Ali G and Borat creator Sacha Baron Cohen has weighed into the Middle East conflict with a recent gag in which he confused “Hamas” and “hummus” and suggested a settlement of the problem through a “time share” on land between Arabs and Jews.

That’s right, the politically-incorrect prankster is back, this time in his latest incarnation as Bruno, a camp fashion presenter in a tight leather jacket and mohican hairstyle. And his latest victims? An Israeli analyst/former Mossad official and a Palestinian academic who thought they were being interviewed for a documentary aimed at explaining the conflict to young people.

Instead they are likely to end up in Baron Cohen’s new movie due out next year, joining the red-faced roll call of duped interviewees who failed to recognise the spoof character.

So, according to ”co-dupee” Yossi Alpher, the Islamist group Hamas is mentioned in conversation, and “Bruno” interjects, asking in a thick mock-German accent: ”Vait, vait. Vat’s zee connection between a political movement and food. Vy hummus?”

He also says: “Your conflict is not so bad. Jennifer-Angelina is worse,” referring to the ex-wife and current partner of Hollywood actor Brad Pitt. Other jokes by the comedian always out to shock include: ”Vy don’t you Jews and Arabs settle the conflict with a time share on the land?”, “Ven vill you Jews return the pyramids?” and ”Vy can’t Jews and Hindus get along?”

Nothing, it seems, is off limits to Baron Cohen, a Jew who Alpher accuses of exploitation.

“Yes, dear reader, Sacha Baron Cohen is loose in the Middle East,” he writes on the www.forward.com Web site. “The end product will undoubtedly be hilarious. We’ll try to be good sports about it. But will Sacha Baron Cohen? He is exploiting our tragic and painful conflict in the most cynical and deceptive manner. I doubt he’ll give us anything in return.”

The Best of the Booker title is handed out this week, with the public choosing between six shortlisted authors who have won the coveted literary prize over the last 40 years. Bookies are reporting that 90 percent of bets placed on the outcome have gone to Salman Rushdie for “Midnight’s Children”, giving him odds of 1/7, the shortest price in the history of the annual prize.

The betting odds clearly favour Rushdie, the most instantly recognisable name among nominees and therefore the writer most likely to appeal to the punters. Rushdie spent many years in hiding after a death warrant was issued against him by Muslims angry at his novel “The Satanic Verses”. Since he emerged from the shadows, he has become a literary celebrity through his high profile on the party curcuit and his marriage to the glamorous Padma Lakshmi, which ended in divorce last year.

Instant recognition may also favour the 61-year-old when it comes to online voting for the award, which closes on Tuesday. All will be revealed on Thursday.

Amy Winehouse hits the headlines more for her private life – battles against addiction, health and the odd fracas with members of the public — than she does for her music. So it was refreshing to see the media focusing on that aspect of her life again after the 24-year-old appeared at Nelson Mandela’s tribute concert on Friday night and at the Glastonbury music festival on Saturday.

While neither was a disaster, in the opinion of people watching, neither was great either. At the Mandela concert, she showed flashes of her ability and charisma but they were only flashes. Overall she looked lost on stage before the 50,000 crowd, and her voice sounded strained on the higher notes. Tabloid reports picked up on her altering the words to the anthem “Free Nelson Mandela”, which rounded off the tribute to the elder statesman before his 90th birthday. “Free Blakey, my fella”, she sang, referring to her jailed husband Blake Fielder-Civil. To be honest, I couldn’t tell her exact words when watching, but several reporters said they could.

Then she was off to Glastonbury, where 80,000 or so fans generally enjoyed her set, albeit with reservations, including what they described as a slurred, lazy rendition of signiature tune “Rehab”. And again, a scuffle with a member of the crowd midway through the performance and a swear word aimed at U.S. rapper Kanye West dominated coverage.

The question now is “where next?” for Winehouse, who was recently diagnosed with a mild form of lung condition emphysema, and whether her tentative comeback last week heralds a return to the good old days of music-making for the five-time Grammy award-winning star.

The ”Is It Art” debate is up and running again in the UK. Unsurprisingly, it involves Martin Creed, a conceptual artist who most famously won the Turner Prize in 2001 for his installation of an empty room with a light switching on and off.

Well, Creed is back, this time with a work involving runners sprinting the length of Tate Britain’s neo-classical galleries (86 metres in all) at 30 second intervals. 50 people earning $20 an hour will keep “Work No 850″ going for the next four months or so, and the gallery has warned visitors not to interfere with the sprinters. It will be interesting to see how they cope on a crowded Sunday afternoon.

Asked if he thought the work pretentious, the artist pointed out that, literally speaking, it was not, as these people were not pretending to run, but were actually doing it.

The Times produced a “for” and “against” column to discuss the artistic merits of Work No 850. In the Creed corner, its art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston calls it “silly, reckless, exhilirating and wonderful” and says “it makes you feel more alive. What more can you want?”. In the skeptics’ corner, David Lee of art publication The Jackdaw counters: “The concepts in most conceptual art are frequently extremely small ones barely worth the illustration. Now, we are presented with a work in which there is not even a concept.” He dismisses the piece as a stunt to raise the profile both of the gallery and of the artist.

So, well before this year’s Turner Prize exhibition at none other than Tate Britain sparks the “Is It Art” debate all over again, where do you stand on Creed’s creation?

OK, they may not be Prince in terms of their importance and popularity, but youthful band McFly are a pretty big deal in Britain, boasting seven number one singles and two chart-topping albums. So when they announce they will be giving their new album away for free with a Sunday newspaper, perhaps they should not be ignored.

