Mehta hopes products such as "Gunpowder tea" will help the company rise from the ashes

The world seems to think far too highly of the British people. Most hotels abroad have only two tv channels in English, BBC World News and CNN. Someone should tell them we’re not all dodgy businessmen. However, the same gangster-types would have been as exited as a boffin with an Oxford place to see the piece shown on the recently opened East India Company store on Conduit Street in London. Sanjiv Mehta, a Mumbai-born entrepreneur, bought the Intellectual property rights of the long-dormant  company in 2005, and has since then invested an estimated £20 million developing the brand for its future as a luxury goods store.

The store itself, which opened on August 13, is not as glaringly obvious at first, unlike many other shops in the area. The front is simple, dark and elegant. This seems to be the general theme of the store; apart from the actual products, the layout is spotlessly attractive. An espresso machine quietly hums in the background, as guests to the store are offered a free sample of what the board hopes will be their trademark goods. When I visited the store last Tuesday, a highly attentive and knowledgeable sales assistant offered to give our party a grand tour of the 20x20m room. This is a testimony to the cliche that size doesn’t matter. Every product seemed to have a story behind it. For example; the East India Company holds the patent for the original digestive biscuit recipe.

At the centre of the store there is a marble counter displaying small samples of their most popular goods, one of which is the infamous salty chocolate…bar. However, as this is £5.00 a slab and tastes of, basically, salt and chocolate, this is not something you want to nurse a messy and well-publicised divorce on. Most products are equally grand and expensive, with a jar of “chocolate sugar” costing £8.00 and “Orange and gold leaf” being among the marmalades. We were told by the assistant that a new store may open in Scotland due to the huge connections between Scotland and the East India Trading Company; “at one time, 30% of Scottish people were working for the East India Trading Co.”

I myself wasn’t entirely convinced by bits of pepper in my dark chocolate, but seeing the girlish grins of the burly London lawyers shopping in their long lunch makes me think this is a brand that will last.

Another Orange Wednesday has been and gone, and with it another film. I’d been wanting to see Wild Target for some time now and it didn’t disappoint.

Grint in Action

As with everything it seems nowadays, it’s your run of the mill comedy, incorporating a bit of a love story, which I won’t spoil, a few comic deaths and a side helping of Rupert Grint. As a remake of a French farce, it’s clear that although the comedy has been adapted, it’s over the top, and never riotously funny perhaps as a cause. The film raises quite a few squeals of delight however, particularly if you’re a fan of Bill Nighy or Emily Blunt.

If not though, you might find the film lacking as the humour is at times overworked, the plot overstretched and the characters too strained. There is little character development in this story but then as a comedy that seems unnecessary.

Rupert Grint’s first truly non-Potter film goes off with aplomb, and it’s easy to separate him from the affable ginger we’ve become accustomed to. He’s only one of a whole list of crazy characters whom it’s easy to fall in love with.

At the end of the day, whilst the plot is hilarious, and I’ll never tire of seeing Emily Blunt walking through London (watch it to understand why!), it’s not quite anything more than a standard comedy.

VERDICT : Rent

BREAKING NEWS: News broken, suspects called in for questioning

As we all know, this is a site for the lovely people who are aspiring writers and big cheeses in the media industry. I myself want to be a journalist, with my brilliantly vague idea that I’ll go to Cambridge and they’ll be dead impressed and I’ll end up a human rights reporter uncovering massive political scandals (or something). I’m sure most of you have actually thought your plans through a bit more, but here are some things I have uncovered about trying to break into the buisness;

In May 2010, Ed Caesar wrote in the Sunday Times Magazine about the difficulties of getting into this astonishing buisness. According to Caesar, 1,200 people applied for just one reporters position on the Sunday Times website. I think we can all agree that that is slightly terrifying, but luckily he does give us a few pointers on how to get a better chance; “Today, you’ll need luck, flair, an alternative source of income, endless patience, an optimistic disposition, sharp elbows and a place to stay in London.” This may be the reason that so many journalists come from more affluent backgrounds. It has absolutely nothing to do with snobbery (the whole point of free speech and writing is to promote the opposite), but there is little need for the big national papers to allow for those with low income. You will be expected and should rejoice at the chance to work for nothing, so parents can come in handy. However, it doesn’t have to be this way. There are many notable journalists who struggled on their own and made it big. Take a look at that young-journalist class of 2008. Of the seven finalists, only Jerome Taylor went to private school, and he was equally skint. All the finalists worked to the bone to get into the “charmed circle”. The only problem is getting there.

