John Walsh: BTW (19/11/10)

The next big thing in publishing

* Are you sick of 3-D? Maybe, as you plonked those annoying spectacles on your nose once again to watch Avatar or Toy Story 3, you wished the craze, brought back from the 1950s, would die out. No chance. Stand by for the rise of the 3-D magazine. Dazed And Confused, the on-trend monthly journal, gave its readers the first 3-D fashion shoot in August. Its December issue features a 3-D shoot (free glasses thrown in) with the French "robot dance titans" Daft Punk. Next thing you know, it'll be The Spectator, and Charles Moore's face will come jumping out at you as you read. Meanwhile, bookshops across the nation are bracing themselves for the soon-to-be-published tome, 3DD: A Book of Boobs in 3-D, sure to be a Yuletide favourite. No really. I'm told they leap off the page and land right in your lap.

* The Advertising Standards Authority has banned Beyoncé Knowles's television commercial for her perfume Beyoncé Heat from daytime TV, saying it's too "sexually provocative" to be shown before 7.30pm. As YouTube viewers will know, she appears in it clad in an orange frock that keeps threatening to fall off, strokes a wall in an abstracted fashion and sweats a great deal, while singing "Fever", the Peggy Lee lament about influenza. Frankly, I don't see much to object to. I'm intrigued, though, by the production details about the perfume. They tell us: "The colour of the flacon and liquid was chosen after Beyoncé's favourite colour – red, with a wish to look like fire with antique details." I can assure Ms Knowles, 28, that she looks very fiery indeed, and her antique details are in a miraculous state of preservation.

* An ancient Remington typewriter, a Bakelite phone, a Singer sewing machine, parquet tiles, photographs of Marilyn Monroe and stretch-fabric 1950s armchairs covers have all been used to furnish a "Reminiscence Room" in a Wiltshire care home, where patients with Alzheimer's are "calmed" without the use of anti-psychotic drugs. The theory goes that, surrounded by the tat of yore (did I mention the push-along toy dog?) they will access their past and become less confused about the present. But are we quite sure how the poor souls will feel? Won't they just think they've been relocated to a car boot sale in Croydon?