With a population equivalent to that of the rest of Latin America and a landmass bigger than that of the entire European Union, it is a mistake to underestimate Brazil’s potential.. Brick by brick, the wall of secrecy surrounding Guantanamo Bay is being dismantled. Last week, a BBC interview with a detainee conducted through a lawyer broke one taboo. Now, the Pentagon’s release of 6,000 pages of transcripts is a much more significant development. Leafing through this material on the Pentagon website will cast some readers into the milieu portrayed in the recent bestseller The Bookseller of Kabul, for this is a world of travellers, newly liberated by the forces of globalisation from the provincialism of their ancestors.

As cooks, cleaners, drivers, salesmen and merchants, they criss-cross the Muslim world from Afghanistan to Saudia Arabia, working, studying, going on pilgrimage and yes, in some instances, looking for a fight with US forces.. Good day to you. To which, no doubt, you will reply: what’s good about it? And you have a point Bad news attacks us as unceasingly as the weather. Gloom, pestilence and dissension are in the air, and spirits obstinately refuse to rise even though our lad James Blunt has reached number one in America. Why can’t Tony have a word? From every direction, fresh blows rain. You might think one sector smiling bravely through the cold supersnap would be the Shetland woolly jumper industry But no: they’re running out of knitters Knitters, says one company, “are a dying breed. Our oldest is 94 and the youngest is 60 and we can’t get any more.”
So you turn to comedy, and find grim reaping there, too: the memorial service for Ronnie Barker, above; and poor Linda Smith, when never had we more need of her.

Vale.Nevertheless, there is uplifting news out there, if you’re resilient and persistent. On a personal level, for example, I was dismayed to read yet more dire warnings about the dangers of obesity, followed by the revelation that the sexiest part of a man is a violently concave lower midriff, a feature, you will concede, unlikely to accompany those portrayed so fetchingly above.But then I found this new American research showing that well-padded men are better off than thin ones in the event of a car accident, which was almost as exciting as discovering that you can visit a different chip shop in Nottingham every week for 18 months. You can, and it certainly helps put the closure of 25 branches of McDonald’s into some kind of perspective, thank goodness.Be careful, though, where you seek your consolation. One tucked-away item of recent good news was that Virgin Trains has recorded its best punctuality figures on the London to Scotland West Coast route, 91.1 per cent of trains on time in January. But why are they picking on you?Similarly, if you’re a cat owner, ear anxiously cocked for coughs and sniffles overhead, you won’t be as buoyed as you might be when I tell you that a troupe of Russian cats which crawl on high wires, do paw stands and balance on balls is currently the toast of Broadway.Better to concentrate on the safe stuff, like having only the one mortgage and a partner who isn’t fluent in Italian or runs a car dealership in Kent.

I’d be careful about the cricket, too, particularly now that George Bush has taken it up, as he’ll probably rewrite the laws so that no one is allowed to get out.The really good sports news is that we’re going to have another World Cup song, and John Barnes will be rapping on it again, although I think the real winner would be Blunty singing a ballad version of the classic 1970 effort, “Back Home”, especially if Becks could do an Elvis-type spoken-word recital in the middle: “Back Home, they’ll be thinking about us when we are far away… We’ll fight until the whistle blows, For the folks back home”.Marvellous. I’ve just discovered a new favourite country and western title, too: “All My Friends Are Dead”, from the legendary Freddie Gage. This might also be the time to tell you that, having read a little further, I see that although well-padded men are more likely to survive the car accident, they are equally likely to succumb to a heart attack as a result of it. A heartwarming achievement Farewell, also, to William Russell, first half of Russell Hobbs, appliance makers. I had always imagined that Russell Hobbs was one man, a rakish fellow given to driving gloves, but I was nevertheless pleased to learn that Mr Russell, who has died aged 85, was a keen Wagnerian who also worked on the pop-up toaster.The second half, Peter Hobbs, was still bubbly enough to toast the half-century of the world’s first automatic kettle with a Marilyn Monroe lookalike at the Ritz last autumn.Theirs was, of course, a major achievement in the history of this unregarded helpmate to almost all human endeavour.