I got in touch with Klein and a few other celebrity baseball fans to see if they might like a crack at getting into a game.”Yes, I would consider it,” said comedian George Lopez, an avid White Sox fan. “I can’t hit or throw, but Ozzie Guillen and I would be the perfect fit. I know all the bad words in Spanish.”"I could get on base,” said another Second City stage alum, “Cheers” sitcom star George Wendt. “I’d be the opposite of Bill Veeck’s little-person stunt. My belly would be so far over the plate they’d either have to walk me or hit me.”Celebrity baseball fever, catch it.It could be the beginning of a trend.”Wheel of Fortune” host and lifelong Chicago baseball fan Pat Sajak e-mailed something exactly along those lines from Vero Beach, Fla., where he was in the stands for a Dodgers exhibition game.”This could lead to other celebrity signings,” Sajak speculated. ” Prince William to the Royals, or Shaquille O’Neal to the Giants, or Johnny Depp to the Pirates, or the Olsen sisters to the Twins.”I checked with actor and “Bleacher Bums” play co-creator Joe Mantegna to see if he would like to play in a game with his favorite club, the Cubs.Yes, he gladly would. But what if he gets two or three hits? Suppose he turns out to be a combination of Alfonso Soriano and Moises Alou?”My only fear,” Mantegna said, “is that they would ask me to play left field the entire season and put my ‘Criminal Minds’ job in jeopardy.”As you know, the Cubs are always trying to come up with new ways to turn a profit. That gave stand-up comedian and Cubs fan (same thing?) Tom Dreesen a brainstorm that he passed along to me.”They should charge rich and famous people the same way NASA charged that rich guy to go into space,” Dreesen said. “Then use that money to buy better pitching.”I can see it now: Chicago millionaires paying to play third base for a spring inning.Or show-biz stars, fulfilling a childhood fantasy the way Crystal is doing.Vince Vaughn, baseball crasher. Bill Murray, starring in pinstripes. John Cusack, ninth man out.Not a fantasy camp but a genuine, full-speed, no-holding-back Cactus or Grapefruit League spring game, just like Crystal’s is going to be for the Yankees.”Well, here’s the thing,” sportscaster Bob Costas, a close friend of Crystal’s, told me. “Whether you’re in favor of it or not, at least Billy was a legitimate ballplayer in his day. He was a star shortstop in high school. He went to Marshall on a baseball scholarship.

Sir Alan Sugar ran through their claims to fame in case, as he said drily, “Some of the viewers out there might not know who they are.” It is a joke he’s made before, but money is honey and a rich man’s joke is always funny. Phil Tufnell, or Tuffers, predictably arrived late for this briefing. “I do apologise, Sir Sugar,” said Tuffers. “Sir Alan,” said Sugar sharply. He is touchy about what you call him.

Not half as touchy as Hardeep Singh Kohli, the men’s team leader, who instantly resigned when Kelvin MacKenzie said, “You’re not fucking Hitler. Calm down! We’re not annexing fucking Poland here.” Hardeep was livid: “D’you know, that’s it. I am not going to be called Hitler. Stop the recording!” Saying which, he exited excitedly. The leadership passed to Lembit Opik, who, after some criticism of his balls, tried to pass it on to Kelvin MacKenzie. Who said that this wasn’t pass the parcel.

The leadership of the women was, however, tight in the talons of Jacqueline Gold, who runs sex shops. So tight that Kirstie Allsopp, presenter of Location, Location, Location, stuck her head in a bucket, declaring, “I’m saying nothing.” In this she sold herself short. When she and Jacqueline locked horns over who should ring Richard Branson, there was a frank exchange of views. Kirstie said, “You clearly don’t have any confidence in me. You cannot control everything. IT’S A TEAM! I have connections but, if you think yours are better, go ahead!” Jacqueline made conciliatory noises. Kirstie responded, “I am not your darling! I am nobody’s darling! I am going to bed.” And went.

Louise Redknapp, a wag, was quite wonderful at relieving men of their money. It was financial liposuction.

Apparently, the proper response to someone who gives you £30,000 is: “You’re a star!”, and to someone who stumps up £100,000: “You’re a rock star!”

There is no higher earthly accolade.

