Things we like

Glamour’s Celebrity News app

Life is short and no-one has enough time to spend on the important things in life – like the latest celebrity gossip. So thank the heavens for Glamour’s free Celebrity News app. It allows you to filter the key Hollywood news and concentrate your mind on the key issues of the day – like what brand of hair shirt Kristen Stewart wore when she patched things up with R-Patz. It should help the Condé Nast magazine start a fightback against Mail Online’s dominance in this area.

Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean Feast on More4

This four-part mini-series that aired on More4 last week and this week was a visual delight for both foodies and travellers. In an age when celebrity chefs are overexposed and shouty, it was refreshing to see a programme hosted by the likeable, softly spoken Yotam Ottolenghi.
In a nod to
the playful
making-a-fool-of-yourself-around-quizzical-locals style of Michael Palin, we watched as the inquisitive chef explored Turkey, Tunisia, Morocco and Israel, trying to learn skills and techniques that have been mastered over generations. The bit when Ottolenghi got shouted at by a rotund baklava baker for not rolling the pastry thinly enough was priceless. Exactly the kind of content More4 should be commissioning to elevate its status.

Flipboard offering brand advertising
Haven’t heard of Flipboard? You clearly don’t have an iPad. But as tablets become more prevalent,
we predict this app will become as popular as Facebook and Twitter. Flipboard enables you to effectively curate your own magazine, which pulls together everything you are interested in, from news to your social media updates.
And now, for the first time, the app is allowing advertisers to broadcast their brand campaigns in the UK. In a deal brokered by
MEC, Telegraph Media Group has partnered with Halifax to create the first UK campaign on Flipboard. We think this is a clever move that could reach new audiences.

And one thing we don’t…
Charlie Brooker letting rip over John Lewis
We all know comment is free, but sometimes comment seems to meander off and fall into a bucketload of – ahem – nonsense. Charlie Brooker, normally the font of cutting wit and cynicism, seems to have undone himself with this week’s blog, published on the Guardian website, in which he rewrites the ending of the latest John Lewis ad: "Fortunately, the advert ends just before [the snowman] clumsily attempts to mount [the snowlady] like a donkey, which is just as well since being made of snow, she can surely only be a few days old at the most. And we’ve all had enough paedogeddon for one year."
Erm… best keep it to yourself next time, Charlie.

This article was first published on campaignlive.co.uk