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I've cracked it. I know what feminism needs. It needs pockets. Pockets are amazing, and as a woman there are way too few at your disposal. We get lumped with the crap kind, the tiny ones that can only fit half a hand, or even the kind that look like pockets but on further inspection are actually stitched shut and no use at all. Ornamental pockets, now that's some serious bullshit. And the vast majority of women's fashion has no pockets at all, not even of any kind. What the fuck, clothing manufacturers? Where am I supposed to keep my Oyster card for easy access? Remember how angry you get when you're stuck behind a woman holding up a queue of commuters, rifling through her massive handbag in a desperate search? Come on now, this is for the good of us all.

And while we're here, bollocks to handbags. We're obsessed with them. We don't leave the house without them. In a world of no pockets you need somewhere to keep your phone and purse and keys while you're on the move, and because you've put those things in a bag you chuck more things in there too because you might as well and before you know it you're lugging around a thing the weight of a small child that's full of stuff you don't actually need and calling it a fashion statement. Maybe you spent hundreds of pounds for the privilege of being weighed down. How are you supposed to smash the patriarchy if you don't have both hands free?

Recently my Barbour jacket (which has excellent pockets, top notch garment) allowed me to ditch my bag and experience a unique kind of naked freedom, though it was interrupted by frequent jolts of fear that I had left my bag elsewhere. I sensed its presence (or the lack of) constantly, like a phantom fucking limb. Ain't nobody got time for that level of attachment. No disrespect to my bag, which was handmade by some super talented friends and is a very lovely thing, but the only way it benefits my day to day life is I often find a secret Twix in there, bought as part of a Sainbury's meal deal and promptly forgotten about. So yeah, I'd miss that, because Twixes are brilliant. But this is the greater good we're talking about - there have to be some sacrifices.

I think we should start a movement: Pockets Against The Patriarchy. It involves sneaking into high street shops and stitching pockets onto things, and will pave the way to gender equality. Who's in?

#handsfree

The extraordinary moment occurred in the first act of the Noel Coward comedy during a séance scene in which, ordinarily, Madame Arcati summons the ghost of her client's dead wife. Last night, however, the events of the play were interrupted by a real life visitation from Britain's best-loved wordsmith.

Shakespeare, though visibly confused at first, gathered himself quickly and addressed the stunned audience. "I have been humbled by your continued appreciation of my work," he said, "and indeed it is my work, all of it, and mine alone. But perhaps 'tis time you got over A Midsummer Night's Dream."

It was hoped the Romeo and Juliet hit-maker would stay for a Q&A session after the performance but he declined to sit through the second act, though he insisted this was no reflection on the work of fellow playwright Coward; "I prefer Private Lives," he remarked. This was, perhaps, in the best interests of the audience as the show was already running late and there were severe delays on the Piccadilly Line.

No photos on the theatre please: a camera-wielding miscreant broke the rules and captured Shakespeare's surprise arrival.

Speaking to wide-eyed bloggers at the stage door, Lansbury, 88, explained her motivation for the stunt:

"I wanted to do something to celebrate the 450th anniversary of the Bard's birth, and I knew it had to be special. I'd been watching a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and those kids are summoning things all over the place whether they want to or not - pop out for some milk, come back with a demon - and I figured that having played a medium to such critical acclaim, I'd be able to pull off the real deal, and with more accuracy. All my years of acting training have given me great control: it's all about focus. Sunnydale would have been a lot safer if Buffy had gone to drama school."

Guys, can we talk about Beyonce? You know, AS A WOMAN and in relation to feminism and that. By being a woman at the very top of her game she has become a potential feminist icon whether she intended it or not. It happens with all successful women, for better or worse. Margaret Thatcher? Potential feminist icon. Rebekah Brooks? Potential feminist icon. You see where this is going.   It's often difficult to reconcile feminism with a love of modern pop music, which is especially unsettling because women are making the best pop music out there. Bitches be brilliant. But Beyonce was undressed on the cover of GQ, and Rihanna went back to a man who beat her, and nobody ever wears trousers. When was the last time you saw a performance that didn't involve THIGHS (thighs are very important, especially ones belonging to Beyonce) and a barely-covered crotch thrusting at the camera? For 21st century women, the pursuit of Pop Super Stardom begets an eye-watering dedication to waxing.   And now we have to figure out how to feel about Mrs Carter: that is, a phenomenally talented woman, having worked constantly her entire life to be the best she can possibly be, ditching the name she made for herself and taking that of her husband. It makes me more than a little blue. It's personally problematic as usually when I'm in a funk it's Bey I turn to - specifically I listen to Irreplaceable and may or may not get drunk. OK so I probably will get drunk but that's not what this is about, alright? Jeez.  