Tamara Ecclestone, the men’s team’s PA, had this talent in spades. She persuaded a benevolent gent to double their takings. Actually, he was her daddy.

Each team had to fill a shop with donated goodies (”Watches and diamonds and stuff,” as Louise put it) and flog the lot in one orgasmic sale. It was said of the late Queen Mary that she looked as if she just stood there, rotating slowly, while people threw jewellery at her. She would have whistled to see how the women’s team attracted watches, diamonds and, indeed, an ostrich-feather fan (later sold to David Walliams for £1,000). Louise totted up the loot: “Pistol panties, Polo dress, D&G bag.” Rejecting, however, a Harrods ponyskin handbag (”When you say ponyskin … you don’t kill baby horses? It’s cow, isn’t it?” “No,” said the salesgirl patiently. “It is pony”).

The men never quite got the hang of ringing up a chap and cooing. Lembit was turned down like a bedspread, even by his own Cheeky Girl. Life as a Lib Dem, however, makes you spectacularly immune to rebuffs (”No? I’ll take that as a possible, then?”) There was nothing left to do but laugh. Hardeep rolled on the floor. Tuffers doubled up, howling.

The women’s sale throbbed with celebrities. Many not even disgraced. Sir Alan, dropping in on the men’s sale, looked very vinegary when told the oysters were free. If you want to know the result, it’s on Friday. If you want to know what Pistol panties are, I am told they make you look like a film star. Which film star was not specified.

Now for something entirely different.

Wonderland: The Curious World of Frinton-On-Sea (BBC2). Frinton is famed for fresh air without fun. On its coat of arms (”Enduring values”) a man still plays golf in plus fours. The residents tended to tell Marc Isaacs to go away. One of them in the authentic voice of Old Father William addressing a tiresome young man: “That’s the third time you’ve asked me that, and I’ve already answered it once. I think we’ve had enough of you, thank you very much.”

People seemed to be appearing in their own discrete dramas. Margaret was in something by Alan Bennett. She ran a gifte shoppe that no one seemed to visit and yearned stoically for spritely Jeffrey, who preferred ballroom dancing. An old lady in something by Sam Beckett stood on a street corner, waiting for her sister, who didn’t always remember where she lived. “I’m hoping I’ll see some of my family coming through the gate … Somebody should be coming, you see … Am I in your way?”

It felt as if Frinton was holding its breath, waiting for today to go away.

Its residents rallied magnificently to attack Network Rail, who were pushing through closed-circuit-television technology. Frinton wanted a human being. They believe in yesterday.

· What did you think? Have your say at blogs.guardian.co.uk/tv

The market for big-ticket, big-name bags, as sported by the likes of Kate Moss and Victoria Beckham, has been expanding rapidly, chalking up 30% annual growth in the past three years. Total UK handbag sales, boosted by the “it” bag phenomenon, will exceed £500m for the first time this year.

Burberry has a new “Warrior” bag at a variety of prices from £850 to £13,000, depending on whether it is cut from leather or gold alligator skin. Chanel recently unveiled its Forever alligator bag, complete with a clasp studded with diamonds, for £100,000. And Smythson sells the Nancy bag, designed by Samantha Cameron, from £495.

Mintel is forecasting an 18% fall in sales growth thanks to the consumer downturn and celebrity fatigue.

“Women have become more cynical about celebrity-endorsed products,” said Katrin Magnussen, senior fashion analyst at the market research group. “Many will no longer be as quick to spend hundreds, even thousands of pounds on a bag just because the likes of Posh Spice have been snapped with one, especially when these days the must-have looks are quickly translated to the high street.”

A downturn in demand will be bad news for firms like Burberry, Mulberry and luxury label groups such as LVMH. The handbag business is a vital part ofthe fashion trade, often generating bigger profits than clothes. Mintel says worries about cheap labour and the environment will also hit sales. A green bag, it seems, could be the next “it” bag

When Kirsten Dunst was spotted last year during South by Southwest, the A-list star most certainly was not languishing in a long line or grooving with the festival masses. Rather she was, as one American-Statesman staffer blogged, ” … at the Spin Party, watching Kings of Leon and puffing cigarette after cigarette.”

That’s right, like any Hollywood heavy-hitter or hipster musician worth their salt, Dunst was chillin’ at an invite-only VIP party.

