Category Archives: Worlds Shortest Radio Show

I was a late convert to his Sunday night show on Radio 2 but made sure I caught the last one a few weeks ago because I had a feeling we would never hear him broadcast again. He played the standards – Frank, Dean, Nat, Ella and complemented the songs with gentle anecdotes about those […]

……I didn’t drive. I didn’t go on the train. I cycled, as part of a big London-Brighton ride in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital. Did I do it for charity or for personal vanity? Probably a bit of both. When I finally pedalled, leaden-legged, on to the seafront, this is the track that came […]

What? You didn’t realise this was all about God? So when he says “I’m right here on my knees”, what did you think he was talking about? Actually, don’t answer that.

I’m sure, like me, you loved “Summertime” by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince which made Will a pop star before he became a movie star. But wouldn’t you just like the classic backing track over which he rapped? Then you can make up your own words. Or not. Just find a sunlounger, lie […]

And my suave teenage son is taking his girlfriend there. He tells me they’ve even got a DJ so I immediately shout “Boom, boom acka lacka lacka boom!” He sighs heavily and looks at me with a mixture of contempt and pity so I explain: “When I was a club DJ in the 80s….” This […]

Trev is probably the last of the “famous admen”, whose renown spread way beyond the advertising industry. Despite founding a very successful agency and making a fortune, he’s always been quite indifferent to money. Even when he had very little, I remember him spending it on experiences rather than on conventional possessions. In his opinion, […]

Every heterosexual teenage boy who ever heard this record hoped that his first carnal experience would be something like this. Of course, it never was. You’re a kid, a woman like this is way out of your league – you’re too young. Then many summers later, you hear it again and realise that the 31 […]

Today, I think it has to be Terry, a part- time pub singer who changed his name to Matt Monro and became arguably the greatest interpreter of popular song this country has ever produced. The pub where he was discovered, The Boston Arms in Tufnell Park, is just down the road from me and on […]

…..that turned me off the Notting Hill Carnival. Once the area’s affluent new residents began referring to it as “carnival” and comparing it to fiestas they’d attended in tiny Tuscan villages, it was all over for me. Back in the day, when the floats trundled past the end of my road, the carnival was a […]

As long as both personas are lovely, as is the case with Dianne Larrington. An upstanding member of her community, she works with young people, often from quite challenging backgrounds. She hardly drinks, seldom swears and is a paragon of kindness and virtue. But….every year at the Notting Hill Carnival her alter ego comes out […]