We’ve been watching a terrific BBC film (in Alan Yentob’s Imagine series) about David Hockney’s return to his Yorkshire roots. It’s an entrancing movie (still on iPlayer here.) It’s complemented by this nice Spectator piece, A Yorkshire genius in love with his iPhone.

Landscape and nature dominate Hockney’s life these days. In mid-May, I arranged to call in with my wife to see him for lunch. The exact timing was decided only after a lengthy conversation by text, the point to be determined being when the hawthorn would come into blossom. As soon as it was out, he would want to be painting it all day, every day. So a definite invitation could only be made after the progress of buds in the local hedgerows was examined. Day after day for several years, in summer heat and freezing winter winds, Hockney has set up a canvas beside some quiet road. The film catches him at work, putting on the paint. At one point a local driver stops to remark to Jean-Pierre — in Yorkshire so broad that the BBC has resorted to subtitles — ‘Tell him when he’s finished we’ve got some decorating needs doing at t’pub.’ Hockney himself is as unmoved as Van Gogh was when heckled by the youth of Arles. He carries on calmly depicting the rolling fields…

Thanks to Gerard for spotting the Spectator piece.

Lest we get too carried away by admiration of the Daily Telegraph‘s role in exposing the hypocrisy and corruption of MPs, it’s worth consulting Ben Goldacre’s column in today’s Guardian.

He focussed on a report in the Torygraph which appeared under the headline “Women who dress provocatively more likely to be raped, claim scientists”. The report begins:

Psychologists found that all three factors had a bearing on how far men were likely to go to take advantage of the opposite sex.

They found that the skimpier the dress and the more flirtatious the woman, the less likely a suitor was to take no for an answer.

But, contrary to popular opinion, alcohol consumption did dampen their ardour with many men claiming that they were put off by a woman who was drunk.

Sophia Shaw at the University of Leicester said that men showed a “surprising” propensity to coerce women into sex, especially those that were considered promiscuous.

Ben phoned Sophia Shaw to see if the story was an accurate account of her research. She told him that

every single one of the first four statements made by the Telegraph was an unambiguous, incorrect, misrepresentation of her findings.

Women who drink alcohol, wear short skirts and are outgoing are more likely to be raped? “This is completely inaccurate,” Shaw said. “We found no difference whatsoever. The alcohol thing is also completely wrong: if anything, we found that men reported they were willing to go further with women who are completely sober.”

And what about the Telegraph’s next claim, or rather, the paper’s reassuringly objective assertion, that it is scientists who claim that women who dress provocatively are more likely to be raped?

“We have found that people will go slightly further with women who are provocatively dressed, but this result is not statistically significant. Basically you can’t say that’s an effect, it could easily be the play of chance. I told the journalist it isn’t one of our main findings, you can’t say that. It’s not significant, which is why we’re not reporting it in our main analysis.”

Ms Shaw went on to say:

“When I saw the article my heart sank, and it made me really angry, given how sensitive this subject is. To be making claims like the Telegraph did, in my name, places all the blame on women, which is not what we were doing at all. I just felt really angry about how wrong they’d got this study.”

Ben reports that since he started sniffing around, and Shaw complained, the Telegraph has changed the online copy of the article. But “there has been no formal correction, and in any case, it remains inaccurate”.

Now… Of course this is the kind of thing that happens every day in much of the mainstream media, so we’re rather resigned to it — especially in reporting any aspect of scientific or scholarly work. But it’s conveniently overlooked by many of the most vociferous print-based critics of online news, who are forever asking rhetorical questions about how much fact-checking is done by pyjama-clad bloggers. Actually, in this particular case, a blogged account as factually inaccurate as this Torygraph story would have been picked up and demolished within minutes in the blogosphere. So let’s have less cant from the processed-woodpulp brigade about the intrinsic superiority of their trade.

Footnote: The byline under the Torygraph report is that of Richard Alleyne, who is billed as the newspaper’s “Science Correspondent”. According to the Press Gazette, he’s been in post since Roger Highfield left in October 2008 to become Editor of New Scientist. Before that, Alleyne was a general news reporter. Maybe he should be sent on a course to develop his listening skills.

Wonderfully sharp and surreal column by Harry Pearson in today’s Guardian. Sample:

During a Test match between New Zealand and South Africa in Wellington in 1994, the Springboks forward Johan le Roux bit a chunk out of the All Blacks captain Sean Fitzpatrick’s ear. Le Roux reacted to his punishment by commenting that if he had known he was going to be banned for 18 months he’d have ripped Fitzpatrick’s lug off in its entirety and taken it home as a souvenir. As you will judge, this was before the evil wand of professionalism had cast its sordid, cynical spell over the gentlemanly world of rugby union.

Thankfully, it seems that at least some vestige of Le Roux’s Corinthian ideals lives on in the Rainbow Nation, even in this dread age of image rights and sponsored shorts. Following an altogether predictable fuss about Schalk Burger’s gouging antics, De Villiers nailed his colours, and probably several of his fingers, to the mast and declared that any young man who doesn’t want to go out on Saturday afternoon and have his eyes poked out should dress up in frills and call himself Jessica.

As someone brought up in an era when any chap in full possession of all five senses was regarded as a mummy’s boy of the most foppish stamp, I can only applaud De Villiers’s words – albeit with only one hand, the other having been lopped off during a typically bruising beetle drive at the local WI a few years back.

Any road, it is plain De Villiers is a man of the old school – several faculties short of a full university and justifiably proud of the fact. One thing I must take him to task for, however, is the suggestion that wearing a tutu would somehow preclude violence.

Ballet, or “the posh blokes’ football”, as the former Stoke manager Tony Waddington so memorably called it, is perhaps not top of the agenda with the Springboks. Otherwise they would surely be aware of the notorious business in 1962 when Dame Margot Fonteyn was banned from Sadler’s Wells for eight months after a “bag-snatching” incident involving Rudolf Nureyev during a matinee of Lac des Cygnes.

Made my day. Hope he writes in tomorrow’s paper about the defeat of the plucky, er, Scottish hero Andy Murray at the hands of some American whose name escapes me just now. If Murray had prevailed this afternoon he would, of course, be a British hero. Or perhaps even an English one.