So the jury's in on exercise reducing weight: it might not make any difference.

Rubbish. Haven't they seen The Biggest Loser?

Easy to lose the pounds if you have any self-discipline - which none of us seem to these days. The real reason most of us return to our own level of lardiness is that we have to actually change our way of life. Not eating crap and swimming and yoga. All fine if you're on TV and have to face that monstrous scale-thingy and slim and sweat and cry for your team in a coloured singlet.

Other serious research suggests cutting carbs might actually pay off, but over-the-counter remedies almost certainly don't work.

Good food news over the weekend - organic is better, perhaps 40% better, if you accept that antioxidants undo systemic evil. You can even eat less fruit and veges as long as they're organic. So get to it - turn over that useless grass and grow your own.

And you can have a drink during pregnancy. Well, there's no evidence it does any harm, said an obstetrician in the British Medical Journal. So why have the authorities been telling pregnant woman not to drink at all? For a good reason: the wrong people - ie not the worried well who never do anything of risk - will take this as a green light to throw it down. Course, in this country, that's how we get up the duff in the first place.

Just out from the former frontman of underrated Scottish band Del Amitri is Justin Currie’s new solo album What Is Love For. It’s already available from the New Zealand iTunes Store and as a CD on the Rykodisc label. The pop song is the musical equivalent of the short story; the perfect one something you strive for and never quite attain; the end result a deceptively simple embodiment of a craft largely inaudible to the listener. ‘Walking Through You’ is the most immediate expression of that craft on this record. Anyone who filed Del Amitri under ‘mainstream AOR’ never listened beyond the melodies; just beneath that veneer is something altogether darker and more heartrending. There is a coded personal language to a relationship break up that Currie managed to interpret over and over again. Sample some of the new songs on his MySpace page, or better still support him by buying this CD. Currie has written some of the best pop lyrics ever. This record continues his habit of penning bittersweet love songs that leave you wearing a twisted smile, feeling some of the hurt the circumstances must have caused him: “But if I ever loved you/shouldn’t I be crying/Shouldn’t I be cracking up/And drinking all the time?” Currie is one of the most talented songwriters around and fortunately, for those of you who don’t believe that, he’s written a beginner’s guide to songwriting to prove he knows what he’s singing about. Touchingly, he dedicates this album to Dels guitarist Iain Harvie, “without whom I’d be a basket case”. Hearing it, you suspect writing love songs is less cathartic for Currie than it is for his audience. What love is for—assuming you’re damaged enough—is sharing the uplift that can only be had from heartbreak.

I saw the movie Control tonight, about the band Joy Division. It was made by Anton Corbijn, a great rock photographer who worked for NME in the late 70s and 80s.

New Zealand writer Chad Taylor (this photograph by John Hagen) has been described as “the Nick Cave of New Zealand literature”. Our own Mr O’Neill enthused about his most recent published novel, Departure Lounge, in the manner of a dust-jacket critic (I feel an ellipsis coming on): “this is Chad Taylor’s best book to date … it is also quite beautiful.” His previous novels are Pack of Lies, Heaven, Shirker and Electric. A review of Shirker in the UK magazine Buzz describes his writing thus: “Prose so cool, and images so compelling, it’s film noir in novel form.” We at NZBC like his writing for all kinds of reasons (a prize to anyone who knows of another writer who has named the protagonist of a novel after a motorway off-ramp), and on top of that he has Raymond Chandler on his bookshelves, Rioja in his glass and Warren Zevon on his stereo. We joined Chad for a glass of the red stuff to find out how the chainsaw juggling is working out for him. Read on…

I was at the rugger last night in one of them fancy corporate boxes (thanks Sky) with a very svelte Maurice Williamson (85kg, he says). He was still busy doing a few calculations but reckoned the deals were already being made to elevate Michael Barnett to the chairmanship of the ARC.

Needless to say he was pretty pleased with the results in and around Auckland, which sees a considerable strengthening of the centre-right.

So we lost, eh?

I was as sad as the next bloke that doesn't watch most rugby but likes the big games. I wasn't assured we would beat South Africa, but thought we'd get past a to-date lacklustre France. What at a game, though. Terrific.

I'm over the loss now, as I suspect are most people. Hey, it's just one or two of those things. But the media, having little else to write about, are in deepest mourning mode on our behalf.

Getting rid of your coach - especially Mr 90% Graham Henry - seems a massive overreaction (Robbie Deans got his bid in early). Is this what we do here? I thought we were the passionless people. Perhaps that's what passionless people do - they seek scapegoats. This is a technical solution; the French apparently had more of that passion stuff than us (though did you see the tears on Dan Carter's face. To me that's a good sign. It's a sign that we care, and that we don't care that we care.)

Burning one of those black flags that people have been flying from their cars seemed like a passionate response - it's what a friend saw happen on the morning of our loss. But it was probably just an ironic little gesture. I though the same - you useless buggers!

Speaking of flags, perhaps we should take this opportunity to change our unimaginative little emblem, along with our lugubrious anthem. The particularly rousing Flower of Scotland, which is only 40 years old, and La Marseillaise are both martial hymns.

Changing the flag would at least get us away from the similarly lame Australian one.

The Aussies, being the displacement specialists they are, felt bad but took comfort in the possibility we'd be feeling worse.