not in person, by a much grubbier crew - the "dirty mac" brigade.

The horror that turned heads in '74 has been exhumed from movie hell. Chris Darke exorcises its troubled past, while Catherine Von Ruhland gives it her blessing

CARLTON Communications yesterday took a further step into the world of cutting-edge entertainment technology by paying pounds 160m for Nimbus Technologies, a leading manufacturer of video discs.

People keep asking me if there is any point having censors in the age of the Internet and satellite TV

IF YOU were choosing a symbol of the millennium, what would you look for?

RAPE victims, children and disabled witnesses are to be given extra protection in court, under laws to be introduced in the autumn.

The word "dangerous" clings to Jerry Sadowitz (right) like a limpet to a rock. It stems from a period when TV commissioning editors found his incendiary material too hot to handle and a member of the audience came on stage at the Montreal Comedy Festival to whack him after an offensive remark.

Tony McCoy last night failed in his appeal against a four-day suspension imposed by the Aintree stewards after his winning ride on Pridwell in the Martell Aintree Hurdle on Saturday.

NOT HERE. This is the mantra being spoken in Jonesboro in the aftermath of Tuesday's Westside carnage. This kind of horror belongs in the urban wastelands of Chicago, Los Angeles or New York City. But not in our town, not in rural and suburban America. How, then, to explain the fact that the three fatal school rampages that have shaken this country in five months have all been in not-here places?