Author Archives: Paul

When HR departments were called “Personnel”, before humans were just “resources”, they seemed much kinder and more concerned about employees’ welfare. In the 90s, I worked for an ad agency with a wonderful Head of Personnel. One day, she made me bring in my Post Office savings book and, appalled that there was only about […]

Robert Mugabe is one of the most vile, corrupt and murderous despots the world was ever known. He’s ruled Zimbabwe for 37 years, during which time he’s destroyed the economy of what was once one of Africa’s proudest and most prosperous nations. Zimbabweans are gentle people but they’ve had enough. The military have removed him […]

….to be 90 today so Happy Birthday to Sir Ken Dodd. I went to see him a few years ago with my friend Brian Jenkins. Neither of us particularly enjoyed his act but we enjoyed the fact that we were seeing the last of the great music hall performers. It was as you would expect: […]

Hearing John McCarthy on Radio 4 last night reminded me of DJ-ing at his release party back in the early 90s. For anyone who may have forgotten, John McCarthy was a journalist working in Beirut in 1986 when he was captured by terrorists and held captive for more than five years. His girlfriend Jill Morrell […]

Is there anyone in the world who didn’t know this? And his, shall we say, “direct” approach to any young man who took his fancy? I thought Kevin Spacey’s sexuality was about as secret as Frankie Howard’s toupee. “Francis” was another charismatic entertainer around whom attractive young men weren’t exactly safe, but he operated in […]

Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols was released 40 years ago today. And since then we’ve had constant commemorations of punk because it was a largely middle-class thing. And the kids who embraced it grew up to be cultural commentators for The Guardian, or commissioning editors for the BBC. That said, Never Mind […]

Long before I started collecting singles obsessively, my mum, dad and three older sisters bought them regularly so my house was full of them even before I was born. I learned to stack them and play them when I was about four and I haven’t stopped doing that to this day. One of my favourites […]

The south of England woke up to scenes of natural devastation not witnessed before or since. In the great storm of 1987, thousands of trees came down, cars were crushed and 22 people were killed. The storm raged most ferociously between 2am and 5am. Imagine if it had been between 2pm and 5pm – how […]

Just finished reading This is Going to Hurt, Adam Kay’s hilarious but often horrifying account of working as a junior doctor. It reminded me that, whenever I DJ’d a doctors’ or nurses’ party, they were particularly wild. Given the highly pressurised and life-or-death nature of their work, it was no surprise that off duty, they’d […]

This was the name used for Disney World in Florida when it was being constructed. I first went there when I was in the mid-1980s and it was fantastic. I returned about 25 years later once my two children were old enough to appreciate it. They absolutely hated it. In that time, Disney World had […]