Throw away your iPods and keep smoking

DAVID HOCKNEY says the iPod is to blame for the decline of art and standards of dress in Britain. Hockney, 69, told the Daily Torygraph that people no longer look at the world around them, preferring instead to stick their ear buds in and switch off their brains.

"We are not in a very visual age," he says. "I think it's all about sound. People plug in their ears and don't look much, whereas for me my eyes are the biggest pleasure. You notice that on buses. People don't look out of the window, they are plugged in and listening to something. I think we are not in a very visual age and it's producing badly dressed people. They have no interest in mass or line or things like that."

Hockney also bemoans the rise of the nanny state and says he will keep smoking despite the anti-smoking laws being brought in from July.

"It won't make any difference to me," he says. "I am appalled at it actually - they are treating us like children. I'm not a schoolboy. Mr Brown thinks he's a prefect and I can't smoke behind the cricket pavilion." µ

L'Inq
Daily Telegraph