The spy novels of Mick Herron. I picked up one of his Jackson Lamb novels from the library just before lockdown and now I’m hooked. It’s like discovering a new band and finding out they have a whole back catalogue […]

The amount of swearing in modern chart music is one of my great bugbears – and I realise what a grumpy old prude that makes me sound. Over a third of the tracks in the current UK Top 40 playlist on Spotify have […]

Not so much a television filming location as a Word magazine shoot location.

A few years after I moved on from a London job, there was a work reunion planned for a Saturday evening. The venue was a pub in […]

It’s the logo for the For Britain Movement – described by Wikipedia as a ‘minor far-right political party’. Set up by former UKIP leadership candidate Anne Marie Waters (whom Morrissey has previously spoken in […]

Agree with the comments above that it is too long. And yes that is partly because they threw the kitchen sink at it, but also due to some long talky bits that could have been handled with more economy. The comic […]

Nu metal – voluminous jeans with a chain wallet; chequered Vans; on the top half, a black short-sleeve shirt with flames around the edges, or a white shirt with Avril Lavigne-style school tie.

I think it was Al Needham on chart music who said he misheard the lyric as “no bums” and took it to be a defiant statement of heterosexuality.

I share your sentiments re. Tory voting but having met Harrington a few times and seen him at work in his constituency I like him a great deal.

Silly me for saying ‘coined’ when I meant ‘quoted’ *slaps wrist*

…not that I’m unduly worried about the careers of the erstwhile X-Factor contestants turned kids’ TV presenters Sam and Mark, nor indeed what my 7 year-old is going to watch on a Friday evening. But it’s example […]

…but there is already a live programme on CBBC on Friday evenings with silly games, sketches and prizes hosted by the exact same presenters. My son loves Friday Night Wind Up with Sam and Mark. This strikes me […]

I just sought out this thread again after a year of thoroughly enjoying the Chart Music podcast. I’ve even started bunging them $3 a month through Patreon. I wasn’t really expecting anything in return, it just […]

14 in 1990. Baggy. Voluminous jeans, mustard-coloured hooded top, beads, straggly hair. I thought I looked like Shaun Ryder in the Step On video. I looked like Harry Enfield in the Kevin the Teenager sketches.

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I’d like to think it still is, the same way you like to imagine your childhood street has been perfectly preserved – I can picture the old turnstile being exactly how I left it, the gents urinal basically being a […]

I’ve fallen in and out of love with football over the years, but as someone who didn’t grow up in a football household or with football mates, never really felt I did it properly. Even at the peak of my foo […]

More to the point, for me: do the Daleks not remember where Earth is? Surely they can land at any time without waiting to be summoned? (Apologies if this was covered in the episode, I had to keep breaking off to […]

That was worth it for Derek Jacobi reading the CBeebies Bedtime Story (around the 5:30 mark). NSFW!

I watched A Star Is Born last night – not what I was expecting at all. The title and the inclusion of Lady Gaga led me to expect jazz hands, but the film was a wobblily shot and moving portrayal of addiction with […]

Teeth, Animal, Pepper, Lips, Zoot

Fairbrass, Fairbrass, Manzoni

Corr, Corr, Corr, Corr

I’ve remembered another. I used to work for a community organisation that often put on neighbourhood ‘fun days’. These would typically involve local interest groups – the Rotary society, the WI etc – exhibiting […]