The first time I heard Irreplaceable was in December 2006 and I was in hospital, post-operation, off my tits on Morphine. Picture this: I was a mess. I was 19 and drugged up to the hilt in a pair of pink pyjamas. Being in that bed was a monotonous blur (yeah, it's a thing) of sympathetic looks and heads tilted to the side, night terrors and catheters and my incredibly stupid decision to bring only university work with me so I would have no other choice but to get on with it. Obviously that didn't work because I was an idle, idiotic teenager, and also high. I was feeling pretty fragile and more than a bit pathetic. 

Reproduced in part by This is Cabaret in September 2012.

Helen Arney: Voice of an Angle at the Soho Theatre 6 September 2012

Adorkable “Geek Songstress” Helen Arney wears her geek badge with pride. She is bright and engaging from the off and the audience knows exactly what they're in for, from the pun in the title which, she was at pains to point out to the venue, was definitely not a spelling mistake, to her PowerPoint presentation on her favourite triangle; she's on a mission from... well, probably not God. But maybe from Brian Cox (she toured with him y’know) which in certain circles is basically the same thing. She makes jokes about apostrophes – this is a woman who would not make a spelling mistake in the title of her own show. Lady's got a Venn diagram! She means business. Now let's get down to some not-so-serious learning.

Ever wondered what led a young Schrodinger to think about a half-dead cat in a box? Or how the Sun feels about lending its name to a tabloid newspaper? Never fear! Helen is here to clear all that up in song format. Her musicality is impressive: she has grade 8 in two separate instruments, she says, yet now devotes most of her energies to the ukulele (well, she is in cabaret) and her voice has a lovely tone – very warm, and showcases a variety of styles across her one-hour set. The songs stand up well on their own and her obvious enthusiasm for her subject (science, in case you didn't get that from the Venn diagram) is a joy to behold (“Holy fuck!” she shouts while showing a clip of the surface of the sun). There's a punch line or two that fall flat, but she easily gets the audience back on her side and even singing along. The accompanying projections are a nice touch too, and very nearly seamless. The musical-visual combo of her final number ‘You & Me & Walt Disney’ is particularly impressive and well worth a visit to YouTube, where it’s currently languishing at a mere 13,000 views.

She's doing her own bit to make science fun and doing a good job of it too, with her uke-powered ditties that occasionally sound not unlike Glory Box by Portishead, dispensing facts from the GCSE biology curriculum at a rapid rate like neurons barking orders to your nervous system. In fact she's so much of a geek she has spent too much time learning about life, the universe and everything to know that it was in fact PJ who was blinded in 90s Geordie TV classic Byker Grove, not Duncan – a pretty fundamental error, Helen, but we'll forgive you because your natural charm is just so goddam endearing. And when every member of the audience leaves with a certificate and a (tenuous) working knowledge of how to sing a googolplex, you can learn to let these things slide. We've all had a good time here. We've acquired interesting facts. We've bettered ourselves and gotten a branded piece of high quality card from the School of Sci-Fidelity to prove it. No need to break out the red pen. A+.

Originally published by Burlexe in April 2012. Link to the original article here.

After all the hype and anticipation, the numbers are in and the odds are in Katniss Everdeen's favour. The first feature film instalment of The Hunger Games is raking in millions at the box office and critics have been largely positive, especially regarding its star, Jennifer Lawrence, who has carved a new role as heterosexual pin-up and acceptable girl crush in the hearts of cinema-goers worldwide. You could call her The New Megan Fox, if you're into that sort of thing. But is she also the new poster girl for female empowerment? Is Katniss a guiding light for young girls lost in a patriarchal labyrinth? It's a lot of pressure for someone so distracted by trying to stay alive. Still, at least she's doing a better job than Bella Swan.

