Paul Newman is no more, and bang goes another piece of my heart.

My friend texted me as soon as she heard, just in case I hadn't, because she knew I'd need to know. For there was a time when I believed Paul Newman to be the most beautiful man alive. Indeed, I didn't even know men could be beautiful until my teenage self gazed at Paul Newman's mouth – and was lost. The blue eyes were just back-up.

From Paul I learned much: I learned that misfits with southern American accents can be oh so sexy (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) and that Elizabeth Taylor always was a pretty rubbish actress (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof again).

I learned that bad boys are always the most desirable (The Hustler) but that eating 50 boiled eggs can be surprisingly cool too (Cool Hand Luke) – at least until you become a proper grown-up and start to think things like kindness count for a lot.

But Paul was kind, raising millions for charity – but most of all he was the epitome of cool.

So cool that he proved it was possible to suddenly and inexplicably ride a bike around a field with Katherine Ross sitting on the handlebars and Sacha Distel filling the air with a cheesy song about raindrops, and all in the middle of an otherwise perfectly brilliant film about two cowboys, and not lose your cool.

That was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a buddy movie to end all buddy movies, but there was no fickle swaying towards the swaggering blond sidekick that was Robert Redford for me, I was always Paul Newman's girl.

No relationship is without its hiccups though and I have to admit I didn't care for Paul's explanation for his fidelity to Joanne Woodward, to whom he was married for fifty years.

He reputedly said: "Why go out for hamburger when you have steak at home" which revealed, on that occasion, a disappointing lack of finesse. And wit. And style.

But still, even men with the sexiest mouths in history have their off days.

And Paul made up for it on the day he declared his inclusion on former American president Richard Nixon's Enemies List to be one of his greatest achieve-ments. Just like that, he was straight back to being cool.

So I'm sad that Paul Newman is no more, he was cool and he was sexy and he was kind. By any stretch, that's a big loss, but at least the films will be back on telly again.


Lost in music


Technology and me are not bosom buddies, as you might expect. I like stuff about Jane Austen, I like Doris Day films, heck, I like the Lakeland catalogue.

I'm not going to do technology, am I? I'm Mrs Luddite. If I can't point it, press it and drop it on the sofa, I can't be bothered with it , which rules out everything except the television zapper, and, obviously, I only use that to jump from Jane Austen bonnet-busters to anything to do with flour, scales and baking.

And yet... and yet I find myself having an increasingly intense relationship with my iPod. By rights, I should be in a flapper dress doing the Black Bottom to the sounds of my wind-up gramophone, dropping ash from my cigarette holder all over my old 78rpm records.

But I'm not. Instead I can often be found at the computer, gazing dreamily at next door's dustbin, thinking up tunes I can download... easy as pie.

Well, almost. There are times it defeats me. Just this week I clicked on a classic Roxy music track only to be defeated by a funny little notice that said I would have to upgrade to a later version of iTunes for that. Who am I, Einstein?

So, no Roxy Music then, but, ooh, so many others.

And this year I've got ahead by already downloading all my seasonal listening – oh yes, Gaude Te, Fairytale of New York, Merry Xmas Everybody – they're all there in a little Christmas folder, just waiting to be unleashed into my ears on December 1.

There are lots of us around, us more mature iPod users, you can see us walking through Leeds, looking just a bit self-conscious with the wire from our earphones trailing over our work suits.

Gosh, those earphones are useful though. We can wander the streets listening to the entire works of Fleetwood Mac, enjoying our son's White Stripes collection, wondering how our daughter's Britney Spears got on there, mixing it up with a bit of The Spice Girls – and we're inviolate.

No marketing person, no-one with a survey, no-one with anything to sell can touch us. It's as close to perfection as you're ever going to get in this little ol' life.

Naturally, there's a price to pay – isn't there always – and with downloadable music, it's the album covers. Because album covers (forget the CD years, a mere blip on face of music history) were great, weren't they?

Sometimes I swear they had to be designed by rocket scientists they were so damn complicated, with moving parts and everything.

I remember well, during my Rod Stewart/Faces adoration phase, buying an album cover with a mouth on it that opened and closed. Yes! Actually opened and closed. Imagine.

And it didn't just stop at articulated jaws, there were all manner of added extras, as I recall. Posters, song lyrics... it was like Christmas everytime you bought a new album.

So we've lost there. You're never going to get a toy to play with when you download some music straight into your lugholes. But it's a price worth paying, I find.