WORCESTERSHIRE cinemas are currently hosting a rap movie titled Get Rich Or Die Tryin'. It has been criticised for being extremely violent.

I wouldn't dream of having a go at something I'd never seen. A grim experience in my youth when I was caught bang to rights for condemning without viewing provided a salutary lesson and also no small degree of notoriety.

However, rap is an entertainment that prides itself in the glorification of violence and abuse of women. Yet, despite the contradictions, there has never been any shortage of glowing reviews in hideous, posturing national publications such as the Guardian extolling the virtues of lyrics devoted to keeping your bitch right where she belongs.

A brief musical lesson, then. From peasant dance sprang European classical music, out of American blues came jazz, and from myriad forms we now have world music. Sadly, rap is rooted in sterile, infertile ground and will never, ever yield anything other than aggression and hatred.

RETURNING from the pub, some of you will perhaps have arrived home on a Saturday night in time to see the Dave Allen Show repeats. Oh dear. If we needed further proof that comedy doesn't travel well, then look no further than this embarrassing delve down through three decades.

To think that the chain-smoking Irishman was once at the cutting edge of daring, social comment. Sadly, his pay-off line "may your god go with you", then regarded as rather dangerous, appears forced and pointless in 2006.

Even in 1971, there would have been a questionable, dodgy humour to a Ku Klux Klan gag. It's also breathtaking that a member of an oppressed race such as the Irish should have ever found such material remotely amusing.

The only pleasing aspect was his incessant smoking and nervous, obsessive trousers-brushing routine. In fact, it was the funniest facet to the show - nowadays, anyone behaving like this would be arrested and then bored to death by the health police.