Comparisons between The Hunger Games and Twilight are inevitable - both are franchises based on books aimed at a young adult readership with hoards of teenage fans. Both have enjoyed incredible box office success. The urge to compare and contrast heroines Katniss and Bella is too strong to resist, as a quick Google search will prove, but it has to be done - so sit down and buckle up. If young people find role models in popular culture, and they do, then it stands to reason many will look to Twilight, having nothing else of equal scale. There hasn't been such a phenomenon since Harry Potter, which for all its majesty is male centric and offers an uninspiring idol in the bookish, sexless, serial teller-offer Hermione. Twilight's Bella is easier to identify with given her startling lack of character - the few descriptions offered in the original text are delightfully vague and could apply to almost any teenage girl, and even when transferred to the big screen and given Kristen Stewart's face she doesn't exactly sparkle (pun intended). There's nothing to aspire to beyond the possibility of supernatural romance and being so inexplicably captivating that powerful, dangerous boys will fight over you. I feel so very sorry for any girl growing up wanting to be Bella. But it's OK that she's in what is tantamount to an abusive relationship because he's drawn to her, yeah? Of course she should beg him to hurt her because he LOVES HER, yeah? Of course she wants to be domesticated - isn't that the point of having a fanny?

Sent into the cinemas in the break between Breaking Dawn parts 1 and 2, The Hunger Games's brand new female-centric franchise is a welcome injection of spirit, presenting Katniss as a face of rebellion to counteract Bella's pouty subservience. She is a tough cookie: brave and resourceful and more than capable of looking after herself. Suzanne Collins's text plays around with gender subversion, giving Katniss the hunting skills while her male counterpart sticks to baking and icing cakes. The romantic elements of her story haven't been key to its promotion - perhaps this is helping to attract a broader range of viewers, but it also reflects the heroine's own mind, which is rarely occupied by thoughts of romance. Whatever the reasoning, Lionsgate are onto a winner: the opening weekend grossed $155 million and was the third-best debut of all time. Both Katniss and her non-fictional alter ego have been catapulted into our collective conscious, and with three more films lined up, both look set for pop culture glory. If a hugely influential pop star (*cough* RIHANNA) will go back to a man who beat her up, then we could do with a bona fide action hero to knock some sense into everyone.

Having said that, The Hunger Games is not a feminist manifesto: Katniss is a likeable lead and a decent role model but there's nothing here to push any boundaries. There may be a lack of Twilight's abstinence porn narrative, but it's not exactly a hive of sexual activity either - if Katniss experiences any sexual desire, she keeps it secret from even herself. She seems unaware of the concept of birth control, which is incongruous (come on, they're in THE FUTURE) and downright unfair, given that access to condoms would make her life choices a hell of a lot easier. She spends much of the series declaring the traditional route of marriage and motherhood disagreeable but (spoiler alert) ends up following it anyway. To take Katniss Everdeen as a true example of female empowerment doesn't stretch to much beyond women possessing some typically masculine qualities and kicking some ass before whimpering a bit and apathetically conforming to the traditional female role. Ellen Ripley she ain't.

OK, I admit it, Company Magazine is growing on me. They've got that new, compact, sexy-textured thing going on, and this issue was filled with ice cream shades and aztec prints and bomber jackets and high-tops. I love bomber jackets and high-tops! I can even overlook the implication that wearing a bum bag and/or visor for the purposes of fashion would ever be a good idea and almost – almost – admit to liking this rag. But... no, I can't; there's just too much lol-ing and heart-ing and ridiculous non-words like 'fashpiration'. Say it with me folks, sound it out: fash-pi-ray-shun. It's a lexical nightmare. No one's having fun here, even if you do get turned on by speech impediments (what? It's a thing, just ask interwardisco). Lazy, thoughtless use of language is an unforgivable sin in my book, and there's a lot of it here: see their feature 'Meet the YHTs' profiling Young, Handsome and Talented actors. On the surface it's a good feature – these guys certainly are Young, Handsome and Talented so no complaints there, but I take umbrage with their all-too-frequent employ of J-Lo and R-Patz inspired nicknames. Alright, I'll let you have D-Bo for Douglas Booth; I doubt it'll catch on, but at least it makes sense (although if I were unleashing my full pedantic potential, I'd say it should, technically, be D-Boo). Jeremy Irvine, however, is not and will never be known as J-Ir because it is linguistical nonsense. How are you even supposed to pronounce that: jay-err? Jerr? That's not a moniker, it's a pause filler – you might as well call him 'Umm... what's-his-name... you know, that guy', which lends a level of irony to this feature so spectacular it would make Alanis Morissette's head spin.