Journos today are recommending that our best chance is to get a postgraduate diploma in Journalism, with any luck at City Univerity or Cardiff. I recently heard an anonymous tip-off that Welsh universities are positively discriminating towards English citizens, so those of you born in England might have a chance.

The main thing you need to remember though, is tenacity. There are thousands of you in the same position and want it as much or maybe more. Some of you will be willing to sell your dog to the Koreans for the honour of having your perception nationally recognised. Therefore, as Nicholas Tomalin says, you need “A knack with telephones, trains and petty officials; a good digestion and a steady head; total recall; enough idealism to inspire indignant prose (but not enough to inhibit detached professionalism); and a paranoid temperament.”

Good luck everyone!

P.S. Ed Caesar if you’re reading this, I don’t suppose you have any work experience going…?

Lost in London

That’s the theme of a new TV show that has just started on BBC 3. The idea behind Peckham Finishing School for Girls is to set four twenty-somethings from Peckham with four Surrey born, privately educated toffs.

From the onset, although the contrast is emphasised with a hyperbolic commentary from another frightening British voice actress, we get a stunningly different picture. At the start they all remark upon how they’ll get along in the future, either on account of their tendency to laugh, or rave, smoke and drink.

Most of them still start with the wrong view though, expecting benefit scroungers, or single mothers who are feeding off the system. In fact that’s exactly what the programme goes against, one is bi-polar and had their parents separate 11 and as a consequence has lived in 14-15 different places, another is a single mother pitted against someone who hates the very idea of single mothers on benefits, out of the idea that they just choose to have a baby.  There’s plenty of potential to go on a rant here, but this is simply an opportunity to re-iterate that “some people do stuff just to get by” as one man intelligently says on the show. Other sites suggest that we’re bullied by the show, and I happen to agree, but I can’t feel any sympathy for the privileged girls who time and time again pull out well-worn stereotypes, though at times it’s obvious that the documentary team have engineered antipathy between the two groups.

The general feeling of the show is one of realisation that all the reasons they perceived for people being on benefits and the like are not those that we read in the horror stories, but as Nat, a friend of one of the main characters, says “shit can be really hard.”

Everyone is entirely willing to accept that there is a certain element of gang culture and the like around them, but crucially, most of the characters in the show expose a willingness to overcome this, or to understand, but then, there are large moments where they just regress to people who stereotype others, and not grasping the seriousness of the situation.

I won’t spoil the show, though I’m not sure how worth watching it is, as the sad thing about this is that at the end of the day it’s a documentary, but one in which the creators have endeavoured to find posh girls who fulfil all the stereotypes and on the reverse end, girls who fulfil none of the lower class stereotypes. In a way I wish that they were perfect, because it makes for painful viewing when the girls are discussing what will happen if they “get slung at by our Peckham sisters” and the others declare that “they’re not worth fighting, they’re like puppies.” It’s rather interesting as well that they happily go up to people on the street and talk to them, and I think they’ve done well to do so.

The problem here is that the BBC has gone for comedic value rather than documentary integrity.

Verdict : Miss

Sleigh Bells are one of my recent discoveries. I started listening to them at the beginning of the year and I was captivated from the beginning. Althoug the lyrics are barely audible the tunes are just so catchy, its almost impossible not to like them. If you’re a fan of new rave/wave, Crystal Castles, Kap Bambino and all that jazz then you might just like these guys.

  Sleigh Bells , a Brooklyn band, with a front woman much like Alice from Crystal Castles – they are rising on the scene. Pitchfork love ‘em, and i’m just waiting for them to get big so I can claim “I’ve been a fan for years”. They’re playing Austin right now, and London at the end of the month, definately worth paying to see.

 Their best song is Crown on the Ground…. amazing!

Sleigh Bells – Crown on the Ground youtube