The band is following Prince’s lead to the letter. The U.S. star also issued an album free with the Mail on Sunday last year in a move that enraged retailers and record labels, for obvious reasons, but which was seen as a commercial success when the tour he was promoting sold well.

McFly will release “Radio:ACTIVE” with the same newspaper on July 20 in order to lure more people to their live shows. It underlines the trend in pop music towards giving your music away for free, or at least selling it for a song, in order to make money through live performances, merchandising and advertising.

Prince has done it, Radiohead has done it with their “pay-as-much-as-you-want” scheme, Coldplay gave away a single from their latest album online — the list gets longer and longer. The reason? Selling music does not make enough money, due to online piracy and the popularity of other forms of entertainment like video games.

Artists are convinced they will be the winners in the long term as revenues from touring go on rising. Record labels are going to end up among the losers if the trend continues. But there is another potential loser. The music fan.

Industry executives, perhaps unsurprisingly, argue that the more music is given away for free, the less money music labels make, and the less money labels make, the less money they spend on discovering new talent.

Do you buy that argument? And will the trend towards cheaper music continue to the point where some or even all of it is free?

Details of supermodel Naomi Campbell’s “air rage” outburst in April came to light in court on Friday, and very nasty it sounded too. According to the prosecution, there was a lot of swearing and shouting, some flailing arms and legs, spitting and general accusations of racism, all on a British Airways aircraft preparing to take off for Los Angeles. The reason? A lost piece of luggage.

Bad blood between Campbell and the airline that reportedly banned her over the incident turned sourer still after the 38-year-old subsequently accused someone on the flight of calling her a “Golliwog supermodel”, explaining that it was “not the passenger”. BA has come out with a firm denial of any allegations of racism, but we may not have heard the last of the infamous April 3 inflight incident just yet.

The little-known Creaky Boards just became a little less little known thanks to an accusation of copying against mega-band Coldplay via a Youtube posting.

The video cuts snippets from the Boards’ song “The Songs I Didn’t Write” (oh, the glorious irony of it all) with clips from Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida”, the title track from the group’s new album which is selling fast in the UK. The posting even claims the band thought they spotted Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin in the crowd at a gig last year when they performed the song, hence making the link between the two.

The allegation prompted Coldplay to issue a blunt denial, saying that “Viva La Vida” was actually written seven months before the night in question.

The blogosphere has been busy with reactions to the accusations, with what seems to be a slight majority accusing the Boards of a cheap publicity stunt. Still, it may have worked. More than 320,000 visits have been made to the Youtube posting to date, about 1,000 times the number of clicks on other Creaky Boards’ contributions.

Chris Martin seems like the antithesis of a rock ‘n’ roll superstar, and therein lies his charm. On stage and in interviews, well some at least, he comes across as a thoroughly nice chap, self-depricating about his and his band’s achievements. Even when he walks out of interviews, it is more of a quiet strop than a storm of swear words and flying instruments.

Coldplay’s lead singer, more famous than he otherwise would be due to his marriage to Gwyneth Paltrow, is ultra-sensitive about how he, his band and their music are viewed, although on the strength of the reviews of their warm-up tour gig at Brixton Academy in London on Monday night, he need not worry.

“From the response here, Martin can stop reading his own press and relax. Coldplay are going to be okay,” wrote the Evening Standard’s David Smyth in a three-out-of-five star review. The band, promoting its new and some would say pompously-titled new album “Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends”, is now on the road, kicking off the tour in Barcelona on Tuesday.

Too skinny? Too fat? Does it really matter?

U.S. soprano Deborah Voigt explained to Reuters this week how she shed 120 pounds, with the help of gastric bypass surgery, after being dropped in 2004 by London’s Royal Opera House for being too fat for a little black dress they envisaged for the part of Ariadne in “Ariadne auf Naxos”, Richard Strauss’s opera.

Four years later the same company invited her back to perform the same role in the same production. Ironic, and deliberately so, but everyone seems happy as early reviews of the slimmed-down, glammed-up singer are glowing.

At the other end of the scale, the mother of British actress Keira Knightley has been quoted in the media as saying the “Pirates of the Caribbean” star does not have an eating disorder, is naturally skinny and “eats like a horse”. Knightley won damages from a newspaper last year for linking her figure to the death of a teenager who battled with anorexia, and her weight has been the subject of persistent tabloid press interest since.

Both women are examples of the fixation with weight and image in the entertainment world, much of it fueled by the media. Both cases raise the question of whether performers should bear any responsibility to their viewers or listeners. Voigt accepts that in this day and age, a svelte singer has a better chance than a portly performer. But does that necessarily make it right?

Fan Fare humbly suggests that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama considers a rank outsider to be his running mate in forthcoming elections — Bob Dylan.

As the world’s media ponders who Obama will pick as his vice presidential candidate, we’d like to throw the 67-year-old singer/songwriter/poet into the ring. He has a name that travels across borders, is a cultural icon (surely that overused word is justified in this case) and he could come up with a mean campaign song to rally the followers.

Dylan recently praised Obama for redrawing the U.S. political map. “Poverty is demoralising. You can’t expect people to have the virtue of purity when they are poor. But we’ve got this guy out there now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up…Barack Obama,” Dylan told the Times newspaper in a recent interview. ”He’s redefining what a politician is, so we’ll have to see how things play out. Am I hopeful? Yes, I’m hopeful that things might change. Some things are going to have to.”

Returning to the theme of that campaign song, how about something along the lines of “The Times, They Are A-Changin’”? Sorry, I couldn’t resist.