Qatar workers' deaths are India's responsibility too

‘Despite nearly three decades of rapid growth, net formal employment in India has not increased at all.' Illustration: Otto Dettmer

The grim news coming out of Qatar about the deaths of hundreds of migrant workers from India and other (mostly south Asian) countries provides an insight into the appalling lack of concern for human life among employers there. The problem seems especially bad in the construction industry, as companies try to finish sites for the next World Cup at breakneck speed. It underlines the double standards with respect to local and migrant workers, as well as divisions among the migrants themselves, between expatriates from rich countries and those employed in the dirty, difficult and dangerous activities that locals no longer wish to perform.

But the deaths offer an insight into the depressing reality of workers' conditions back in south Asia too. To start with, this dreadful situation did not come to light because the government of India was so shocked by the information that it protested and lodged a formal complaint. Far from it: Indians know about it largely because a news agency filed a request under the country's Right to Information Act, forcing the embassy in Qatar to reveal how many Indian citizens had died in the past two years.

It turns out that on every month, on average, 20 Indian workers died, and in some months nearly 30. But we do not know how many others suffered injuries that have affected their lives and ability to work. We do not know what the Indian embassy – or indeed the government of India – did to express its concern about this over the past two years when they must have known about these deaths.

This apparent apathy and even nonchalance fits in only too well with the overall approach of the Indian elite towards the mass of its workers, migrant or otherwise. The Indian growth story has been marked by very little employment generation. Despite nearly three decades of rapid growth, net formal employment (jobs that provide any sort of worker protection and are subject to labour laws) has not increased at all.

According to official National Sample Survey data, about 95% of all Indian workers are stuck in informal activities, in precarious and often exploitative and low-paying contracts. More than half of these are "self-employed", which means that they are responsible for their own safety, and usually determine their own exploitation out of sheer desperation.

The lack of adequate regulation to ensure workers' rights has been part of a strategy that sees economic growth as worth almost any cost, and maintains that private investors must be provided all sorts of incentives to allow them to deliver such growth. Any kind of worker protection is seen as something that shackles both investment and growth and thereby inhibits potential wealth creation. This strategy delivered growth (but without creating good jobs) for a while; now even that growth is running out of steam.

Pressure from below has led to some policies designed to improve working people's lives, but only to a very limited extent. The rural employment guarantee programme, for instance, has operated to stabilise wages, especially for female workers. But even that has been run down by the government in the past few years, with spending on the programme falling in most states.

The only "dynamic" private activity that has generated more jobs in the past decade has been construction. However, most construction in India is marked by a lack of concern for minimal standards of worker safety and other basic protections, as in Qatar. Indeed, we don't know how many workers die or are injured while working on sites in India itself, because such data is only haphazardly collected.

Given this context, it is no wonder that the push factors for migration remain so strong. For a while lack of opportunities at home was not enough to drive worker movement because so much of this kind of migration remains demand driven. But there has been a post-recession revival of building work in several Gulf states, and it is particularly evident in Qatar, led by mega-construction for the World Cup. When the sheer pace of construction combines with a desperation on the part of workers willing to make huge sacrifices to improve the living conditions of their families, the result is a massive potential for exploitation.

Migrant workers contribute hugely to the Indian economy, helping to stabilise the balance of payments through their remittances. Yet Indian public policy towards migrants remains woefully lacking. Recognising the rights of migrant workers in Qatar is obviously crucial; but it is just as necessary to recognise the rights of workers in India and reduce the incentive to migrate in the first place.

• This article was amended on 21 February 2014. The headline had said 'World Cup site workers' deaths in Qatar are India's responsibility too'. It now says 'Qatar workers' deaths are India's responsibility too' to reflect the focus of the article on deaths in the construction industry generally in Qatar.

Brazil puts the arts in the pockets of the poor with new cultural coupon scheme

Men concentrate on their dominoes next to a mural by street artist Speto, in São Paulo. The government hopes poorer Brazilians will use the Vale Cultura scheme to broaden their cultural tastes. Photograph: Marcos Issa/Bloomberg/Getty

Like millions of other São Paulo residents, Telma Rodrigues spends a large part of her day going to and from work. She hates the commute, and not just because public transport is packed, slow and inefficient. She finds it boring.

