It has a pleasant sound, including Dylan’s voice, but there isn’t an original phrase in it. Even the titles, I contain multitudes, Crossing the Rubicon and others are taken from elsewhere. You can see this as […]

I know we live in strange times, but I didn’t expect a sincere tribute to Dame Vera on Twitter from…. Hawkwind. (I think they did a charity concert together.)

RIP Vera 😢…..A great singer, a lovely lady….It was an honour to to share a stage… pic.twitter.com/70hZ0H08f4

— Hawkwind (@HawkwindHQ) June 18, 2020

Well, a lot of people do think sports players are creative, to the point where some get quite annoyed with people like me who can’t see it. And there was probably more creativity in Tommy Cooper’s conjuring tha […]

The same happens to a lot of writers. How many people could go beyond The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, A Clockwork Orange, Lucky Jim, Portnoy’s Complaint or Lord of the Flies in listing the works of their w […]

I don’t know. I’m not sure of your point, to be honest. Certain cases will get publicity, and it can’t simply be because race or class, as there instances of killings and abuse of people from many different […]

I don’t know the money involved, but a lot of police effort went, eventually, into finding the killers of Stephen Lawrence and Damilola Taylor, for example. And the killing of Victoria Climbie, led to an enquiry […]

I was looking at Tim Brooke-Taylor’s Wikipedia page and came across the fact that the three future Goodies made a short film with Orson Welles, which, like so much he did, was never completed or released. This is […]

About one hour into Boris Johnson’s meeting with the House of Commons Liaison Committee, Robert Halfon starts asking questions. I hope I’m not imagining it, but surely that’s Sweep on the bookshelf behind him. Can […]

I am a big fan of both Sonny Rollins and Wayne Shorter, but I only realised recently that they are three years apart in age. They do seem to be of different generations, but I’m not quite sure why. Maybe Rollins’s […]

I’d say nothing. Johnson plays at being Bertie Wooster, and thinks Cummings is his Jeeves. The others are clearly the Drones.

Although I think they are both turning out to be Spode – the supposed strong man who […]

I think that’s exactly right – he’s a salesman who can’t sell himself. I’d add that from the accounts I’ve read of his character, he reminds me of a couple of people I met when I worked for a few large public sect […]

Coincidentally, I got an email today from Lakeland entitled Cook anything with Cobb. That’s a pretty good summary of his career, although amusingly it was in fact advertising a barbeque.

Rick Beato’s tribute is […]

Yes, that is definitely the way to kill off the “them and us” argument.

By the way, I am told that Loose Women turned against Johnson over this today. Not exactly the “Westminster Bubble”.

Ozzy Osbourne is one. I don’t really follow sport, but there doesn’t seem to be much imagination in a lot of the nicknames there either: Phil Tufnell – Tuffers; Henry Blofeld – Blowers; Ian Wright – Wrighty.

Don’t think much of this spokesman Cummings has put up.

I’d go further and say it’s the one thing she should be admired for – not going along with the unspoken pressure to change your accent if you want to get on. I don’t suppose we’ll ever get away from people be […]

There is a surprising amount of social observation, wit and satire in Country:

Deana Carter – Did I shave my legs for this?
Kinky Friedman – They don’t make Jews like Jesus any more

Someone we know was in touch over the weekend. She works for an organisation which puts on events of various sorts , for individuals or companies. They have been told they can’t really expect any business of that […]

I remember Showaddywaddy and Darts, and they seemed to be harking back to a distant era In fact, music that was less than twenty years old. I found the same when I got into jazz and read about the trad revival – […]

Maybe I should have said “stayed” rather than lived. It was a couple of periods of about six months a few years ago, although I’ve been back a few times since for shorter periods. I am married to a sort of Indian […]