Still, at least they've had the good grace to pick Kate Bush as this month's Awesome Lady of Tunes. Oh Kate. I love you, Kate! Your slumberous eyes and wailing falsetto make everything brilliant.

Women Who REALLY Rock

#5 Joan Jett

Well, come on, she's the Queen of Rock 'n' Roll - this is a done deal. It's just a shame Kristen Stewart had to get involved.

Hey, everybody's got an opinion! Facebook and Twitter are awash with rallies against consumerism, woe-is-me tales of singledom and smug posts containing far too much information about couples' private lives. So here's what I think:

Couples? Back. The Fuck. Away.

This day is not for you. I know it's confusing. I know your television and all the magazines and shops and restaurants and EVERY MEDIA OUTLET IN THE FUCKING WORLD are telling you to spend money on your beloved, because set menu earlybird dinner specials and heart-shaped gifts are the best way to show your affection on this, the most romantic of all holidays. That what you desperately need in your life on this sacred day is some red lingerie - after all, this is the one day of the year you're allowed to have sex! DON'T LISTEN TO THEM. You already have each other - you can have sex whenever you want. And you can gorge yourself forever on earlybird dinner specials if that's what does it for you, but why bother on the day all the prices go up and you're surrounded by dickheads photographing their love and uploading it to Facebook? No, not for you. Step down.

Company's had a makeover, and it's a pretty good one. They've ditched the standard 'glossy magazine' paper of choice and Company 2.0 has a finger-pleasing matte texture. In addition, the smaller 'handbag size', pioneered by (whisper it) Glamour, works very well - each page is colourful and attractive and made me want to leap off the tube and into the nearest Topshop (who cares about getting to work when I could be buying jeans made from recycled deckchairs, right?). They're definitely onto a winner. They even went with a totally reasonable Woman Who Rocks and put the spotlight on Dusty Springfield. Not much to complain about here - everybody loves Dusty! What could they possibly say to ruin this one? Well, possibly they could include this stellar quote from Company editor, Victoria White: "Her music still sounds great today, more than 40 years after she recorded it... Amazing!" Yes, I suppose that is amazing... oh wait, my mistake, no it isn't because THAT IS THE POINT OF GOOD MUSIC. If 40 years later it sounds like an unholy racket then chances are it was always an unholy racket and your ears just weren't working properly the first time round. And of course, let's not forget their handy 'Get Dusty's Look' tutorial, in which it turns out Dusty's look is pretty similar to Duffy's - who knew? With five entries to go and a virtual guarantee that Adele will be shoehorned in somewhere, you have to wonder how many times they're going to plug the beehive during the course of this countdown. Do they have shares in Elnett? Women Who REALLY Rock #6 Bessie Smith

Often titled the Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 30s and the highest paid black entertainer of her day. She has been cited as an influence on many subsequent vocalists, including Billie Holiday and Janis Joplin - the latter paid for a tombstone to be erected on her unmarked grave in 1970, more than thirty years after her death.

In what is fast becoming one of the most bizarre groupings of people since the advent of Come Dine With Me, number 7 on Company's list of musical females is Sade. Well... fair enough, Company – she didn't make my shortlist but I can't really argue with her presence on yours. Although I would absolutely question your logic of rating her musical importance a mere three steps away from Victoria Beckham's.

Still, this flash of... um, whatever this brief respite from lunacy indicates, had to be balanced out somehow. So to compensate for Sade's appearance, Company readers must also suffer Christina Perri fanning the lukewarm flames of the New Boring by harping on about “humility and realness” and a rage-inducing article entitled 'I heart God and Louboutins!', bemoaning Christianity's lack of street cred. Personally I'd say a lack of cool-factor was the least of any fact-denying, ignorance-promoting organised religion's problems, especially when faced with propaganda pieces like this one, which sacks off any justification or even explanation of what her beliefs actually are in favour of Justin Bieber quips. But, y'know. Whatevs.

Women Who REALLY Rock

#7 Kate Bush

Even if Kate had only recorded 1978’s The Kick Inside and given up on music then and there, she would probably still have made this list on the strength of Wuthering Heights alone. But thankfully she didn’t, and her eclectic back catalogue showcases such a wide range of musical styles that every female solo artist since can expect to be compared to her at some point in their career. What a babe.

