... before my mag arrives:

Is it safe, for someone who is only about to start season2 of The Wire, to read the David Simon interview?

Can we have an article on Fred Dellar, Prisoner of Rock? At the very least I'd like to know more about his presence at a Billie Holiday gig, mentioned in the previous issue.

just 2 episodes into season 1!

No spoilers at all......honest!

somehow always manages to be more interesting in glossy reality than these perky ( if slightly sixth-formish ) little trailers would suggest.

with 'perk' however.

The photo wall behind Kate and Andrew reminds me of the suspects board used by McNulty, Freamon and co in The Wire to work out the hierarchy of Baltimore's criminal underworld.

When this TV programme was first mentioned it sounded like it would be worth watching but I am now fed up with reading about it in The Word (and no I still haven't spent £25 to watch it and probably won't). I appreciate the enthusiasm for sharing something good but, for god's sake, give it a rest for a month or more.

that when mentioning The Fall in articles he always used to follow it with '(whom i discovered and gave to the world)'. This continued until he recieved a note from Mark E Smith thru the post with 50p attached that read 'Dear Danny, here's your share, now shut up about it.'

Now he's got his Wirecast and best article ever on The Wire out of his system, will an inflation busting £3.48 be enough for Mr H to shut up about the pigging thing? At least on the podcasts as my fast forward button is wearing out.

You meet a friend in the pub, a person whose options you trust and respect, and he raves at some length about this TV programme you must see. Because you trust them, you watch the programmne, and perhaps you like it, perhaps you don't, it's not important. A month later you meet them again, and they rave about it again in almost identical terms. Amused, you suggest the possibility of early onset Alzheimers and depart with a smile. Four weeks later the same thing happens, as it does four weeks after that, and after that and so on. You go from appreciative to amused to irritated to annnoyed to angry to homicidal.

So it is with Word and The Wire.

Unless the readership suffers from very high levels of churn, which seems unlikely, everyone now knows what Word thinks of The Wire, has had a chance to look at it and be converted or not. Enough articles already!

My copy of The Wire Fanzine arrived today (the one with John Lennon on the cover)

Thanks.

PS - not much of a fan of The Wire, but it's admirable that you're all so passionate about something on the telly.

...I read Rob Fitzpatrick’s piece on NWA’s Straight Outta Compton. Tim Westwood is very articulate and he must have a few stories to tell. Has he ever been interviewed in WORD?

I also got around to reading the Cinema section, which this month is headlined by a review of The Duchess. Mr Hepworth’s tea drinking/oral sex analogy ("a cooling draft direct from the faucet of the original Earl Grey”) indicates that a profitable sideline writing bodice-ripping highwayman porn is well within his abilities.