Author Archives: Paul

I met my friend Robin Easterby this morning for breakfast at a cafe in Kensal Rise called Gracelands. We were surrounded by young mums sipping artisan lattes, with toddlers either sitting with colouring books or in 4×4 buggies. When I was child, I told him, the mummies of Kensal Rise were far from yummy. They […]

One of my earliest memories is the birth of my sister Caroline. As soon as my dad had left for work, one of my other siblings was despatched down the road to fetch my Auntie Bet and to call the midwife (in that order). Someone no doubt called out for some hot towels then, very […]

£32.7 million, to be precise. But it’s hard to feel much sympathy. When Wonga first launched, they asked me to write some ads for them. I didn’t know anything about them and went along to meet one of the partners. He was bright, urbane and professional but when he calmly outlined their obscene interest rates, […]

And yet Tom Jones, Ray Davies and George Benson are the headline acts at this year’s Greenwich Music Festival. I’m a huge fan of all three but I honestly don’t know if their continued stardom is a good thing. What does it say about contemporary talent that these old troupers should still be headlining so […]

Described as The Thinking Person’s Desert Island Discs, this wonderful programme this week celebrates its twentieth anniversary. The guests are usually highbrow, highly intelligent luminaries from the arts. I’ve seldom heard of any of either them or the pieces of music they choose. But that’s the reason I love it. Without this programme, I’d never […]

And if you have an independent record shop near you, there are two ways you can support it. Either by buying records from them, or by giving records to them. This morning, I took a crate of unwanted vinyl down to Flashback Records in Crouch End. It’s a great little shop, straight out of a […]

Here’s a minor hit from 1987 by a band fronted by my old friend Steve Elson. When it made the charts, everyone remarked how much like The Rolling Stones they sounded. So Steve had a brilliant idea – disband Broken English and form The Counterfeit Stones, the best tribute band you will ever see. I […]

It’s a documentary about a rock stars’ agent called Shep Gordon who’s led the sort of life that will make you feel you haven’t lived at all. Yes, it’s sex, drugs and rock n roll but what makes it so different is that, by all accounts, Shep Gordon is one of kindest and most decent […]

Hard to imagine but he’s 65 today. I don’t think any solo performer has ever caused more teenage hysteria than David Cassidy. Thousands of girls besieged Heathrow Airport when he first arrived in 1972. When he appeared at White City Stadium, the stampede to get to the stage was so bad that more than 600 […]

Before Brad Friedel or Tim Howard, Kasey Keller was the first American goalkeeper to play in the Premier League. He made his name at Millwall before moving on to Leicester City, Tottenham and Fulham. Though I’ll always remember him for referring to away games as “on the road” which sounded cool and quirky in his […]