Failing to get my hands on tickets for Jerusalem is bothering me a great deal more than it probably should. By all accounts it’s an incredible show: one of my colleagues has seen it five times (five times! FIVE! No small feat when you consider the £50 price tag on a standard ticket) and another claimed it was “the most watchable thing [she’d] ever seen”. Pfft. Whatever. Are you trying to tell me it’s more watchable than Sir Ian McKellen explaining the art of acting to a stunned Ricky Gervais in Extras? Exactly – nothing is. I rest my case.

The most distressing element of this tragic tale isn’t that I’m missing out on some brilliant theatre, or even that, despite the apparent scarcity tickets, I seem to be the only person in London who hasn’t managed to get hold of one. It’s the overwhelming sense that this is a Zeitgeist moment that I am not part of. I briefly entertained the notion of a last-ditch attempt – spending the night partying in Soho then heading straight for the theatre at 4am to queue for the day tickets released six hours later. I was perhaps more excited about the plan than its actual objectives: surely as a twenty-something arts graduate living in London these are exactly the sort of adventures I should be having?  My inner monologue was yelling “OF COURSE I should be pulling all-nighters in pursuit of culture! I can’t wait! It’ll be just like Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist but with more theatre-based lols and fewer awkward orgasms!” But this plan was quickly abandoned upon discovering that queues for day tickets begin forming 24 hours in advance: my sofa-loving backside wouldn’t be up for sitting on a January pavement for that long a stretch even if I didn’t have a job to go to. So there it is – see you later, Zeitgeist. I have visions of watching BBC4 documentaries in ten or twenty years time interviewing excited, misty-eyed theatre-goers, and sadly reflecting that I was probably at home eating soup and watching Spaced for the billionth time.

New Year’s Resolution: Be a better Londoner, stop watching boxsets in your pants*.

Brace yourselves. In at number 8 of Company magazine’s baffling countdown of influential female musicians is… Duffy. That’s right – DUFFY. Yes, her debut album adorned coffee tables the world over in 2008, but come on people! This is the woman who destroyed her career with one horribly misjudged Diet Coke advert! Watch it here and find the entertainment factor by seeing the bicycle as a handy metaphor for her future record sales, gliding through the supermarket discount aisles then abandoned entirely. And let’s not forget that Duffy’s response to poor sales of her Difficult Second Album was to sulk and quit the music industry. “Gosh, the non-record-buying public are so MEAN! You meanies! No more dreary blue-eyed soul for YOU. Yah boo sucks!” Good for you, Duffy. I mean, if musicians were always deterred by lack of commercial success in the early stages of their career we’d be living in a world without Pulp’s His ‘n’ Hers, but whatever. You’re so inspiring; you totally deserve your place on this list! (Note: she does not deserve her place on this list.)

Somehow I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Company magazine has a long-standing working relationship with Diet Coke. They ran this campaign back in 2009, and the brand crops up a mere four pages after Duffy’s overly-bronzed face in the current issue as a sponsor of the 2011 High Street Fashion Awards. I can’t help but wonder if this entire countdown feature was hashed together purely as an excuse to force her back into the public eye, announce that she's working on a third album (a fact shockingly overlooked by every other publication in existence) and credit her for the recent boom in beehives and flicky eyeliner while they’re at it (I’m sure Amy Winehouse would have had something to say about that – “Cat AIDS” springs to mind). But wouldn’t it be easier for Diet Coke to simply find a new muse? There’s a wealth of gullible young popstars out there waiting to be taken for a ride (for a ride, geddit? Like on a BICYCLE!) and surely they should be doing everything they can to distance themselves from this horrendous piece of PR. Either they’re suffering from levels of guilt hitherto unheard of in large corporations, or Duffy’s legal team have got them over a barrel. Step away from the contract, folks: no good can come of this.