Now there's light at the end of the tunnel. As of last month, the Brazilian government is giving people such as Rodrigues a "cultural coupon" worth $20 a month – enough, the 26-year-old said, to buy a book to enliven her daily ride.

The money, loaded on a magnetic card, is designated for purposes broadly termed cultural – though that could include dance lessons and visits to the circus in addition to books and movie tickets. In a country still battling high levels of poverty, the initiative has won widespread praise as a worthy and yet relatively cheap project. But it has still provoked questions. Is it the state's job to fund culture? How will poor Brazilians use the money? How do you, or even should you, convince people their money will be better spent on Jules Verne rather than Justin Bieber?

"What we'd really like is that they try new things," culture minister Marta Suplicy said in a telephone interview. "We want people to go to the theatre they wanted to go to, to the museum they wanted to go to, to buy the book they wanted to read."

Although it has made significant advances in recent years, the South American nation is still relatively isolated and many of the poorest Brazilians are unsophisticated in their tastes. They pick up an average of just four books a year, including textbooks, and finish only two of them, a study published last year by the São Paulo state government showed. Almost all of Brazil's 5,570 municipalities have a local library, but only one in four has a bookshop, theatre or museum, and only one in nine boasts a cinema, according to government statistics.

When asked what they most like to do in their spare time, 85% of Brazilians answered "watch television".

The rechargeable coupon, known in Portuguese as a Vale Cultura, is available to workers who earn up to $300 a month, or about five times Brazil's minimum wage. So far, 356,000 people have signed up, and government officials hope as many as 42 million could eventually join, helped by firms that enrol their employees and companies who sign up to accept the card in lieu of cash. Several credit card firms are making and distributing the cards.State-run companies are obliged to participate, and ministers are encouraging unions to demand the Vale Cultura as part of their annual wage negotiations.

"This is innovative and cool, and no one in the world is doing anything like it," Suplicy said. "My hope is that it will be revolutionary for culture here. It provides an opportunity for people who never had it and, at the same time, has an impact on cultural production."

Such grand ideological gestures are not uncommon in Brazil, particularly under the Workers' party government that has ruled for the past 11 years. The administration's cash transfer programme, which gives monthly grants of between $15 and $125 for sending a child to school and participating in pre- and post-natal care, has lifted at least 20 million people out of poverty.

A visitor takes in an exhibition at the Banco do Brasil Cultural Centre in Brasília. Photograph: Evaristo Sa/Getty

But the projects are sometimes divisive. Although the cash transfer programme has been replicated all over the developing world – and helped the Workers' party to three consecutive election wins at home – it is seen by some as a golden trap for the poor.

Suplicy pointed out the majority of the money flowing through the Vale Cultura will stay in Brazil and give vital local support. She also stressed, however, that people need time to develop their tastes.

"The point is social inclusion," she said. "But I am under no illusions that it will happen quickly. It is a big challenge, and it is going to take time."

What the Vale Cultura could do is have an immediate impact on democratising access to culture.

At the moment, thousands of films, plays, books and concerts are dependent on corporate sponsorship, and big Brazilian companies invest $800m a year on cultural projects in return for tax breaks. But that money too often goes to the safest and most insipid ideas, said André Forastieri, a cultural commentator at one of Brazil's big TV channels. The Vale Cultura gives power directly to the people.

"The Vale Cultura is not to be celebrated as a huge step forward," Forastieri said. "But it is better than having the money invested by bureaucrats and marketing directors of big companies."

Most people acknowledge that the majority of the money will probably go on what might charitably be described as low culture – self-help books, concert DVDs, and shows or downloads by sexually explicit rappers. But like the culture minister, who thinks people will gradually become more demanding, Forastieri said the first step is getting people involved.

"Rap is considered part of the culture in the US, but 30 years ago they were trying to ban it," he said. "It's stupid to think the money will be spent homogeneously. There's no better and more democratic way than to put the money in the hands of the people to spend it as they want."

And people are seizing that opportunity. One of the most encouraging aspects of the programme is that the most enthusiastic backers are not multinationals, private banks or other big employers. Almost three-quarters of the initial signatories are small family firms, alerted to the idea by their employees.

"My workers told me about it and suggested we sign up," said Mayra Toledo, owner of a patisserie in São Paulo. "I thought it sounded interesting, so I did, and all four of my employees will get it. It's something that is good for them and cheap to do."

