If getting dressed every day is all getting a bit too hard, yet you refuse to grow up and stop wearing jeans seven days a week, French label APC might just be for you. Designer grump Jean Touitou has been knocking out his take on the clean French collegiate look for over 20 years now, and unlike striped t shirts, berets and cliches about France it just never gets old. Consisting of a steady diet of sweats, jeans, chinos and parkas with the odd nice shoe thrown in, the quality is superbe and you can easily mix and match the lot to always look like you’re on your way to somewhere much better to meet more interesting people. Put another way, you’ll always look right without looking like you really care, and is there anything more perfectly French than that? Hard if not impossible to get these days in Australia, they do a great online business that will have the clothes on your back and insouciance in your vocabulary quicker than you can say un, deux, trois. Looking this elegantly casual doesn’t come cheap of course, but it’s either that, or stop telling girls you DJ for a living.

Ubaldo Bellan of BMW dealership Bellan & Giardina in Vicenza is reported to have the largest vintage BMW collection in Italy. This short film profiling the family-run shop and its motorcycle restorations is beautifully shot motoporn for lovers of classic old bikes that should make the type who tool around on those overpriced Deus hybrids bile green with envy. My rusty Italian comes up with the translation “The Future Cannot Exist Without the Past”, and that being the case, the future of BMW’s bikes at least looks very assured. If you have a spare 4.24 to appreciate the love that’s gone into Ubaldo’s restorations, while also enjoying a little Tchaikovsky, you shall be richly rewarded.

John Barnes, ex 80s Liverpool player and also someone who knows a thing or two about racism in football had this to say about the Suarez/Evra shake-off: “It’s not a big deal, it’s insincere, it doesn’t mean much, they’re shaking hands for show. We’re making a mountain out of a molehill. We are not the custodians of moral value in the world, we think we are but we’re not. There’s worse things happening in the world, worse things happening in the country, everything should not be laid at footballers’ doors.”

As much as I’m no fan of Luis Suarez or Liverpool, the eight match ban for aggravated name-calling was harsh. He obviously feels highly aggrieved, but without the media buildup around the largely pointless ritual of the pre-match handshake and the resultant firestorm, very little more would’ve been heard once he was back and playing. I’ve enjoyed the barrage of criticism aimed at him and the club as much as the next man who hates Liverpool, but the bigger issue here is surely what can and can’t be said without serious censure at a football ground (or on the way to a football ground, or in your own home with the blinds drawn). Should refs red card unkind words while stewards sweep the stands with listening devices to catch anything that could be construed as possibly insulting to somebody, somewhere? Racist or abusive language must not be condoned, but also surely football cannot be expected to be the moral guardian of society’s shifting values any more than the knob sat next to you in row G. People have, and always will say spiteful, nasty, ignorant or just plain stupid things, and that surely is their prerogative, as much as it’s yours to tell them to shut up and fuck off. At any stadium you’ll no doubt hear some unsavoury things (both on and off the pitch), but the alternative of sitting in a ground where tolerance, kindness and respect for the opposition and their fans are the order of the day sounds just a little too Nth Korea for me. At some point soon it’s likely muttering anything vaguely offensive will warrant arrest either in the stands, on the streets or even on the pitch (actually, Chelsea’s John Terry might already know a bit about that last one). A society that defends the right to freedom of expression for Chinese or Egyptian dissidents must surely also extend the same courtesy in supporting the right of ignorant fans and obnoxious Uruguayan footballers to make arses of themselves.

Paul Simonon, punk icon, original style-master and possibly the coolest bass player ever features at number 58 in this very Americanised all-time 75 Best Dressed Men list from US Esquire. Having a killer set of cheekbones never hurt anyone of course, but that aside, Simonon’s art school background meant he was never afraid to take a risk or two stylistically in a time when the Laws of Punk as laid down by a certain J Lydon were apparently set in stone. Apart from Paul, Esquire includes most of the usual worthy suspects (Steve McQueen, Bryan Ferry, Michael Caine et al), but also featured are a few “curve balls” as the Yanks like to say. JFK and Marlon Brando are reasonable enough, but I never thought I’d see George W Bush and Woody Allen featured on the same list, unless it was the top 10 ways of keeping things in the family. For the full listing go here.

