As a Brit, I'm genuinely stunned by this band's American success. Consider it payback for [insert countless US artists of dubious talent who are big on this side of the pond].

In fairness, Lady Gaga's repertoire could have played in any club in the late 90s and no-one would have batted an eyelid. Both sides of the Atlantic are guilty of indulging in nostalgia. 

The disdain for Lost post season 1 is deserved, and I say that as someone who watched every episode. It simply couldn't decide if it wanted to be about the characters or the nonsensical mythology… and so of course ended up failing on both.

Clegg and Milleband are openly atheist, while Cameron has said his involvement with God has the 'frequency of a badly tuned radio' - he's paying lip service to the faithful of his voters but no-one who actually believed in God would say that.

Western Europe still gets a lot of things wrong, but it's almost total indifference to religion is not one of them. More people attend church in China than Europe now. The 3 leaders of the main political parties in the UK have openly said they don't believe in God. Imagine that happening in the States?

I'm not sure I buy the 'critic is dead' argument. Rotten Tomatoes is still highly viewed and referenced. In a age when there are more movies than ever, people are perhaps even more likely to turn to designated arbiters of taste, however arbitrarily they're chosen. Same for music. Pitchfork gets more hits than ever…

This whole 'white people aren't allowed to have problems' polemic I'm seeing on message boards is getting quite boring, though in the case of Videogum's movie reviews it's often quite apt. Like bringing Nazis into a discussion, there's a time and a place for it.

Which one did you read first? For anyone getting into Franzen that's usually the one they prefer since they're not massively dissimilar novels.

Would them not getting together at the end tell us anything about life and relationships that the show hadn't already though?

If I have a problem with the specials it's that they pretty much turn Neil from the boss Brent thinks he is into a genuine bastard. Gervais and Merchant have always described him as the villain, but in series 2 alone that doesn't really fly.

Re: the dating game - "Bubble" was a contestant on the UK's Big Brother, while the black guy (can't remember his name) was a character on a series of commercials for a bank. 'Minor celebrities' would be putting it kindly, but they were indeed playing themselves.