Author Archives: Paul

Never a great singer, he was nonetheless a huge star in the early 60s, in that strange post-rock’n’roll, pre-Beatles era. This is probably the only good record he ever made but he was a smart and resourceful survivor. He came from nothing, lived on his wits and never, ever gave up. When the “singing” career […]

…used to have regular comedy nights. The pub was five minutes from me so I went quite a lot. One night they introduced a surprise guest – Robin Williams, Hollywood superstar and the most famous stand-up comedian in the world. He was in London promoting a movie and just wanted to try out some new […]

…can be inexplicable. I remember an American writer saying to me, “But you guys don’t even have weather”. In the US they suffer real extremes of hot and cold, as well as have hurricanes, floods and earthquakes. How they must laugh every time they see the UK brought to a standstill by a light flurry […]

What were they thinking of? Having him sitting in for Graham Norton yesterday morning. John Bishop is a great stand-up and a very funny man. But with his thick accent and poor diction, he was a disastrous choice for a radio presenter. Unfortunately, it now seems that if you’re famous for something other than presenting […]

One of the best bits of “Boyhood” is when Ethan Hawke’s character makes his son a CD which he calls The Black Album – a compilation of tracks by John, Paul, George and Ringo post-Beatles. This morning, myself and four like-minded anoraks have been compiling our own Black Albums and debating which tracks should be […]

August 2014 is a very unusual month. It contains five weekends: five Fridays, five Saturdays and five Sundays. This hasn’t happened for more than 800 years and it will be another 800 years before it happens again. So in celebration of the number five, it seems only right to revive the work of Five Star. […]

A couple of years ago, I had to pick my daughter up from a party. She came out with three other girls and I agreed to drop them all off home. I dropped one in Islington and the next day, I notice she’s left her purse in the car. My daughter texts her and the […]

And commemorations are everywhere. If I’m honest, I’m finding the BBC’s Great Warfest – an opportunistic theme park of death and suffering – just a little distasteful. Countless songs have been written about the evil futility of war and this one is perennially powerful. Written about Vietnam, of course, but its sentiments can be applied […]

It’s amazing. If you don’t already know, it was shot over a period of twelve years using the same actors, so we see them actually age during the course of the film. The actor who plays the central character, whose boyhood we follow, is six when the film begins and eighteen when it ends. It’s […]

One of the most adroit broadcasters this country ever produced has died, aged just 59. In the 1980s, Mike Smith was everywhere. Star Breakfast Show DJ at Capital Radio, quickly poached by Radio 1 where he went on to present their Breakfast Show too, plus a whole host of TV shows including Live Aid. In […]