Editor-At-Large: Is anyone more irritating and self-satisfied than Madonna?

What she calls her 'business entities' have one aim, and that is to sell her latest offerings, be they children's books, DVDs, concert tickets or albums. Madonna is about pushing product, pure and simple

Has there ever been a more irritating, self-satisfied self-made millionaire? Kate Moss might have been attacked for her less-than-perfect behaviour, but at least she's never told us how to bring up kids or what to eat for breakfast. Robbie Williams might be a bit of a self-centred misery, but he's never thought it was his job when promoting a new album to lecture fans on what to believe in or how to diet. In fact, Robbie is always lovable because he's so fallible. But Madonna - how on earth does this humourless, priggy cow think she sounds as she tells an interviewer "TV is trash ... we're a TV- and dairy-free house"? She ends the chat to promote her new album by saying: "I think of everything I do. How is this going to affect people? What will they get out of this? Am I adding to the chaos of the world? Am I part of the problem, or the solution?"

I can't imagine anyone else in pop having the gall to utter that last statement. Certainly not Kylie, or even the psychic vampire himself, David Bowie. Now Madonna is a fully paid-up student of kabbalah (according to her it's "not a religion; it's a belief system ... now I know why there's chaos and suffering in the world"), she clearly sees that part of her remit is to preach, to patronise, to offer herself unto us as a role model. At 47, the Material Girl has morphed into Concerned Mum, one who picks up her daughter's clothes, bans junk food and TV, doesn't tolerate tantrums and leads a disciplined life, working tirelessly on what she mysteriously refers to as her "business entities".

These "entities" have one aim, and that is to sell her latest offerings, be they children's books, DVDs, concert tickets or albums. Madonna is about pushing product, pure and simple. There were no fewer than 15 pages in Ladies' Home Journal in the US to promote her latest kiddie offering, a feeble tale entitled Lots de Casha. There was the hilarious story in American Vogue earlier this summer in which she was styled as an English country rose, photographed in her English country house. In that interview she confided she'd had three house parties where "Sting played the lute and Trudie read from Shakespeare". Sadly, the Lady of the Manor's ambitions in the equestrian arena came to a halt when she was thrown by her horse on her birthday in August, breaking her collarbone, her hand and cracking three ribs. Nevertheless, she still made number 10 in Country Life's list, published this week, of the 100 people who wield the most power over the English countryside, in recognition of her adoption of rural life, from shooting to fighting wider access to her land for ramblers.

But Madonna is a mass of contradictions. Once against downloads, she's just done a huge deal to make her entire music and video catalogue available on Apple's iTunes Music Store. She who bans television has just done a television ad flogging Motorola phones, in which her latest single is used as a ringtone. Madonna, who considers television "trash", has just sold the documentary of her last tour, I'm Going to Tell You a Secret, to Channel 4 to promote her new album, Confessions on a Dance Floor, released on 15 November. Madonna, who stops her own children from watching the box, has done an exclusive deal with MTV to promote this album, offering fans exclusive content via the internet, broadband and multiple TV downloads. She's appearing on MTV's show Total Request to promote her new single and premiering her new video for the track on VH1. MTV will show her new documentary on 21 October.

She clearly doesn't see any conflict between what she prevents her own children from watching and what most nine-year-olds around the world will be seeing on every pop show going over the coming weeks. The difference is that to Madonna your kids represent consumers whose cash she needs, while her own offspring are nurtured like special little "projects" operating on a far purer and rarefied level.

For Madonna, failure is a hard concept to accommodate. Her film career has been a disaster, from Dick Tracy to Swept Away, with only Evita on the credit side. On stage, she received worse reviews in London than Jerry Hall last week for her wooden showing in High Society. Sales of her last album, American Life, were disappointing, even though she pillaged revolutionary counter-culture by posing on the cover in a beret and dark hair, apeing the Symbionese Liberation Army's iconic pictures of Patty Hearst. Her last tour, for all its athleticism and grinding, seemed a heartless exercise. Her appearance at Live8 in July was judged a triumph, and part of the carefully planned build-up to this autumn's media domination. Madonna clearly wants world peace and an end to suffering, but she's married to a man who makes mindlessly violent films that are universally panned; clearly she sees no conflict of interest there.

Madonna says, "I'm a person who's been through a lot. I'm coming from a point of view now, from experience, so I can help people, share what I know." For been through a lot, read "tried every persona going in order to sell product", and for "help people" you can deduce she means that your life will be enriched by purchasing her latest piece of merchandise. Sadly, the one thing that the Queen of Pop has not picked up by marrying an Englishman is any sense of humour or an iota of humility. Lighten up, love!

Horror! What's with all those boxes in the Turbine Hall?

Tomorrow sees an intensive week for art lovers, with the launch of this year's Turner prize and the start of the Frieze Art Fair. Collectors, gallerists and artists will be arriving from all over the world, but I can save them one stop on their busy schedule, and that is the huge installation by Rachel Whiteread in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. She's a great sculptor, but this piece, made up of 14,000 casts of cardboard boxes arranged in towers, looks like something Selfridges would put in their atrium for Christmas shoppers.

More horror! Alan Titchmarsh influential? Come off it

So Country Life succumbs to the craze for lists and publishes the 100 people who can influence what happens to our precious countryside. Great to see this paper's environment editor Geoffrey Lean in there, as well as Ramblers' Association chief executive Nick Barrett. Is anyone really influenced by duds like gas-guzzler Jeremy Clarkson or would-be actor Vinnie Jones? As for the appalling Alan Titchmarsh, I would have thought he epitomised everything tasteless about garden design. I know Country Life wants new readers, but really.

Shock! Sharp, political drama found in alive West End

Interesting that the highly political plays of Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) are packing theatres at a time when we're always hearing that the West End is full of musicals and froth. First Derek Jacobi triumphed in Don Carlos, and now the Donmar's brilliant translation of Mary Stuart has transferred to the Apollo. Both plays had me spellbound. They are richly rewarding evenings and, judging by ticket sales, I'm sure there is a huge appetite in Britain for intelligent entertainment.