Other workers, who like Rodrigues are hopeful of joining the programme, said the money can help them open unexpected doors.

"There are so many ways to spend it,'' said Kath dos Santos, a 26-year-old office worker, who can afford cinema tickets but said that exhibitions and theatre out of reach.

Dear Obama, art history can earn you megabucks. But so what?

The US president has apologised to an art historian for saying her career choice isn't lucrative. But once you raise the issue of money, the deeper value of culture gets left behind

Culturally rich … Obama presents American contemporary artist Jaspar Johns with the Medal of Freedom in 2011. Photograph: AP

Barack Obama has apologised in writing to an art historian after he appeared to disparage the subject in a speech. The president said people could earn more with manufacturing skills "than they might with an art history degree".

He has since explained that he did not mean to run down art history, a subject he loved at school and which has brought him "joy". But it's the old argument all over again: practical v cultural studies, vocational v inspirational education.

I've been hearing this debate all my life. My dad taught design, craft and technology. Was the purpose of such classes to impart skills or to inspire creativity? What about the ideals of William Morris, for whom artistic education was a way to change society? Such educational questions were debated at the dinner table.

I managed to study A levels with almost no practical application – history, English and Latin – and to study history at university. But art history? Wow, that really did sound useless.

I sometimes went to the library of the art history faculty and it seemed full of posh students planning their next fox hunt. Art history at that time was considered a soft degree for the aristocracy – even the monarchy: it is after all what Prince William went to university to study, though he changed to geography.

But this is an out-of-date perception. Today, art history degrees and postgraduate courses are full of students who are anything but idlers. After all, if we're talking careers, if we're talking money – has Obama not read The Birth of the Big, Beautiful Art Market, an essay from Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy by American art critic Dave Hickey?

Auction houses, art galleries and even art magazines all exist to turn art history into cash. The art world is big and booming and it needs knowledgable experts to grease its wheels. If the private sector is not for you, the museums sector also has opportunities for art historians.

It's just inaccurate to define art history as beautiful escapism in today's economy. In these troubled times, the art market has been one of the most resilient industries. Better than working in Detroit, for sure.

Only ... what about that "joy" the President speaks of? What about the power of art to change lives and worlds? As soon as one argues for its pecuniary value, the deeper, human worth of culture is left behind. Modern politics has no words to praise cultural education for its mind-expanding redemptive magic.

Art history can make you rich. But please don't study it for that reason.

Robert Adams: the photographer who roved the prairies for 45 years

On the road … Pikes Peak, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1969. Click for full image. Photograph: Robert Adams

"In common with many photographers," writes Robert Adams in the introduction to The Place We Live, his retrospective at Jeu de Paume in Paris, "I began making pictures because I wanted to record what supports hope: the untranslatable mystery and beauty of the world. Along the way the camera also caught evidence against, and I eventually concluded that this too belonged in pictures if they were to be truthful and useful."

For 45 years, Adams has photographed the American west, its prairies, skies and rivers, its creeping suburbs, highways and malls. He has recorded the epic natural beauty and palpable silence, and the defilement of that beauty by industrialisation, consumerism and pollution. His vision is essentially humane and thus old-fashioned, and both his pictures and writing – he has published several illuminating books of essays – are characterised by a sense of purpose you do not much encounter in photography any more.

His photographs are a kind of testimony: evidence of what has been lost and what remains. But they also ask us fundamental questions about how we live amid the contradictions and compromises of progress. For all that it carries, his work is restrained, suggestive rather than forceful, every black-and-white print at once a world in itself and part of a bigger narrative about man's destructive relationship with nature.

In the American west nature tends towards the epic, and occasionally Adams's small prints – often measuring just 15cmx15cm – echo thepioneering landscape photography of his namesake Ansell Adams. A case in point is North-east of Ketoa, Colorado, 1969, from his earliest series The Plains, 1964-1974 – a distant view of a small settlement beneath a vast, cloud-swept sky. The image introduces the element of silence that is a constant in Adams's work. As he once put it, writing of the great plains: "There is everywhere silence – a silence in thunder, in wind, in the call of doves, even a silence in the closing of a pick-up door." His pictures urge you to listen as well as look closely. In another early series, The New West, 1967-1971, a woman's profile is silhouetted in the window-frame of a prefab house, its stark geometry contrasted by the sweeping curve of a pathway from the front door.

