Author Archives: Paul

We were at a party and Katie Grogan was quite drunk. I used to work with Katie and the sister in question was Clare Grogan, lead singer of Altered Images. Clare had just split up with some awful bloke and Katie mistakenly believed that I was a nice person. I looked at Clare who was […]

Sir Roger Bannister died yesterday, aged 88. The first person in history to run a mile in under four minutes, he then enjoyed an illustrious career in medicine and was Master of Pembroke College, Oxford. But at my school, “Bannister” meant the Roger Bannister Sports Centre in Harrow, named after him because he was a […]

Toys R Us went into administration this week. Of course, it’s awful for the 3,000 people who could now lose their jobs but Toys R Us have had this coming for years. When my children were small, I went there countless times and detested every visit. Grim, soulless hangars designed to take you past long […]

Heavy snow in March. Weirder still is playing a Christmas song when, according to the calendar, it’s practically spring. Except this isn’t a Christmas song. No mention of Christmas whatsoever. Just cold, snowy weather and a desire to keep warm. So not weird for today but perfectly appropriate.

Minus four in London and even colder in other parts of the country. We even had a “blizzard” yesterday in Soho. Fierce while it lasted but five minutes later, the sun was shining. Americans have long been fascinated by Britons’ obsession with the weather because, compared with them, we don’t really have any. Temperatures regularly […]

To the Reggae Comes to London exhibition at Peckings Record store in Askew Road, Shepherds Bush. I hadn’t been there for about 20 years and assumed it must have closed down but no, I was delighted to discover that it’s still run by Duke and Chris, two sons of George “Peckings” Price, the original owner […]

This was the brilliant headline on a KFC ad that appeared this week. KFC were apologising for having to close 600 stores temporarily because they didn’t have any chicken. Back in the 90s, I briefly lived in Greenwich. This was before the O2, the Jubilee line and other aspects of civilisation arrived in SE10. Very […]

Whenever I’m in Bethnal Green, I call in at Pellicci’s cafe. I have done for about 30 years. Ideally at around 12.45 on a Friday to share a table with a local character known as Jukebox Jimmy and his friend, Mel the cabbie. Jimmy and I struck up an instant rapport because we were both […]

82-year-old Gillian Reynolds has just started a new job as radio critic of The Sunday Times after more than 40 years at the Daily Telegraph. I sat next to her once at an awards dinner and she was fabulous. About 75 at the time, she was bright, funny, contemporary and curious. She made me unafraid […]

Last night, I finally got to see Gary Oldman playing Churchill in Darkest Hour. It was possibly the finest performance I’ve ever seen from any actor in anything. How this skinny bloke from a Deptford council estate transformed himself into Winston Churchill is almost miraculous and it’d be a travesty if he doesn’t get an […]