Yesterday’s Vietnam edition of Top Gear on BBC2 was one of the least entertaining, least informative travel programs I’ve ever seen. The idea that the chaps might have to ride into North Vietnam on a bike painted with stars-and-stripes to remind the people there of having the shit bombed out of them 40 years ago was so pathetically feeble and plain ill-mannered, I don’t imagine it raised a titter anywhere in the land. But poor old Clarkson (who, I know, is a nice guy from his choices on Desert Island Discs) has created a persona for himself of such dimensions his studied un-PC-ness has got way out of hand. Now Top Gear’s producer is grumbling that the BBC will have to cut his budget. May I suggest that the easiest way to cut costs at Top Gear would be to axe the two puerile tossers with whom Clarkson is forced to work. May is a bumbling oaf and Hammond is the most witless little git on telly. Are there really people out there that love them? Je ne croix pas.

When a top class musical act comes to a small town like Ludlow, it’s worth making the most of it, and I went to see Paul Ryan and Kenny Clayton twice this weekend when they appeared at the Ego Bar on Saturday night and the Charlton Arms over lunch on Sunday.

Paul Ryan is the best British singer of the great American Songbook of the 30s, 40s & 50s that I’ve ever heard. His timing, the tuning and timbre of his voice (honed by a steady intake of unfiltered Senior Service) would stand comparison with any of the great crooners (Frank, Bing, Dino or Bennett). But he’s not just a Sinatra tribute act. Performing in a double-breasted suit, ex-Chicago c.1932, with dark hair swept back and a scarlet silk brow-mopper, Paul has the air of a musical ‘Don’. With features perhaps best described as ‘well caroused-in’, he brings a cartload of personal baggage and life experience to his delivery of some of the great songs of the last century, with his own distinctive interpretation of the clever, sophisticated lyrics of Jerome Kern, Ira Gershwin or Lorenz Hart which no X-Factor teenage wannabe could dream of achieving.