Southern Railways usually do a pretty good job of running trains to and from London and Brighton. But the past few weeks have been horrendous. I’ll forgive snow disruption reluctantly (although not the website being down due to demand as people were desperate to get info) but signal failures, fatalities causing total chaos and general …
Last year I started what I suspect will become a bit of a tradition. I named my 5 favourite new songs of 2007. I was loose in my definition of new. This year, ‘new’ means new: all but one of the songs was published in 2008. So here you go: my top five new songs …
Mark Steel is the Jeremy Clarkson of the left. Just cleverer. And funnier. And not so naff. And much better dressed. Steel’s book, What’s Going On? is hilarious but as a humour book it’s strangely unsatisfactory. It’s about the degeneration of a relationship, the decline of the left as a force in British politics and …
When it comes to showbiz, I like schmaltz. I’ve liked schmaltz even more since I learnt it was a jewish/yiddish term for goose, chicken or pork fat. That’s what you need to add a bit of fun, luxury, shine and excitement to a dish. Showbiz is the same. I like schmaltz. So, I’ve been enjoying …
If you’re looking for a thoughtful gift for the geek in your life with a love of the arcane, I recommend you seek out a copy of Enquire within upon Everything for them. There are plenty on eBay. First published in 1856, and selling more than a million copies in dozens of editions, it’s one …
Enquire within upon everything… a perfect gift for geeks. Read More »
Very much the “Anything Goes” version of the Cole Porter classic. Rather than any of the rude ones where, well, anything goes.
This morning I learnt that a school chum has published a novel. Not a close friend or anything but being a curious kind of person I popped over to Amazon buy it: Who is Charlie Conti? by Claus von Bohlen. And while I was there I tought, “well, I’d better get Richard Mason’s new book …
Blame my mum for the fact I know this song. She had a Dr Hook tape and I think it got played quite a lot when I was wee. Well, blame my mum and Radio 2. Radio 2 still plays their tape. So, here’s my homage to that great song ‘When you’re in love with …
Pulp. I just love Pulp and one song will come to that desert island when I’m famous enough and I think it’s probably gonna be this one. Oh Jarvis. Where would I be now? Where would I be now, if we’d never never met? Would I be blogging this song somewhere else instead? And I’m …
After the great song from REM, that I listened to way too much in 1993: Part of my ongoing homage to Graphjam and Indexed.
I’m not that proud for noticing this: I’m not the lovely Lynne Truss and I fully accept that we all make typos. In general, I’m pretty forgiving. But I couldn’t resist pointing out this tiny mistake from the Costa Book Awards. They really ought to know better after all.