Author Archives: Paul

I saw Bohemian Rhapsody last night, the Freddie Mercury biopic. Pretty dismal – apart from Rami Malek’s electrifying portrayal of Freddie – but it reminded me of something I’d forgotten. When Bohemian Rhapsody was released, the BBC said it was too long, too complex to be a single and refused to play it. The British […]

Lewis Hamilton won the World F1 title for the fifth time yesterday but the first Briton to do so was Mike Hawthorn in 1958. Having retired from motor racing, he was killed in a road accident the following year. In the 1980s, there was a programme called The Rock’n’Roll Years. Brilliantly simple format: News footage […]

Not for its idea but for what it was advertising. Double Page spread in the Evening Standard for Billy Joel at Wembley Stadium in June 2019. Run that past me again. Double page spread. Billy Joel. Wembley Stadium. In eight months’ time? I love Billy Joel. I saw him at the Hammersmith Odeon around 1990 […]

In the 1980s, Hoover were in trouble. They had two UK factories – one in Perivale, West London and one in South Wales. The Perivale factory was successful and profitable but the one in South Wales was a nightmare. The workforce were always on strike and the whole plant was haemorrhaging cash. Hoover couldn’t afford […]

Always my favourite day of the week because as a children because it meant both Top of the Pops and Blue Peter. Britain’s all-time favourite kids’ TV programme celebrated its sixtieth birthday last week. I was lucky enough to catch it in the 1970s when it was presented by the Holy Trinity of Valerie Singleton, […]

Until yesterday, I was working on the tills at Sainsbury’s in Muswell Hill. Along with practically every other customer of the store. For years, we’ve been manning the self-service checkouts and we weren’t even getting paid. Not any more. I’ve handed in my notice. If we all quit our zero-hours, zero-salary jobs, greedy supermarkets will […]

For 2018 anyway. We’ve enjoyed a long, glorious summer and even yesterday it was still warm enough to wear shorts. But all summer, we’ve been assailed by a visually unpleasant triple whammy. Pale bald men in shorts and open-toed sandals. Head, legs, feet, ugh! The bald head, of course, cannot be helped and when it […]

Family party at the weekend. My niece Claire, despite looking about 23, turned 40. When she was a baby, we all sang this to her. Of course we did. It was a sweet, heartwarming song that Gilbert O’Sullivan famously wrote about his manager’s toddler daughter for whom he used to babysit. It went to No.1 […]

To the surprise of absolutely no-one, a failed politician secures himself a highly lucrative position within an organisation to whose values he was supposedly opposed. Nick Clegg isn’t an evil man – just vain, unprincipled and easily seduced by money and power. As leader of the Lib-Dems, he apparently couldn’t believe his luck in forming […]

I have no desire to live out in Barnet, Whetstone or Woodside Park. Though I sometimes envy those who do. Because while we who board the tube later at Highgate, Archway or Kentish Town always have to stand, they’re smugly seated, already reading their copies of the Daily Mail. This morning, I became obsessed with […]