Before the week is out...

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MONEY MANAGEMENT - it's a bit of a turn-off isn't it? Which is why it was with some resignation that I sat down at the end of a long day to watch Your Money or Your Life, a new series that aims to do for personal pensions what Changing Rooms did for dry rot. Don't let that put you off, though, because this is genuinely useful and entertaining television. The presenter, Alvin Hall, a bouncy New Yorker who has done pretty well out of investing in Wall Street, gets alongside a couple of real people with real problems and gives them a prescription for sorting out their troubles. Most of us will (I hope) relate more to 25-year-old Natalie, who is careering further and further into the red because of her compulsion for black trousers from French Connection and her regular trips to a swanky sandwich shop, than to Simon, who started his first PEP at college with his student loan. But the advice in both cases is general enough to be relevant to us all: don't worry about a pension in your twenties until you're out of debt; learn to treat yourself and know when to stop; and (in Simon's case) remember to let go and buy your friends a drink once in a while.

Of course, if your financial situation is so bad that the thought of watching a programme about it twists your stomach, then there is an alternative: Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? is back on Friday. EH

`Your Money or Your Life' starts on BBC2 at 8.30pm on Tuesday;

`Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' starts on ITV at 8.30pm on Friday.

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kidults

n: advertising jargon for grown-ups who insist on behaving like children. Traits include playing Cluedo at dinner parties, wearing pig- tails and watching Teletubbies

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NOT SO much lager, lager, lager as a slow-burning cocktail that will knock you off your feet unawares, Underworld's curiously titled Beaucoup Fish must be one of the most hotly anticipated albums of the year. This is the band's third effort after snappily-titled albums Dubnobasswithmyheadman and Second Toughest Of The Infants, and their first release since their Trainspotting anthem Born Slippy. Those expecting either technological progression or a cultural souvenir for 1999 will be disappointed, but spend time with it and you will find it offers something altogether more interesting.

This album sidesteps the crowd-pleasing proclivities of Underworld's contemporaries, The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers, and demands a lot more from the listener than a raised pint of lager. While it still rates as a dance album, you will want to listen to this in your living room - it's a contemplative affair, drifting between spooky soundscapes and gentle dance textures. The boys have earned their place in the end of year "Best Of..." polls. FS

`Beaucoup Fish' will be available on Monday on JBO records, pounds 14.49.

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LEVI'S CITED a collapse in demand for blue denim last week as the reason it is closing half of its American factories. We know that's true - after all, every pair of combats you see on the streets represents a lost sale for jeans, and that's a lot of unsold denim.

But it's not only combats that are to blame - those who do want blue jeans now want them to be distinctive. The last cult label was Evisu, with its distinctive seagull-shaped stitching, but then B*witched were seen sporting them and today no self-respecting bottom wants to wear a pair.

But Evisu's misfortune has been Earl Jeans' gain and these are now the only denim trousers to step into. Earl's deserve it: they are a really good fit, sit sexily on the hips and unlike Levi 501s, don't bag around the bottom. They come in loads of different colours (my favourite is the really dark denim although if you want to be really directional you should go for the washed denim) and, at pounds 95, they don't cost the world. ZB

Available from Whistles branches nationwide. Tel: 0171 487 4484.

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MAGNETS: They're kitschy fridge favourites, and handy for corralling paper clips - but are they the latest medical miracle ? American athletes, arthritics and others have started using "magnet therapy" to treat physical ailments and pain. Magnet-containing bandages have had mystical cachet ever since Cleopatra allegedly stuck one on her forehead to preserve youth and beauty. Elizabeth I reputedly used them for arthritis, and Bill Clinton is said to use them twice day for backache. In Japan, where shops stock everything from magnetic insoles to car cushions, advocates claim that, as the earth's magnetic field has gradually diminished, we are all suffering increasingly from "magnetic deficiency".

So is magnet therapy the millennial answer to aspirin? Some practitioners, like GP Richard Lawson, who saw over 50 per cent of his 80 arthritic and rheumatic patients improve while wearing a strong magnet wristband called the Bioflow, are cautiously optimistic. "No one knows why it works or if it works with any certainty," he points out, although one theory is that the wristband's reverse polarization "tidies up" blood-borne molecules. But before you make magnetic bracelets your new fashion statement, neurologist Peter Goadsby cries quackery: magnet therapy, he asserts, is not practised by serious doctors, and "It's outrageous that these things can be sold to people." See which way the forces of attraction pull you. RH

Bioflow magnetic wristband, pounds 29.99. Enquiries: 01752 841 66.