Factor 3: Applied Creativity

Dumbing up

  Is it just me or is the effluent tide of lowest common denominator tripe that passes for entertainment and culture slowing and even beginning to flow back the other way?

OK, so we've still got OK and 'I'm a nonentity let me in there' still gets a dribble of water cooler time, but elsewhere hope abounds.

In film, Inception has bloggers searching for meanings, references and explanation. People can't stop stammering about the King's Speech and The Social Network, rather ironically, has put the spoken word in to Oscar contention.

On TV there's anything and everything from HBO, Scorcese is directing for the small screen and somebody beg iPlayer to repeat Alan Bleasdale's The Sinking of the Laconia.

And in music, for perfectly polished pop, listen to Progress by Take That - and there's a sentence I never thought I'd write.

Sorry got to go now, Britain's Got Talent is back .. don't you just love Piers.