You can see why Adams was included in the influential New Topographics show in 1975 alongside Lewis Baltz and Bernd and Hilla Becher. But as time goes by, he seems the least detached and neutral observer of that generation.

Robert Adams's Burning Oil Sludge, north of Denver, Colorado, 1973-1974. Courtesy the artist, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Matthew Marks Gallery, New York

Divided into nine thematic headings, many of which refer to distinct regions – The Plains, From the Missouri West, The Pacific – the exhibition reveals Adams to be essentially an explorer with a camera. In series such as What We Bought, 1970-1974 or Our Parents, Our Children, 1979-1983, though, he records the cost, both physical and psychological, of American power. An image such as Burning Oil Sludge, north of Denver, Colorado, could in lesser hands be as viscerally overpowering as its title suggests. Instead, Adams's use of distance and scale makes the plume of black smoke arising from an austere plain both epic and intimate. In Our Parents, Our Children, he breaks with his own tradition to home in on people – often passersby – in close up, while the nearby nuclear weapons plant remains an ominous presence.

There are other surprises: a drab room in Ludlow, Missouri, made luminous by a square of sunlight falling on a bed through a curtained window; an old woman looking sternly at his camera in a car park in Denver; a Sunday School reading group gathered outside a church hall beneath a mountain range in Colorado. All suggest a deep attention to everyday life and its underlying rituals.

It is the land, though, that is Adams's abiding subject, whether untamed or defiled. He is a keen walker, and some of his greatest images have sprung from his walking thoughts. In his series Turning Back, 1990-2003, he contemplates the brutal destruction of the tall trees of the American north-west, where an abundance of large stumps testify to the cost of the practice known as clearcutting, which, despite much opposition, has decimated more than 90% of the original forest. "As I recorded these scenes", he writes, "I found myself asking many questions, among them: what of equivalent value have we inherited in exchange for the original forest? ... Does clearcutting originate in disrespect? Does it teach violence? Does it contribute to nihilism? Why did I almost never meet parents walking here with children?" Robert Adams is a humanist and a witness, an artist whose work insists on hope even as it records – and grieves for – a landscape that, in some instances, may soon only exist in his lucid photographs.

• Eurostar's 2 FOR 1 culture offers get you two tickets for the price of one at the Robert Adams exhibition at Jeu de Paume, Paris.

American inmate killed in Israeli prison after shooting guards

Sheinbein was shot dead after he seized a gun and opened fire on three guards, before barricading himself in a prison bathroom Photo: Jack Guez /AFP /Getty

Israeli special forces raided a prison in central Israel on Sunday, killing a notorious prisoner who was serving time for a gruesome murder carried out in the US.

Police identified the inmate as Samuel Sheinbein, an American who fled to Israel after murdering and dismembering another man in Maryland in 1997 and whose case sparked a high-profile row between the two allies.

Police special forces rushed to this prison in central Israel after Sheinbein stole a weapon and shot three guards, wounding two of them seriously. He then barricaded himself inside the compound where a standoff ensued, with counter-terrorism units dispatched to the scene. The inmate then opened fire again, wounding three more guards, before the forces shot him dead, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Hospital officials said one of the wounded guards was fighting for his life. Police and the Israel prison service have opened investigations into the incident. Sheinbein’s lawyers told Israeli TV that their client was under duress and that the Israeli prison service has ignored their warnings.

Sheinbein, 34, was tried in Israel in 1999, two years after he fled to the country and successfully sought refuge from extradition, enraging Maryland authorities and briefly threatening US aid to the Jewish state.

An Israeli court sentenced Sheinbein to 24 years for his killing and dismemberment of 19-year-old Alfredo Enrique Tello Jr. Sheinbein was 17 at the time of the killing and could have faced a life sentence in Maryland. His extradition to Maryland was blocked after a yearlong battle between Israel and the United States over an Israeli law that prohibited it.

Following that embarrassment, Israel changed its laws to allow the extradition of Israeli citizens on condition that they are returned to Israel to serve any sentence imposed.

Sheinbein, of Aspen Hill, Maryland, confessed to strangling Tello with a rope and hitting him several times with a sharp object. Sheinbein then dismembered the body with an electric saw and burned it, authorities said. Another teenager charged in the killing, Aaron Needle, committed suicide while in jail in Maryland.