The Spin Party was at Stubb’s (and will be again this year), but not all parties are at music venues. The organizers of these official and un-official SXSW-related events transform offices, warehouses and tents into pimped-out, sponsor-laden lounges and hot spaces, offering everything from music and munchies to goodie bags and booze.

It’s all free, but only if you roll VIP.

“Spin and MySpace will have an 80-foot tent in the middle of Sixth and San Jacinto,” says Elaine Garza, Austin-based principal of Giant Noise PR firm. “This is invite only, but there will be a stage, gifting area, lounge and bar. Talk about building from scratch.” This tent is separate from the Stubb’s Spin Party; rather, it’s a place for the movers and shakers to take a break (somewhat) from moving and shaking.

Garza describes the vibe of the tent as a relaxing place for musicians to have a beer or do an interview.

“It will be a reprieve,” she says. “Because there is so much music, people just want some place to chill.”

And according to every organizer interviewed, people also want a place to play Guitar Hero.

The Spin and MySpace tent will have the popular game, as will the Red Bull area at the 5 Gum Perez Hilton One Night in Austin party — ah, corporate sponsorship, those names just roll right off the tongue — (also invitation only) will offer a guitar gaming spot, as well as Austin’s Music & Entertainment (ME) Television studios and offices on South Congress Avenue.

In fact, with the help of designer Joy Kling from Spazio (1214 W. Sixth St. 474-5768, www.spaziointeriors.com), ME has revamped its space just in time for the festivities.

“It’s very office-y, but it’s a VIP event, so we want to give our guests that VIP feel,” says Corrine Perry Rotan, ME marketing director. “We wanted a fun atmosphere and to provide a way to showcase our sponsors a little more, as well as give (the offices) a little facelift, so we can carry it on to other events. Joy provided colors we could use with our existing ME TV colors and highlighted them in the office and on the walls.”

The new color palette includes mango and red. Kling suggested chalkboard paint on the deck overlooking the ME soundstage and candles and a black light for a lounge feel.

The chalkboard wall is decorated with logos for ME and Dewar’s, its sponsor during the festival. Musicians can draw on and sign the wall.

The third-floor meeting room has been converted into an artist and celebrity interview area. The walls are light gray with different-sized bands of color painted around the room. In the Guitar Hero room, there is a 42-inch plasma TV and the now black walls sport vinyl records spray-painted gold.

This combination not only references music, but also — once again — the colors of the sponsor, Dewar’s. Because, though it seems the three days of rockin’ parties, free alcohol, food and swag are all about the VIPs, they are really about — you guessed it — advertising and branding for the sponsors.

BMF Media Group out of New York is taking over Moonshine Patio Bar and Grill at 303 Red River St. (236-9599, www.moonshinegrill.com), for its Eastsport Cafe, sponsored by the Eastsport backpack company.

“For us, the,Eastsport Cafe is all about how we involve a backpack into a cafe,” says Bruce Starr via telephone last week. Starr is BMF’s “talent and branding maestro.” He says for fun, they all have those cheeky titles. “We wanted to build upon how Moonshine looks without cheesing it out. We are all about really creating something that makes the brand and the campaign come to life in an unconventional way.”

So, how do you create a hipsteratti haven with a, um, backpack theme?

“We are going to do hummingbirds and butterflies — spring come to life — and the animals kind of hold the backpack around the corners and the sides.”

The colors and graphic of the look are borrowed from Eastsport’s advertising campaign, which plays on plasma TVs throughout the cafe. There also are two wall installations featuring about 1,500 backpacks and several ad posters in rustic frames and the all important Wi-Fi, of course.

Starr is excited about having the restaurant as a base camp for several reasons.

“We often go out to eat with talent, and eating at the same place as the people that just watched you play can be awkward,” says Starr, also noting that Austin eateries are often packed during the festival. “We need a quiet place to get away, and the only place we found before was the Four Seasons.”

By creating the laid-back Eastsport Cafe, instead of spending what Starr says often amounts to hundreds and hundreds of dollars at the Four Seasons, the BMF crew is able to meet, greet and eat with its VIPs in a more controlled atmosphere, one that also allows the company to highlight its clients.

