Author Archives: Paul

I urge you to watch “Bros: After the Screaming Stops” on iPlayer. As my friend Andy Mac urged me. Words cannot express how ignorant, pretentious and ludicrously self-important the Goss brothers are. Andy compared it to The Office and Spinal Tap but, whereas they were spoofs, this is for real. It’s simultaneously hilarious and tragic […]

The lovely June Whitfield died a few days ago, aged 93. She was one of a shrinking number of UK celebrities who have been continuously famous since the 1960s. They’ve never retired and are still very much in the public eye. They are as follows: The Rolling Stones, Michael Caine, Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, Alan […]

I’ve always been a big fan of Alan Carr and I loved his choice of book on Desert Island Discs yesterday. Alongside the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, he chose the Argos catalogue. Before the internet, all children – and I suspect, adults – would pore over it just before Christmas and put […]

Obviously not the way he runs Sports Direct, in the manner of a cruel Victorian mill owner. Or the way he runs Newcastle United. He cynically invests just enough to keep them in the Premier League, so the TV and sponsorship millions keep rolling in. But he refuses to spend those millions on players who […]

…was the bass player in Cockney Rebel. I got to know him through my art director and it was at my New Year’s Eve party that he met and fell in love with my friend Rachel. They got married and, exactly thirty years ago, were en route to New York for their honeymoon aboard Pan […]

This morning Shaun Keaveny hosted the BBC 6 Music breakfast show for final time. Droll, intelligent and very funny, he’s to be replaced by Lauren Laverne. Meanwhile, on Radio 2, Chris Evans is to be replaced by Zoe Ball and Simon Mayo by Sara Cox. As everybody knows, the BBC is pursuing a blatantly discriminatory […]

The death of Pete Shelley, ex-frontman of The Buzzcocks, has been widely mourned. Particularly among more middle-class commentators. He was described on Radio 4 as a “genius” and one of the greatest songwriters ever. People seemed bemused, almost angry, that The Buzzcocks didn’t enjoy a lot more chart success. I liked The Buzzcocks and bought […]

Not me, obviously, but a caller to 606, Five Live’s football phone-in. “And I can tell you now”, he continued, “that Mark Hughes will never be a successful football manager. He’s a depressive. You can see it in his body language, in the way he speaks, in everything he does. He’s okay when things are […]

God, I hate that programme. I’ve just accidentally caught a bit of it on Radio 4 and it’s brought me out in hives. It’s such a petty, parsimonious little programme about things like avoiding tax on your savings, the pros and cons of switching energy suppliers and the folly of not having a pension. Its […]

But I have a funny feeling – haven’t you – that we may not have heard the end of it.