She releases solo single Crash Landing with Route 1, which, appropriately, fails to make the Top 40. 2006: Keeps the celeb dream alive by appearing on an episode of Ant And Decs Saturday Night Takeaway. 2008: Wins modelling work promoting Playboy-branded knickers. Lands presenting job on BBC3s Snog, Marry, Avoid in which she tells working class teenage girls they dress like whores. Like, shes one to talk! Oct 2009: Frost pops up in a glossy celeb mag modelling wedding dresses. Apparently shes getting married soon. Kerching! In the gripping accompanying interview she confides: Hopefully I can borrow some gorgeous jewellery for the day! Seriously. How do these celebs get away with it? Keep reaching for the stars Jenny! Scott Tenorman GIG P!nk Wednesday, October 14, 2009 metrolife 13 Staying In Book Reviews Book Of The Week Showtime: The Inside Story Of Fianna Fil In Power by Pat Leahy Penguin Ireland So much commercial pop pales in contrast to P!nk. Thats because the 30-year-old Pennsylvania-born popstress has forged her own vibrant niche in the mainstream: teaming up with feminist songwriter Linda Perry and Swedish producer Max Martin, flaunting self-deprecating charm and impressive stamina for extravaganza. She has also earned a perfectly pop audience, multigenerational, metrosexual and conversant with the words to several years of catchy mega-hits expect the So what? Im still a rock star! refrain of her recent single to prove a stormer here. P!nks latest tour is entitled Funhouse after her 2008 album, and it spans more than ten European countries but the O2s hi-tech spec should provide a dazzling playground for aerial choreography, film clips and set pieces. Her set-lists tend to eschew her early rnb grooves for the riffier, raunchier confections shes become famous for; Funhouse is packed with tunes about heartbreak and party-hearty excess (it was recorded during her temporary split from husband Carey Hart) but shes also given to unusual cover versions recent dates included her reworking of the Divinyls I Touch Myself. P!nk doesnt rely on lip-synching, she does her own stunts, and she plays all the starring roles, from clown to vamp, with pizazz. Arwa Haider Tonight & tomorrow, The O2, East Link Bridge D1, 6.30pm, 52.30 to 57.30 (returns only). Tel: 0818 719 300. www.pinkspage.com with the afterlife. As each clue unfolds, the detectives own life continues its gentle freefall; hes still dwelling on his brothers death, still half-heartedly interacting with his damaged family. Though laden with a rather clunky sub- plot about the reopening of two old cases, the meat of Hypothermia remains satisfying stuff. Erlandurs refusal to treat events with anything more than grim pragmatism keeps matters grounded in the clean, cold lines of Indriasons Iceland. Andrzej Lukowski What The Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell Allen Lane, 24 With his Art Garfunkel haircut and TV evangelist zeal, Malcolm Gladwell (pictured, right) cuts a striking figure on the international lecture circuit. The pop philosophy of Blink and The Tipping Point helped him sell out two shows at Londons Lyceum Theatre last autumn, and now hes satisfying demand with this greatest hits compilation of his first 13 years as a staff writer on The New Yorker. A method to Gladwells madness emerges as the articles pile up in quick succession. On the face of it, his stories are about ketchup, Enron and canine psychology, but behind the fickle subject matter, they mostly revolve around salesmen or persuasive speakers. As Gladwell picks apart their techniques, its as if hes piecing together a similar formula for his own writing; from the initial hook to the big reveal, he systematically works each subject like the 1950s Chop-O-matic salesman in his first story. Gladwell has learnt how to sell us stories we didnt even think wed want to read. Fortunately for us, he does it brilliantly. Steve Pill Old Swords And Other Stories by Desmond Hogan Lilliput Press, 15 The celebrated Galway- born short-story writer Desmond Hogan has been in the news for all the wrong reasons recently, following his two-year suspended jail sentence for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy. Its difficult to put that knowledge aside when reading Old Swords, a collection of dense, troubling tales where were never more than a page away from a fawning description of a lithe young male. Hogan is clearly a gifted stylist but many of these stories make for uncomfortable reading; Iowa concerns a Garda sergeant who takes photographs of naked boys with rousse- auburn hair and cranberry pubic hair while in Shelter theres a reference to a teacher in a community college who shows pornographic films to boys hes invited home. Whether this constitutes some kind of literary wish-fulfilment for the writer is impossible to tell but the effect, for the reader, is never less than discomfiting. Elsewhere, Hogan displays a genuine gift for inventive imagery and intelligently examines the way private and public histories are intertwined, but his penchant for paragraph-long sentences can be taxing and many of these stories feel aimless and indulgent. Old Swords certainly offers an insight into the mind of a talented and tormented individual but, like the sword of its title, leaves an unpleasant mark. Daragh Reddin Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indriason Harvill Secker, 13 The latest in Icelandic crime king Indriasons Reykjavik Murder Mystery series is unapologetically business-as-usual for both the author and his hard-bitten creation, the now sixtysomething Detective Erlandur. A fundamentally preposterous crime takes place, yet the manner of its solving takes on kitchen-sink credibility thanks to Indriasons pared- down prose and relentlessly glum characters. This time, an apparent suicide yields enough nagging questions to force Erlandur into a trawl through Reykjavik suburbia, uncovering a lurid story rooted in the deceaseds obsession Beginning with the 1997 general election, Fianna Fil became amazing at getting into and staying in government. But they were dismal at actually governing. That year, FF was back in coalition, this time with the PDs, and Ahern was Taoiseach just as the Celtic Tiger was having its debut. Showtime politics had won them the election, and showtime government lavish spending promises with little thought for the cost of them being fulfilled or the fallout when they were not was going to help them hang on to power. It was Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy who ruled the roost for most of the period, Leahy says, devising his radical, tax-cutting budgets with little or no reference to other ministers or civil servants, while keeping Ahern happy with social welfare concessions. It was McCreevy who drove this and not the PDs who lay claim to the low-tax agenda. In Leahys telling, despite the moniker, Champagne Charlie was actually quite responsible with the finances, mostly restrained in his spending to the exasperation of ministers and even Ahern when the government was swimming in money. It was only after Ahern exiled him to Brussels as commissioner and the former famously declared himself a socialist that public spending got really out of hand, with a directionless Taoiseach as ever unwilling to take decisions that might annoy anyone. Pat Leahy, political editor of The Sunday Business Post, is scathing of the Opposition that have allowed FF to govern almost unhindered since 1997 and most of the press, whom he accuses of blowing health and education crises out of proportion and forcing the Government into bad decisions. Leahy walks a fine line between admiration for the FF machine and disdain for how it allowed the boom go down the plughole, and although his admiration for certain figures is clear particularly McCreevy he doesnt let it get in the way of a good story. Alan Caulfield index.html2.html3.html4.html5.html6.html7.html8.html9.html10.html11.html12.html13.html14.html15.html16.html17.html18.html19.html20.html21.html22.html23.html