Women Who REALLY Rock

#8 Patsy Cline

A celebrated vocalist, Patsy was the first female country star to achieve pop music crossover success in the early 60s. Since her death in a plane crash aged just 30, she has sold millions of records and became the first female solo artist to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

As I write, my fridge is full of yoghurt: there is, in fact, an entire shelf devoted to it. Each day I sit at my desk in the office, scrolling though my Twitter timeline and eating yoghurt. It’s a fairly recent habit; I don’t have any overly strong feelings about yoghurt and having a fridge full of the stuff is a new experience for me. At first, I maintained this new-found obsession had developed due to a number of factors, namely that (a) it’s always on offer and therefore it would be foolish not to buy loads and (b) it stops me buying other, more-fattening treats instead. Without my trusty pots of bacterially fermented milk, who knows how much Ben & Jerry’s I’d be getting through? If it weren’t for Yeo Valley, I could easily fall off the wagon and resume my Nutella Hobnob habit (literally a Hobnob dipped in Nutella – impossibly tasty but dangerously addictive and responsible for my gaining a dress size in 2006). So buying all this yoghurt was definitely a really good idea, I’m so smart. Well done me.

The thing is, it’s bullshit. I know this now. The reason there is no room for non-dairy products in my fridge is because I watch X Factor, which inexplicably devotes a large chunk of its £8,000 per second advertising space to – yes, you guessed it – yoghurt. I am a slave to consumerism and, while I make no apologies for being thus afflicted, I am ashamed it took me so long to realise I was being manipulated.

Advertising is A Big Deal. It’s impossible to get away from and, like it or not, it informs many different areas of our lives: where we shop and what we buy is just the tip of the iceberg. For many people, Christmas officially “starts” when the Coca Cola trucks grace their TV screen (I understand, but would appreciate one year not having to read a million and one irritating Facebook updates all making the same point) and simply observing the Twitter storm that followed the debut of the John Lewis Christmas advert gave an indication of just how much adverts have become an important part of our culture. While I’m sure many would disagree with my sentiment (for those people, I highly recommend reading Charlie Brooker’s recent article on the subject), I don’t see this as a bad thing. It’s true there is a lot of shit out there, and yes this is disappointing given the amount of money and talent that the industry possesses: surely a well-educated, successful industry insider would know that a disembodied female voice telling me to “have a happy period” was only ever going to make me angry? And yet that slogan made it onto our screens. No, Always, I won’t. AND THERE’S NOTHING YOU AND YOUR MAGICAL FANNY PADS CAN DO ABOUT IT. But despite the multitudinous atrocities we bear witness to every day, there’s no reason why an advert can’t be a showcase for the work of a brilliant creative team. Here are my favourite campaigns du jour, which demonstrate just that.

1)      Skittles

Basically, I love this. It has comedy, pathos, a silky smooth-voiced leading man and the ‘objects turning into Skittles’ bits are really well done. While researching this I discovered this advert first appeared four years ago – perhaps this shows a certain degree of laziness on their part, but I don’t really give one: it makes me laugh every time I see it, and I’m glad it’s been resurrected.

2)      Muller

Mutley makes an appearance in this once, which is enough to catapult it straight into this list regardless of what’s going on the rest of time. Fortunately, the other 85 seconds are filled with excellent animation and bright colours, and at the end they all have an awesome party underneath a rainbow. And whaddya know, it’s for yoghurt! How about that.

3)      V05

This one made the list largely because it’s an excellent example of how a well-chosen soundtrack can make all the difference. Plus, the styling is excellent and that girl has really great hair.

4)      American Music Awards on Viva

Sadly I couldn’t find a link to this one, which is a shame because this probably won’t have as much impact unless you’ve seen it already or are willing to sit in front of Viva until you do (personally I spend a lot of time watching Viva anyway, they’re always showing that Gaga vs Beyonce vs Riri video stream which is pretty much a perfect night in). Anyway, the advert in question pays homage to my favourite dramatic music video cliché: rain. We’re treated to an excellent montage of soaking wet musicians with various degrees of pout as Peter Dickson, Voiceover Man, gleefully categorises them – “Sexy rain! Electrical rain! There’s a bucket just out of shot rain!” My only gripe is that it doesn’t feature Stronger by Britney Spears, clearly the best ‘popstar dances in inexplicable shower looking better than any normal person could ever hope to when caught without a brolly’ moment since Take That’s Back For Good (Mark’s floopy car antics at 3:37 are truly something special). Yes, it’s a good advert, nice one Viva.