“The campaign is functional,” says Starr. “A backpack is something you need during SXSW, so you can carry all of your stuff.”

Correction, all your free VIP stuff.

The Perez Hilton One Night in Austin event is another of Starr’s projects. This invite-only, multimedia extravaganza, presented by celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton, kicks off Saturday night at the Palm Door on Sabine Street and goes until 4 a.m.

“That’s a raw space being used by SXSW for showcases,” says Starr. “But, we have it Saturday night. We are flooding the place with pink uplights, plasmas and banner installations that will go behind and (on) both sides of the stage.”

Starr says the 4-foot-by-11-foot and 16-foot banners have funky character drawings of Hilton. One of them, for example, features 50 bobble heads of the gossip hound.

Once again, working with a multitude of sponsors, Starr’s team will create several smaller areas within the larger space.

There will be a 5 Gum wall, so that attendees can “experience” the product. The bars are being done by Moët Hennessy. One of them is a Navan vanilla liqueur bar, which will be macked-out with vanilla candles, and when you aren’t watching the show you can get away from it all with a soothing massage.

göt2b, the hair product company, will have a barbershop on site. Fake ads of Hilton will be throughout the space and stylists will give attendees that essential rock-’n'-roll look and a Polaroid snap of the new ‘do

Rockstar hairdo: Free.

Polaroid of hairdo: Free.

Immortalization of 3 a.m. drunken hook up with (insert name of VIP celebrity here): Priceless.

And when fatigue sets in, no problem, because the java will flow all night long at the Cafe Bustelo Cuban coffee bar. And don’t forget about the Red Bull Guitar Hero area. Because as we all know, a huge, loud room filled with boozed-up, highly caffeinated VIPs wielding overflowing swag bags and rockin’ out on Guitar Hero equals — F.U.N.

“We’ve tried to make it a full experience for the guests,” Starr says. “This is a raw space, not so much to work with, so we are trying to make it as cool and different as we can. We also didn’t want to do too much.”

(Really?)

“Between the banners and the plasmas, we didn’t want to go over the top because Perez has such a brand already and the more stuff you put in the less people you can have, so we really wanted to keep it around the perimeter of the room.”

When it comes to working with a raw space, such as the Palm Door, compared with a finished-out space with its own identity, he prefers the former.

“It gives you a blank slate for your vision,” says Starr. “You never know who is going to come on board, whether it’s Eastsport or AT& T. It really comes down to branding. Calvin Klein is a client and they have this specific aesthetic. Every thing is black, white and gray and they would never go with a space that didn’t have that aesthetic. A space can be really cool, but if it doesn’t match, it won’t work.”

Will the hipper-than-thou hordes of celebs and band members eat it all up with reckless abandon or will some of them eschew the corporate overload? The allure of days filled with live music, freebies and rockstar treatment might prove to be too seductive to resist for even the most principled and conscientious VIP.

Perhaps, the Jungle Brothers answered that question best when they sang, “You wanna get with us because we got it goin on/We in the VIP/Yeah yeah/We in the VIP.”

It’s SXSW time rock fans; See you in the VIP.

mspencer@statesman.com; 912-2519

Dr. Thomas has worked throughout her residency and practice to recruit and
retain individuals who are underrepresented in the field of orthopaedic
surgery. According to Jason Hammond, MD, chief resident in the Department
of Orthopaedic Surgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Center, Dr. Thomas “stands
out as a preeminent role model in the black community and also in the field
of orthopaedics.” Her tireless efforts have helped increase the proportion
of female residents at Johns Hopkins to 20 percent and black residents to
32 percent.

As part of her current practice, she and other physicians visit their local
middle schools to cultivate positive relationships with the students and to
demonstrate the opportunities available through education and perseverance.
“I have been mentoring since elementary school,” Dr. Thomas noted. “I am
still sought out by young people who are interested in pursuing
orthopaedics. This has given me the opportunity to mentor, encourage and
‘prop up’ those who may have felt discouraged along the way.”

Dr. Thomas credits her early interest in art, mathematics, the carpentry
she learned from her father and the art of sewing passed down from her
mother as strong influences that led her to choose orthopaedic surgery as
her specialty. “When I realized that this is what I wanted to do, I began
reading materials and subscribed to the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. I
absorbed the language of orthopaedic surgery, and that made me more
comfortable with the specialty.”