Much as it pains me to say it, I’m starting to warm to “mad-as-a-cut-snake” Mario Balotelli, despite his latest stamping incident. Whether it’s setting his bathroom on fire after lighting fireworks and launching them out the window (and really, who hasn’t done that?), the outrageous back-heel miss in a US tournament, or his series of training ground punch-ups with team-mates, he’s quite obviously not your average player. Then there’s the football. Sublimely gifted, the young Mario was always trouble from the beginning, particularly for some of the notoriously racist ultras who don’t believe black Italians should exist, let alone play for the Azzurri, and Mario wasn’t having that. Making his senior debut at 19 and becoming the first black player to score for Italy, he still seems like he always has a point to prove. Whether some of his antics are borne of frustration, the dramas of spoiled youth or just plain nuttiness, the sullen showboating skills that go with his bad attitude and ridiculous haircuts mean if he can only stay on the pitch City might actually confound the sceptics and take their first title since 1968. Stay mad Mario, but not that mad.

Bryan Ferry: musical legend, style icon, smooth as silk, all around top Geordie bloke. Now add to that list incurable romantic, creche-snatcher and quite possibly, functioning delusionalist. What sort of late-life crisis leads you to start dating your son Isaac’s 29 year old ex-girlfriend in the first place, let alone marry her as Ferry did in the Bahamas recently? He would’ve had cheeses older than her. Of course, if you’re Bryan Ferry such trivialities don’t enter your mind, because, well, you’re Bryan Ferry, and you’ve always had an eye for the ladies, particularly the ones that grace your album covers. Leaving aside the nigh on 40 year age difference, it’s hard to know what they might possibly share, apart from a mutual interest in his reputed 30 million GBP fortune of course.

Regarding Eric’s noble attempt to draw attention to the plight of France’s poor by nominating for President The Daily Mash reported: “Speaking in poetry from the top of the Arc de Triomphe, Cantona said: ‘Heaving the broken body of France onto his shoulders, the dawn streaming golden behind him, he crosses no man’s land and the guns fall silent.

‘Commanding submission with the endless desire in his eyes, he karate kicks injustice right in the chest.’

Vote 1 Eric for justice, égalité, fraternité.

A lot has been said about Joy Division, but not so much by the band themselves. Online music mag the quietus has a philosophy of only covering releases from the last 30 years (“We chose a completely spurious Year Zero of 1974 because that’s when Kraftwerk released ‘Autobahn’ as a single. It seemed to us the birth of modern music”) and has unearthed this gem of an interview from NME in 1979. Observers of the most recent Hooky v The Others drama can only wonder what might’ve been.

It’s awfully good of Liverpool not to dispute the findings against Luis Suarez, if you call saying they’re completely wrong and nothing was proved not disputing something. That wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that launching an appeal opens up the possibility of adding to the lengthy eight match ban and 40,000 GBP fine if things don’t go your way would it (and if you listen to Liverpool fans of course, they never do)? The whole kerfuffle would also have nothing to do with the Uruguayan being simultaneously their best player and A Grade knob either, would it? Despite admitting that he did in fact call Patrice Evra “negro” or “blackie” at least seven times during the heated match, his argument seems to be it was all in jest, and that the term is actually used quite affectionately in his country. Would that be as in your quoted “I don’t talk to negroes” quip Luis? Hilarious stuff and no harm done, we can all agree. After last month’s “He’ll never walk alone” t shirt campaign in Suarez’s defence backfired, it is believed a new Liverpool protest has been planned with players taking to the pitch in white pointy hoods as part of the “see no evil, hear no evil” program aimed at proving acknowledging racism has no place at Liverpool.

Unless you’re a lane-surfing 4WD’er with your phone glued to your ear (in which case, I hope me getting caught under your wheels also causes you to crash and die), you’d know that bikes have been cool again for some time now. And I don’t mean the superfuture road bikes that cost the equivalent of a small boat and strangely make you yearn to wrap your flab in lycra; I’m talking about the stripped bare look of the hipster’s choice, the fixie or garden variety single-speed. But there is a third way – the type of machine that gives more than a sly wink to the simple utilitarian bikes of the past and suggests a leisurely cruise in comfortable clobber rather than too much exertion, geared or otherwise. English manufacturer Pashley has been building some of the best since 1926 and the classic Guv’nor, these days available in Sydney, is still the boss. Single speed or three-geared, it was never meant to be ruined with anything as gauche as a helmet, which is unlikely to help you under a Range Rover anyway.