Sheinbein fled to Israel days after Tello’s remains were found in a garage. He successfully sought refuge under a law that prevented the extradition of Israeli citizens to foreign countries. Sheinbein had only passing contact with Israel, but his father, Saul, was born in the country and Sheinbein qualified for Israeli citizenship.

Israel refused to extradite Sheinbein, prompting protests from senior officials, including then-Attorney General Janet Reno. Some congressmen who had otherwise been friendly to Israel threatened to cut aid in response.

Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, who represented Sheinbein in 1997, bemoaned the “terrible tragedy” that befell the families of both the wounded guards and the shooter and challenged the system for how it has handled her client.

“When he was sentenced, he was 17, without a criminal background, a kid from a normal background,” she said. “It is hard to understand how after all these years in prison it was not able to help him rehabilitate.”

Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler, who tried to extradite Sheinbein back to the US as a state’s attorney in the 1990s, said Sheinbein was a troubled young man whose mental health issues continued into adulthood.

Gansler said the timing of Sheinbein’s prison outburst was most striking because he was close to serving two-thirds of his sentence and becoming eligible for parole.

“He’s on the brink of being released from jail and then he goes on what basically seems to be a suicide rampage,” Gansler said. “So this was a young man who was still very troubled, and this ends a very tumultuous life.”

Gansler said Sheinbein’s death “brings actual closure” to the gruesome Maryland murder case. He expressed sympathy for the families of the Israeli guards, “and hopefully they all survive”

Piers Morgan tries to look on the bright side after CNN chat show axed

Piers Morgan's viewing figures for his primetime CNN show had dropped below 300,000. Photograph: EPA

He is fond of telling people: "One day you're the cock of the walk, the next you're the feather duster." Now Piers Morgan is about to enter another feather duster phase of his career after his primetime US chatshow was axed by CNN.

The former editor of the Daily Mirror, who alienated some of his US audience with his outspoken calls for gun control, was dropped by the news network after his ratings fell as low as 270,000 viewers.

Morgan appeared sanguine about the decision as his exit became public,taking to Twitter to post a link to Monty Python's Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.

Hired by a previous regime at CNN, Morgan, 48, was a surprise choice when he was anointed in late 2010 to succeed legendary US interviewer Larry King, who presented the slot for a quarter of a century.

Morgan had previously been known to US TV viewers for appearances on Americas's Got Talent and the celebrity version of The Apprentice, both on NBC, but as a news interviewer he was an unknown.

Simon Marks, the founder of Washington-based news agency Feature Story News, who previously ran the News Hour programme on US public service network PBS, said: "To be fair to Piers Morgan, CNN should never have hired him for this job, everyone knew it from day one."

Marks said the show had gone from being "presented by one of the most iconic figures in American TV and radio" to being presented by someone unknown to many in the US.

Marks added: "He didn't reinvent himself for the purposes of American TV, he brought the same kind of argument and conversation you would hear in a London wine bar; it just doesn't work like that."

Far from winning over sceptical Americans, Morgan alienated viewers with his calls for stringent gun controls following the December 2012 killings of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.

Hundreds of thousands of people signed a petition calling for Morgan to be deported over the issue, with one of its organisers, Alex Jones, warning him after a shouting match on his show: "Don't try what your ancestors did before."

Morgan admitted that ratings for his show had "taken a bath", falling below 300,000 from an early high of 2 million.

"I am a British guy debating American cultural issues, including guns, which has been very polarising, and there is no doubt that there are many in the audience who are tired of me banging on about it," he told the New York Times at the weekend.

Robin Lustig, the former presenter of Radio 4's The World Tonight who has broadcast extensively in the US, from where he anchored three presidential elections for the World Service, said: "I suspect most people in America don't take kindly to foreigners telling them what's wrong with them. I'm not sure he was the most empathetic of TV hosts, and my suspicion is he gave people the impression he didn't much like America. That was probably the biggest mistake. Alistair Cooke and David Frost, they both made it clear they loved the country. They even began to sound half-American."

It is 10 years since Morgan was sacked by the Mirror for running fake pictures of British soldiers "abusing" Iraqi prisoners, and he has shown a capacity for bouncing back. Married to Daily Telegraph columnist Celia Walden, he still has his ITV chatshow, Life Stories, with the date of the final edition of Piers Morgan Live is yet to be decided. His contract with CNN runs out in September.