Now, she reaches out to other potential candidates for the program,
particularly those who are black or female. Keisha DePass, MD, of the
Maryland Pediatric Orthopaedic Center, said, “Dr. Thomas has been
instrumental in helping me to achieve my goals. She is my role model and
one of the main reasons I felt that I could successfully accomplish my
dreams of becoming an orthopaedic surgeon.”

Dr. Thomas’ biography clearly reflects her vast talent and ongoing
commitment to diversity. A graduate of the New York City High School of
Music and Art, Vassar College and the Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine, she interned at the Yale-New Haven Hospital in general and
orthopaedic surgery. She also completed a fellowship in orthopaedic trauma
and the spine at the University of Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical
Services Systems. She founded the African-American Alumnae of Vassar
College and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Minority Faculty
Association. Dr. Thomas also chaired the education committee at St. Thomas
Hospital in the United States Virgin Islands and the membership committee
of the Monumental City Medical Society, and she was elected president of
the Virgin Islands Medical Society, the Maryland State Medical Society and
the Monumental City Medical Society. Sitting on the Board of Directors of
the J. Robert Gladden Society since 1998, she is also a current member of
the Journal of the National Medical Association’s Editorial Review Board
and a Fellow of the AAOS.

These impressive credentials still do not fully reveal Dr. Thomas’
unwavering dedication to an orthopaedic future that will in her words,
“more closely represent the composition of the United States, as a whole,
and its gender and racial mix of people.” It is this passion for advocacy
that demonstrates her contributions to the Academy and to underserved
communities around the country.

Previous Diversity
Award Winners

About AAOS

Twenty-five years after his death, Vivier remains an enigma: his small body of work is known only to a few aficionados, and performances in Britain are rare. Yet his work is about to become significantly more accessible due to a pioneering experiment in online concert-giving between the contemporary music ensemble Psappha, the BBC Singers and Lancaster University, who have combined to produce a programme of Vivier’s music on the web.

Psappha’s artistic director, Tim Williams, conceived the project after hearing the piece Vivier was working on at the time of his death. “It’s extraordinarily beautiful, yet also one of the most terrifying pieces of music I’d ever heard,” Williams says. “It completely chilled me even though I originally had no idea of the circumstances of its composition. It was only later I realised that it seems to be a premonition of his own death.”

Vivier lived a short, intense life marked by a thirst for new experience - cultural, musical and sensual - which he absorbed into a strange, incantatory sound world of startling originality. Born in Montreal in 1948, he spent his early years in a Catholic orphanage. Never having known his parents haunted Vivier throughout his life, yet it was also the source of imaginative liberation: “Not knowing my parents enabled me to create a magnificent dream world,” Vivier said in 1983. “I shaped my origins exactly as I wished.”

Growing up among nuns also impressed him with a love of ritual. His inspiration to become a composer came in a moment of revelation at midnight mass, though his initial desire to take holy orders was thwarted when he was expelled from the seminary for “inappropriate behaviour”. Vivier never made any secret of his sexuality, living in a Montreal apartment between a public park and a swimming pool that were two of the city’s most notorious cruising areas. In 1981, the pool became the setting for an avant-garde erotic film, L’Homme de Pékin, in which Vivier is seen hurling himself into the water and performing strange, mystic chants in the showers.

French-speaking Quebec was altogether too stifling and provincial for Vivier’s spirit of adventure, however, as well as being too far from the musical centres of Europe. In 1972 Vivier secured a government grant to study abroad, first at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht, then with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne. Stockhausen did not immediately warm to his strange new student - he disliked Vivier’s impish, irreverent behaviour and objected to the ancient sheepskin jacket which he never took off and smelled rather pungent.

After a brief flirtation with the tape loops and spectrum analysers of the European avant garde, Vivier began to travel further afield in his quest for new experience, studying the ritual music of Bali and Japan, and creating the solo piano masterpiece Shiraz, which depicts a day spent following two blind musicians through the streets of an ancient Iranian city. An incessant traveller, Vivier developed an image of himself as a musical Marco Polo - the explorer frequently appears in Vivier’s work alongside other heroes including Mozart, Merlin and Lewis Carroll. The dramatic work Kopernikus, which the composer described as “a ritual opera of death”, bears a distinct Alice in Wonderland influence, as a young woman descends into a bewildering dream-world where the characters sing in a language of the composer’s own invention.

