Radio Times

Outside of low-rent horror flicks, Star Wars and Police Academy, it's not often a movie makes it to five sequels - and even less often that the last one is any good.

But lovable puncher Rocky's back, and the sixth film in the series, Rocky Balboa, topped the UK box office in its first week of release (January 2007), making writer/director/star Sylvester Stallone a very happy man.

In the film, a washed-up, 50-something Rocky makes a fighting comeback, to prove (in his own, slightly slurred words) that he's "still got something left in the basement". Why 60-year-old...

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The fundamental basics of economics are harder to grasp than a dog in a bathtub. This means that you would need to be extremely intelligent to understand the subject in such depth that you can carve out a successful career from presenting its complexities to the public.

In turn, you'd need to exude extraordinary character in order to do so without coming across as a bit of a smug, know-it-all git. This is where we find Evan Davis, at the crossroads where brains meet charm (the corner of Vorderman Street and Lynam Avenue, perhaps).

There is something...

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The humble TV hound is such a mainstay of popular culture that it should have its own category at Crufts. Some become equally as famous as their human co-stars - proof positive that a willingness to lick their own crotch and drag their backside across the lawn on camera is no hindrance to a successful TV career (though anyone who has witnessed the woeful Cirque de Celebrite on Sky One; could argue that the same can be said for people too).

Those who wish, as we are here, to impose some level of hierarchy on the TV dog...

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There are some who say that The Archers is the soap for people who don't like soaps. Or at least for those who won't admit to following one.

Out of the limelight, its actors rarely making the front page of the tabloids; it retains a certain dignity in the face of the Walford gangsters and the teen pregnancies of Weatherfield.

BBC Radio 4 typically announces episodes with words like: "And now, over in the kitchen at Glebe Cottage, Jill's busy making scones." Moments of high tension come with social organiser Lynda Snell's casting of the Christmas play,...

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The comedy panel show is a bankable TV medium.

The subject is utterly unimportant; it could be based around food additives, 17th-century French court costume or international property law; all that's needed are a couple of reliably witty people, a deadpan master of ceremonies and a couple of other vaguely controversial guests to act as stooges.

When it works, as it usually does on Have I Got News for You, you see a magnificently entertaining romp as quick-witted, fast-thinking contestants tear strips off each other. When it fails, as it usually does on They Think It's...

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All admiration has its roots in jealousy.

I think Wayne Rooney is an amazing footballer, and then I remember how many years younger he is than me and how many more millions of pounds he has (which is lots, because I don't have any millions of pounds).

I'm jealous because in my head I can picture myself playing football like him. I can visualise scoring a hat-trick on my Manchester United debut, like he did. I know that I couldn't, of course, because I'm rubbish.

But nonetheless a small part of my brain, the part...

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Along with fast food and plastic surgery, one of the least palatable American exports we have embraced in Britain has to be the "talk show". When did we loosen our stiff upper lip to flaunt such grave dilemmas as "I'm 68 and love my teenage Albanian lover" on live TV?

The worst part of the whole debacle is the role of the talk-show host. A kind of drive-thru pseudo therapist who espouses clichés, solicits inane audience questions, and wields the ever-present threat of the "lie detector test" as proof of their moral guru-like status. They even...

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Some people sound as though they learnt the English language on the planet Mars. Christopher Walken, say. Or David Bowie.

Sid Waddell, the voice of darts, appears to have overheard a snippet of a conversation between Walken and Bowie, then invented the rest himself. He is unrestricted by the laws of syntax and holds scant regard for the ways of the mother tongue. Sid Waddell isn't just a commentary icon, he's a poet.

Football had Kenneth Wolstenholme, snooker "Whispering" Ted Lowe, but it's darts that has pulled the otherwise humdrum world of commentary into hitherto unheard-of levels...

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We've come a long way since Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Back at the height of the Cold War, the espionage game was conducted over grey filing cabinets or through the slats of Venetian blinds. Usually by people wearing very thick glasses.

Nowadays, secret agents are younger, sexier and contracted to walk three abreast while making witty asides at the same time as saving Blighty from disaster. This is the explosive world of Spooks - an arena where renewed national anxieties in the post-9/11 world has taken the place of Soviet double agents.

Slick, controversial and never one...

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Ever since Man discovered that storms weren't actually the result of Thor riding across the sky on a chariot pulled by goats, there's been a big problem with weather: it's not very funny. But if you're on TV, your duty is to entertain.

Some weatherpeople make a token effort: talking through a doggedly maintained rictus grin, wearing deliberately hilarious clothing or, if they're on ITV in the mornings, pointing to the map with their breasts instead of their hands. Yet there's only one whose performance is worth watching even if you don't care a fig for tomorrow's...

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One man's tat is another man's treasure.

If you're lucky enough to have a day off work - or unlucky enough to have a stinking cold - and you're slumped in front of the TV with a tepid mug of tea in one hand and the remote control in the other, you'll find yourself overwhelmed with an array of other people's stuff. Napkin rings, vulcanite vestas and carriage clocks are in abundance, appearing on a procession of programmes dedicated to antiques and collectables.

Twenty years ago, our only real chance to see the contents of the...

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I don't understand schedulers. You have a hit with a business reality show, which after two series proves so popular that it escapes the ghetto of BBC2 for the bright lights and ratings goldmine of BBC1. What's more, you also have the rights to the original American version.

So why put the American version of The Apprentice, which to my mind is the better of the two, on at close to midnight twice a week? It's no wonder I'm turning up to work like a bleary-eyed zombie on Thursday and Friday mornings.

"Hang on a minute," I hear...

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For a time in the late 70s and early 80s, whoever was in charge of the music used for the BBC's sports coverage hit an immense run of form.

In fact, given that his competition consisted largely of a loft-insulation-headed Jimmy Savile and a pre-fame Pete Waterman, he may well have been the best DJ in the country.

For whoever he was, and for the sake of argument let's call him God, he's responsible for not only most of televisual history's great theme tunes, but also history's greatest - that of the BBC's snooker coverage.

This...

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It seems remarkably easy to become a celebrity chef these days.

We seem to have an insatiable appetite for their winning smiles and briskly constructed dishes, and the qualifications needed to become one are getting much easier to achieve:

* An over-reliance on the word "literally" (as in "I'm literally going to put this hake in the oven", or "all you have to do is literally get the bowl out of the cupboard")

* A tendency to describe foodstuffs as having been "caramelised" when what they actually mean is that they've been "fried"

* A mastery...

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