Author Archives: Paul

……so here’s a heartwarming tale. I used to spend a lot of my lunch hours and even more of my money in a tiny second hand record shop just off Tottenham Court Road called Rocks Off. It was run by a voluble Irishman and his gormless looking assistant. This creature never spoke or served customers. […]

….so they could enjoy the day with their families. My mate Pete was a milkman and one Christmas Eve, as we carried him out of the pub at midnight, he announced that he had to go straight to the depot to do his round. We got him there and somehow managed to get him out […]

Every Christmas, along with an implausible plot and a some hideous revelation, the snow falls on Albert Square. So we somehow still believe that a white Christmas in London is the norm, when there hasn’t actually been one for 43 years. It would be nice, just once, to have a sprinkling of snow on Christmas […]

……within earshot of “Doc”, our evil, wheelchair-bound maths teacher. He was the strictest, cruellest member of staff in a school where there was some pretty tough competition. Doc was a religious zealot whose beliefs, as is always the case, brought him neither comfort nor joy. Every Christmas, he would deliver a bitter and morbid lecture […]

I did last year. Pulled over on the Harrow Road after going to see Ivy and Basil. They’re a Jamaican couple who used to live round the corner and Ivy was one of my mum’s oldest friends. Their house is always full of music, laughter and far too many decorations. I go every Christmas and […]

Nat King Cole’s version is definitive one – the one we all adore but have savoured a hundred times before. Sometimes it’s good to try a different recipe. Last night I tried one of those Heston Blumenthal mini-Christmas puddings with the clementine hidden inside and it was gorgeous. The Christmas Song made to this recipe […]

If it’s a person you want for Christmas, you have to ask that person yourself. This is the one time of the year when you can be a bit bolder than usual. What’s the worst that can happen? Your entreaty will be declined. But what if it isn’t? What if those feelings are mutual? What […]

That we became a more caring, sharing society under the Tories. Not that the Thatcher government can take any credit – they just happened to be in power when Bob Geldof changed the world. It’s impossible to exaggerate the effect this record had. Yes, there had always been sponsored walks and people sitting in bathtubs […]

In the late 80s, her Sunday night show on Radio 1 was essential listening. Miss P was the first DJ to bring reggae to a national audience and, because her programme was on quite late, she played a lot of Lover’s Rock. This slower, more romantic style of reggae was perfect for an end-of-the weekend […]

He was a strict old-fashioned Irish priest who taught us Latin and, not surprisingly, seldom mentioned the UK singles chart. But when the Christmas chart of 1973 featured, not just Slade, T.Rex and Alvin Stardust, but a bunch of folkies singing an ancient medieval carol entirely in Latin, he told us that this was proof […]