Vivier never saw his opera produced; Kopernikus was eventually staged by the director Pierre Audi at the Almeida festival in London in 1985. The production was subsequently revived in Amsterdam in 2006 as part of a dramatised retrospective of Vivier’s work entitled Rêves d’un Marco Polo (Dreams of a Marco Polo). Yet Vivier’s eccentrically constructed scores are rarely heard in the concert hall, as the attempt to interpret them requires digging through disparate, often contradictory sources. Psappha’s Tim Williams says: “Even though the scores are in the process of being republished and re-edited, there are many areas where it is by no means clear what effect Vivier had in mind. There’s a huge range of ritual bells and esoteric percussion, for instance, some of which he specifies very precisely, but others which can only be identified through drawings in the score. And many of the analogue synthesisers Vivier used are no longer in production - we had to track them down on eBay.”

It seems certain that, were he still alive, Vivier would have embraced the potential of the internet: it is particularly fitting that this global composer should be selected for this experiment in free, online concert-giving. The conductor, Nicholas Kok, hopes that the performance in Lancaster, and subsequent webcast, will be a significant stage in the rehabilitation of Vivier’s reputation.

“It’s hard to say why he has been so neglected,” Kok says. “Is it because he was Canadian? Is it because he wrote sensual, intensely personal music which doesn’t conveniently fit into any modernistic school? Is it because he was gay? It’s unfortunate that the one thing people do know about Vivier is that he died a violent death, which gives his legacy an aura of sickly glamour. But it’s time to reappraise his work as music, not just the soundtrack to a lurid, psycho-sexual biography.”

William says: “Vivier did seem to set his course to self-destruct, which makes it very hard to separate the life from the art. The sonorities of the temple bell and the seediness of the pick-up joint are indivisible aspects of his sensibility. But I’m convinced that if he had lived, he would have become an icon of contemporary music. He came from Canada, but it seems as if he belonged to a different planet.”

Psappha and the BBC Singers perform music by Claude Vivier at the Great Hall, Lancaster University, on February 28. Box office: 01524 594151. The webcast will be available from March 17 at psappha.com. The concert is also broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on March 15

Its greatest strength is that it looks past the mythic and questionable tales of Barrett’s post-Pink Floyd life to create a revealing portrayal of the musician as a person, not a caricature of LSD abuse or the many other labels both fans and music journalists have applied to Barrett ever since he disappeared from the music scene in 1967.

The book takes a chronological approach to Barrett’s life, including how he first became interested in art and music at a young age, the founding of Pink Floyd and the band’s influence on the psychedelic scene. It also follows Barrett’s exit from the band and his two solo albums, and of course, his mental issues. These include his well documented behavioral “eccentricities,” and retreat from public view, as well as the possible factors that resulted in this retreat.

The book is nicely rounded out with the critical and commercial responses to Barrett’s only Pink Floyd album, The Piper At the Gates of Dawn, why Barrett continues to hold people’s interest despite a scant recording career, and how his decline is eerily similar to that of other artists.

In any book about Syd Barrett, there will inevitably be a focus on his mental decline. The authors do an admirable job of chronicling this without turning into hack armchair psychologists. What becomes clear is that starting around 1967, Barrett became increasingly withdrawn, and his behavior increasingly bizarre, with the initial and obvious culprit being his extreme regimen of acid intake. The authors also suggest other factors, with varying degrees of plausibility, including the singer’s sensitive personality, his fear of the fan worship he found himself subject to, and a never-diagnosed mental condition (possibly Asperger’s disease).

The well-known stories are all told again, including how the musician would be completely uncommunicative, would sometimes play the same note over and over during concerts, and would, as one contributor to the book stated, “travel in his own mind.” Pink Floyd member Nick Mason is more direct, describing Barrett as an “f—ing maniac.”

