The iPhone, the latest must-have gadget from Apple, fails to give users complete access to the internet, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) rules today.

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A war of words between two of the nation's best-known news presenters has erupted after the BBC's chief interrogator, Jeremy Paxman, said it had become impossible for middle-class white men to make it in the television world.

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Back in the late Nineties, many new media pundits scoffed at NBC Universal’s decision to pay $894m (£476m) for exclusive American broadcast rights to this year’s Beijing games. Mass media spectacles on television are yesterday’s news, the pundits all said. In a fragmented media age, these scoffers went on, investing nearly a billion dollars in the broadcast rights to televise a single event was the act of a dinosaur doomed to business extinction.

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Sophie Turner Laing, 47, is Sky’s managing director for entertainment, giving her overall responsibility for all Sky channels except news and sport. She began her television career working in programme sales and went on to found HiT Entertainment, which has since produced popular children’s shows including Fraggle Rock, FiremanSam and Bob the Builder.

She is a director of the History Channel and a trustee of Bafta. She lives in London with her husband and two children.

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At weekends, Matthew Wright just select a machine from the stable of monstrous motorcycles at his disposal. Will it be that least of a Royal Enfield? Or the Suzuki trail bike? No, surely it has to be the Triumph Bonneville 750cc. Wright is a biker of some standing, a veteran of eight long two-wheeled journeys across the Indian subcontinent and the Far East, three of which took him into the Himalayas, with others to Bhutan and Vietnam. He was, he says, “doing it years before Ewan McGregor got the idea.”

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We are at the Summer Sundae festival in rainy Leicester, and two DJs are packed within the walls of a tiny mobile studio resembling a cross between a caravan and a space ship to talk their way through three hours of broadcast time. They sound remarkably similar, finish each others’s sentences, and are the most criminally-underrated talent on British radio.

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Last week I read?

I have been in Lithuania, at the Vilnius Book Fair, this week and picked up a copy of The Vilnius Review, a brilliant poetry magazine. I also read a very good piece on The Times’ website about the Georgian State Ballet. They opened the Edinburgh InternationalFestival with Giselle on the day Russia declared war, showing great emotional strength. The performance was mind-blowingly beautiful and very haunting, and the review was beautifully written. We have a festival planned in Moscow in October which will probably have to be postponed. Although its aim is to bring people together to discuss these issues, the Russian state is quite controlling and it would be oxymoronic to promote culture while there’s a war going on next door.

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An alien landing in Soho would probably get the distinct impression that the world is accelerating away from the current entertainment establishment. There is revolution in the air and the time has come for the broadcast industry to do something about it.

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On the kitchen table lies a copy of the London Evening Standard, normally his nemesis but today bringing front page news of the resignation of Boris Johnson’s deputy, Tim Parker. “It’s a heartbreaking headline,” observes Ken without a trace of pity. A few seconds before 1pm he dashes to the radio and turns on The World at One, voicing displeasure that the bulletin fails to mention Boris’s latest set back.

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Now that Boris Johnson has accepted the torch on London’s behalf – and try not to become inured to the surreal splendour of Boris’s debut as a global political statesman – the time comes to reflect on the Olympic efforts of the broadcaster surely poised to restyle itself as Team BBC. Today, the first and business-class airline seats are doubtless replete with BBC executives congratulating one another about the excellent ratings and splendid coverage.

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OK, three words right? Recession. Recession. Recession. If I had a thousand pounds for every time I heard the words “credit crunch”, I wouldn’t be worried about any recession. Indeed, my extensive research among the chief financial officers of London’s leading agencies has pointed to an almost jaunty “Crisis, what crisis?” Admittedly this is a somewhat uneasy calm. As one senior bean-counter confessed to me, “Any minute now I expect the cold hand of reality to grab me by the scruff of the neck, march me down to the basement car park and slam my nuts repeatedly in the glove compartment of the company Jag.”

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Newspapers cry wolf so often at the slightest perceived threat to editorial freedom that it is sometimes hard to know when the danger is real. In a number of current cases, however, there are grounds for serious concern.

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Altogether we’ve got 41 foreign bureaux for a foreign newsgathering team of 250 people, with a total budget of £35m. On top of that figure, the World Service pays us £9m for the journalism we give them.

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On 17 November 2006, Kristofer Ström posted his hand-drawn stop-motion video for Minilogue on YouTube. That was nearly three million hits ago. Many of those viewings were by bored advertising creatives trawling for ideas. More than a few found themselves charmed by its innocence, simplicity and invention, and resolved to harness these qualities to the Great Engine of Commercial Desire. I was one of them. But for one reason or another Ström’s handiwork remained virgin and intact. Until now

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In June the Fleet Street rumour mill began to hum – thelondonpaper was facing the axe. All the evidence was there.

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Most people use the annual MacTaggart Lecture, which opens the Edinburgh International Television Festival, to apply for a new job or settle old scores.

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Perhaps the most important programme of the week, if you're worried about kids in gangs carrying guns and knives, was Radio 4's Ganges, Guns and Knives. One was grateful that the producers did not try to play clever buggers with the title.

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Channel 4 is looking for a new presenter with "excellent numeracy and literacy skills as well as charm and charisma" to replace the irreplaceable Carol Vorderman on 'Countdown'. First Des O'Connor announced that he was about to step down as presenter, and then Vorderman quit, after she was given 48 hours to walk away or take a 90 per cent cut in her £1m salary. For someone with such excellent numeracy skills as Vorderman's, it was a no-brainer. Vorderman helped her late co-host Richard Whiteley (the Mayor of Wetwang) to bring the programme a cult status, and even won the heart of George Clooney when he caught the show on a visit to Britain. Now Channel 4 is staging a Mensa-style quiz to try to find her replacement. Could you be the one?

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