Author Archives: Paul

Former singer of The Seekers, 74 today. She and I share a birthday, albeit quite a few years apart. We all tend to know which, if any, celebrities share our birthdays. So I’ve always known that Judith Durham shared mine. Though for years, I wanted someone a bit cooler. Then it transpired that Tom Cruise […]

By all accounts, including this one, one of the nicest people who could wish to meet. He presented Film ’72 until it became Film ’99 and he was unceremoniously dropped by the BBC. He was immediately snapped up by Sky and free to voice commercials, which is how I came to meet him. He was […]

So Theresa May has come to a quite desperate arrangement with the DUP to prop up her minority government. There are understandable concerns because this move is seen to favour the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland over the Catholic minority in what is still a very fragile patina of peace. Growing up in the 70s, […]

Tiny flimsy microcars, two wheels at the front, one at back and powered (if that’s the right word) by a single cylinder engine more suitable for a scooter. Yet bubble cars were the height of 1960s urban cool. My cousin Colin had one and I remember the thrill (though not the obvious danger) of him […]

Just when you thought the UK political situation couldn’t get any worse, up pops Ed Miliband sitting in for Jeremy Vine all this week on Radio 2. The latest in a line of creepy losers trying to convince us that he’s not just a dull politician. But he is. They all are, none more so […]

In the news this week for all the wrong reasons. A Muslim-hating monster drove a van on to the pavement near the mosque, trying to mow down as many congregants as possible. Finsbury Park is about ten minutes for me. It’s a truly mixed community where people from all parts of the world, all creeds […]

34 degrees in London today. The last time this happened in June was in the famously hot summer of 1976. When this, featuring a very young Jerry Hall, was high in the charts. At the time, the title seemed very appropriate. Because if you made physical contact with another human being, this is what tended […]

I loved the whole album. In 1984, we all did. Sade’s Diamond Life seemed the acme of smooth sophistication. More than any other album, it signalled the UK shaking off the shackles of the seventies. Diamond Life sold millions and made Sade Adu, the band’s singer (Sade was always the name of the band) an […]

The Big Yin has been knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List. And as anyone who has ever seen him live will attest, the man is a natural comedy genius. And apparently he always was. Many years before this record went to No.1, my Uncle Pat – my dad’s brother-in-law – worked with Billy Connolly […]

Just thinking about Adam West who died at the weekend aged 88. He of course played Batman in the original 60s TV series. This made him something of a kitsch cult figure but he was much more than that. He was hugely influential. He and the series may have been as light and silly as […]