Barrett’s post-Floyd life is also examined. After releasing two solo albums, including the brilliant and disturbing The Madcap Laughs, Barrett essentially lived a solitary existence until his death in 2006. From what details we do know, he had little human interaction outside of his family, and passed the time by painting, walking, riding his bike, and watching television. Attempts by music fans and journalists to speak with the legendary Pink Floyd founder were either met with adamant refusals or only a few cryptic words. When Barrett was spotted, the details were strange and perhaps apocryphal; no doubt these stories have helped shape the image of Barrett that still persists to this day.

In some ways this book is not easy to read. Many of Barrett’s flaws are exposed, including violent episodes against both former girlfriends and music business executives. The irony is that the book discusses the intimate faults and shortcomings of a man who, regardless of whatever mental conditions he had, wanted his privacy from the world at large respected.

The authors do an admirable job of walking the fine line between accurate biography and dirt digging. They also show how the notion of Barrett as a throwback to the suffering artist living in splendid artistic isolation is complete and utter BS. The great unanswered question is what would have happened to both Pink Floyd and Barrett had he essentially not gone off the rails.

And he was sweating bullets.

“I was a wreck. I was scared to death,” he said. “A lot of the people in the crowd were singers and actors, so they have a full capability to understand what I’m doing. And they would know if I wasn’t doing well.”

Not to mention, he wasn’t sure how well his brand of raucous blues would fare with the audience.

“They’re used to real singers and crooners, but mine is a show band,” he said.

Belushi - a veteran of such films as “Return to Me,” “K-9″ and “Mr. Destiny” - sat in the dressing room, his nerves getting the best of him.

Finally, he summoned up his courage and hit the stage.

“I just live with that nervous edge,” he said. “I just step out and start. That’s what you have to do. Just let it go.”

And he did.

Belushi’s performance went so well the organizers for the event invited him for an encore this year, during the 20th anniversary of the invitational.

Jim Belushi and the Sacred Hearts will be the featured entertainment on Friday night at the Renaissance Esmeralda Resort and Spa in Indian Wells. The evening also includes a dinner of Frank Sinatra’s favorite foods and a silent auction.

The “According to Jim” actor had a chance to hang out with many of his own favorite celebrities during last year’s invitational.

“Dick Butkus is my hero. That was pretty cool meeting him,” Belushi said. “Then there’s Dick van Dyke, Joe Mantegna, Dennis Farina. There’s a whole gamut there. I love all those guys.”

Before he takes to the stage, Belushi says he has some odd requests in his contract rider.

“I ask for completely wacky stuff, like a Diet Coke and a turkey sandwich. Maybe even something wild like fat free potato chips,” he joked. “And a stripper pole. But that’s just for stretching.”

Belushi expanded his repertoire to include blues music in the mid-1990s when buddy Dan Aykroyd asked him to don a hat and sunglasses for the Blues Brothers Band. Belushi was skeptical, since his brother John is the guy who made the Blues Brothers famous.

“I said, ‘Uh, I don’t think so Danny. That was John’s thing,” Jim Belushi said. “There are a few things I can’t do in my career - I can’t eat a cheeseburger, I can’t carry a samurai sword, and I can’t play the blues.”

But Aykroyd can be convincing, and so Belushi signed on to play a few gigs.

Belushi ended up playing regularly with the Sacred Hearts, the house band at House of Blues. The sound is a mix influenced by all types of blues, from Memphis to Chicago.

It’s a fitting addition to an already impressive resume.

“I sing. I dance. I act. I do comedy. I do drama. And I pickpocket,” Belushi said. “That’s the only reason I do this [Sinatra event], so I can go out in the audience and go through purses. There are some rich people out there!”

So, Jamie Oliver is a chef but Delia Smith is a cook. And she’s in hot soup for urging us to buy cheap chickens rather than expensive organic birds.

I back Delia all the way. It’s OK for celebrities like Jamie and Eton-educated Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to trumpet the virtues of free range food. But how many mothers are able to afford it?

When I was a lad, fowl was a once-a-year luxury at Christmas. My father kept hens (not chickens) in a coop behind the garden shed of 15 Railway Terrace.

Despite war service, he was too squeamish to wring their necks and got a neighbour to do the job. Mother and me plucked the birds.

Nobody has to do that these days. Chicken is one of the cheapest meats available. And you can cook it 100 different ways, as Delia shows in her latest book. So, up with the cooks! A bas les chefs!