Morgan became the News of the World's editor aged just 29, before becoming Daily Mirror editor in 1996. He was questioned in November last year under caution by detectives investigating phone-hacking. A CNN spokeswoman said the interview by police was not a factor in his dismissal. Morgan has always denied any involvement in phone hacking.

Morgan can console himself that, While many British news executives have made it big behind the scenes – former BBC director general Mark Thompson at the New York Times, former ITV News chief Deborah Turness at NBC – , few "Brits abroad" have succeeded as presenters of US television news shows.

"The problem for British journalists working in America is that American journalists take themselves very seriously, to the point of pomposity," said Stephen Claypole, a former senior BBC News and TV news agency executive who is now chairman of consultancy, DMA Media.

"They are not at all knockabout in the way they do things. [Morgan] has always been a pretty bumptious character. That was part of his success at a very young age."

Morgan's troubles also reflected wider issues at CNN, which blazed a trail when it was founded by Ted Turner in 1980 but has found itself trailing in the ratings and struggled to establish an identity between its rivals – the rightwing Fox News and the liberal-leaning MSNBC.

Plus there were barriers Morgan could do little about. The New York Times writer David Carr wrote: "Old hands in the television news business suggest that there are two things a presenter cannot have: an accent or a beard."

Richard Sambrook, professor of journalism at Cardiff University and a former director of the BBC World Service, said: "It's revealing that for all this talk about global media and the rest of it, it's his accent that was picked up as opposed to whether his interviews were any good.

"For middle America, it is a deeply cultural thing: these things do matter."

For the moment it is his longstanding rival, Jeremy Clarkson, who has the upper hand. "I'm feeling strangely contented this morning," tweeted the Top Gear presenter on Monday. "I wonder if something wonderful has happened somewhere … I understand that Nigerian TV is looking for a new chatshow host. Anyone got any suggestions?"

Morgan himself claimed to have noticed some schadenfreude, tweeting later: "Amusing @BBCNews coverage of my CNN show ending just now. Thought the reporter was actually going to burst out laughing with glee."

Harold Ramis, Ghostbusters star and Groundhog Day director, dies aged 69

The actor and writer-director, known for playing Egon Spengler in the Ghostbusters films and for directing comedies such as Groundhog Day and Caddyshack, died earlier today

Actor, director and writer Harold Ramis, who died aged 69 today. Photograph: Rahav Segev/WireImage

Harold Ramis, who helped catch phantoms in Ghostbusters and directedBill Murray to glory in Groundhog Day, has died at the age of 69. A leading light of 80s American comedy, Ramis had been suffering from autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis for several years.

Born in Chicago, Ramis worked as a teacher and journalist before teaming up with comedians John Belushi and Bill Murray for the wildly successful National Lampoon Radio Hour in 1973. The crew later branched out into film with National Lampoon's Animal House in 1978. Following Belushi's death from a drug overdose, Ramis and Murray went onto star alongside Dan Ackroyd in the 1984 hit Ghostbusters.

Ramis (left) with his Ghostbuster co-stars Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd in 1984. Photograph: SNAP/Rex Features

Ramis made his directing debut with 1980's Caddyshack, though his best-loved picture remains 1993's Groundhog Day, starring Murray as a self-absorbed TV weatherman. In 2006 the comedy was added to the US National Film Registry as a "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" work of cinema.

Ramis enjoyed another box office hit in with the 1999 Mafia comedy Analyse This, starring Billy Crystal and Robert De Niro. On screen he appeared in Knocked Up, Year One and the Oscar-winning As Good As it Gets.

At the peak of his success, Ramis would claim that his anarchic, freewheeling comic style was inspired both by an early love of the Marx brothers and a brief, post-college job working at a Missouri mental institution. "It prepared me for when I went out to Hollywood to work with actors," he explained. "And not just with actors. It was good training for just living in the world."

• Hadley Freeman: Harold Ramis was the GrandDude of comedy
• Harold Ramis: a career in clips 
• 20 years of Groundhog Day
• Hadley Freeman: Why Ghostbusters is my favourite film

• This article was amended on Monday 24 February 2014. We originally said that Harold Ramis appeared in High Fidelity, when his scenes were removed from the final edit. This has been corrected.