The last days of the Raj?

As a fellow University College London alumnus I naturally wish Raj Persaud well in his efforts to save his career amid accusations of plagiarising other peoples' work. Whatever else you say about him, he has certainly put psychiatry on the media map.

That said, I can't say I am hugely surprised that Persaud has found himself in a situation where his skill for self-publicism appears to have backfired on him.

In my first year, he was chair of the UCL Labour Club, in which capacity he demonstrated an easy charm and ability to bullshit which was almost pre-Blairite in its magnitude. I thought then that he could have gone a long way in national politics had he chosen to.

Later, he signed my nomination papers for an elected student union post only to tell me afterwards that he had voted for someone else. This too, I later came to learn, was a fairly commonplace practice among political types.

So farewell then, Shoot! magazine

In an announcement which will surely cut deep into the hearts of fortysomething British males everywhere....IPC has announced that Shoot! magazine is to close after forty years.

I first started getting the mag at the age of eight in 1971 and until I discovered girls about seven or eight years later, the arrival of the latest fortnightly edition was the most eagerly anticipated event in my calendar.

The line-up of star writers in those days comprised the cream of British footballing talent - Bobby Moore, George Best, Billy Bremner, Alan Ball and Kevin Keegan.

The fact that they were not necessarily always positive role models for us young readers - Bremner and Keegan were sent off for fighting in the '74 Charity Shield, while Ball was sent off while playing for England earlier the same year - only added to its appeal.

My most treasured issue was perhaps the 1978 World Cup special which contained a number of confident predictions about Scotland's likely progress in the tournament, but I must have stopped getting the mag soon after that.

It's a shame that, like Camberwick Green and Trumpton, it won't be around for my own son to enjoy.

Calling all rats up drainpipes

As long-standing readers of this blog will know, Tony Bevins was one of my journalistic heroes. So it was good to hear that a group of friends and former colleagues have established the Bevins Prize both as a way of remembering him and as a means of encouraging and promoting investigative journalism.

The prize is a bronze statue of a rat up a drainpipe, which the organisers believe captured the essence of his approach to journalism.

Always a great believer in the merits of original research, Bevins would have been appalled by the prevalence of "churnalism" in the national media that exists today.

The organisers say the judges will be looking for work that required assiduous digging, and that successfully challenged those in power. I can think of a few bloggers whose work might well qualify.