5)      Nando’s

It was with a sense of trepidation that I opened the November edition of Company to see who was up next in their list of influential female musicians. Where do you go from Victoria Beckham, Holly Valance? Melanie Blatt? I mean, really, what kind of precedent are you setting here? I certainly wasn't expecting to see Toyah Wilcox gracing their pages as number nine. I was pleasantly surprised that they'd opted for someone with genuine musical talent, although I confess that Toyah didn't even make my shortlist let alone my top ten. However, after reading the profile they'd written I was mostly just confused: it doesn't even mention her music career except to say she “found her niche in the pop charts … and established [herself] as Britain's edgier female popstar”. With the exception of that one vague sentence, they talk solely about her hair and make-up – they were great, yes, but did they really have that much an effect on music? I suspect this entire feature is suffering from poor editing; if it was only ever intended to discuss the personal fashions of female musicians then their use of the phrase “changed music forever” is somewhat misleading. And if it is purely a style feature, then WHY is it purely a style feature? The whole publication is full of them, would a bit of variety not be a good thing? Women like music, don't they? It would be nice to read something more insightful than their 'Sound of the Underground' reviews page (summary: 'there are some albums out this month and they're ALL ACE!'). I'm holding out for next month, Company. Don't let me down.

Women Who REALLY Rock

#9 Debbie Harry

Most famous for fronting Blondie, Debbie Harry is one of the most recognisable female faces in the history of rock 'n' roll. Throughout their career their ever-developing musical style covered punk, new wave, reggae, disco and rock and she established herself as one of the most influential people in popular culture.

On Sunday I was stood in WH Smith in Central Station, Newcastle, scanning the shelves for reading material for my journey back to London. I don’t read a lot of magazines and have few criteria when picking out a glossy for this sort of situation: ‘£2 or under and definitely not Glamour’ just about covers it. I hate Glamour. Despite its proud claim of being ‘Britain’s Number 1 Women’s Magazine’ it’s always seemed anti-women to me, or at least believes the majority of women to be mindless idiots. I simply cannot see the appeal of being patronised by poorly-written articles helpfully explaining how to get/keep a man while being shown pictures of “affordable” high street designer rip-off outfits at £200 a pop. Begone, Glamour, and take your sweeping generalisations with you!

So, keeping all this in mind I eventually chose Company, largely due to the picture of Tulisa on the front cover (I love a bit of the Female Boss, I am not ashamed). Company is a new publication to me and I would have quite happily read it, recycled it and never bought it again were it not for their new series launched in this issue: Women Who Rock. For the next ten months, they will be profiling the ten most influential women in music; those who “changed the face of music forever”, as voted for by their panel. A quick glance at the panel doesn’t exactly inspire confidence – Olly Murs? Really? Who keeps employing this guy? – but even that didn’t quite prepare me for what followed. The esteemed judges have chosen to open their series with… Victoria Beckham. Hang on, what? The tenth most influential female musician of all time is the worst Spice Girl? The weak link in a manufactured pop group, who pointed and pouted her way to a disappointing solo album and a career in the fashion industry? Even X Factor contestants aren’t taking to the stage with cries of “I want to be as big as Posh Spice! That tune she did with Dane Bowers was WICKED!” I grabbed a pen from my bag and within minutes I’d listed nearly forty women infinitely more deserving of such an accolade.

That a women’s magazine would put so little effort into a series like this is intensely disappointing and, to be frank, insulting; it is lazy journalism that does a disservice to womankind. There have been so many important, inspiring, game-changing women in the music industry, yet Company would rather ignore them entirely and waste more column inches on paparazzi favourites. Why would a publication specifically for the female of the species commission this feature then throw away the opportunity to talk about genuinely impressive and influential women? Do they have such a low opinion of their demographic they believe them incapable of engaging with anyone without a recent pap-shot front cover and a famous husband? THIS IS AN OUTRAGE. So I’ve made my own top ten and will be blogging them here, alongside Company’s choices, every month (the irony here is that I will now be buying it every month, as opposed to the ‘once in a blue moon when catching a train without a book’ scenario I’d envisaged. See what you’ve done, Company? Oh, I bet you think you’re so clever.)

Women Who REALLY Rock

#10 Annie Lennox

A classically-trained, gender-bending pop culture icon, Annie achieved international success in the 1980s as one half of the Eurythmics before embarking on a prolific solo career; her continuing ability to shift records by the bucket-load has made her the most successful female British artist in UK music history. She also pushed and blurred boundaries all over the place with her pioneering of the androgynous look – highly controversial in 1983, but now seen on catwalks the world over.