Category Archives: Worlds Shortest Radio Show

For my wife, no TV show is complete without a panel of judges. I seldom watch these programmes, so I’ve only just discovered that Boy George has replaced Tom Jones on The Voice. Much better. Tom was always so handsome, such a huge star with such an amazing voice that he never developed much of […]

Huge, lumbering and largely empty, buses are the bane of many Londoners’ lives. I know, I know – it’s “wrong” to criticise such a wealth of public transport but you could sometimes walk from Marble Arch to Oxford Circus on the roofs of stationary buses. Now it’s been confirmed that a London bus moves more […]

I don’t want to tempt fate but Desmond Carrington will be 90 this year and still hosts “The Music Goes Round” every Friday on Radio 2. He can’t go on forever but the show is hugely popular and not just with the elderly. It has a sizeable cult following among those not yet carrying a […]

Well, obviously not John Lennon. I found myself at the Brixton Academy for the NME Awards watching a bunch of bands I’d never heard of collecting gongs for music I’d never heard. But I had heard of the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award – ladies and gentlemen, Yoko Ono. And up she tottered, tiny […]

Odd title. Ski-ing in the snow? As opposed to where? It’s also an odd title for a Northern Soul anthem. Hard to imagine two more disparate activities than Northern Soul and ski-ing. But the Alps is where everyone seems to go during February half term. I went loads of times but,if I’m honest, I never […]

Traditionally the most romantic day of the year. Though a marriage guidance counsellor once told me that the biggest problem she encounters between couples is – wait for it – unromantic women. Howl and object as much as you like, that’s what she said. And Valentine’s Day is a prime example. While there’s pressure on […]

Filming is apparently due to start on a biopic of Barry Sheene. I suppose the success of Rush, about James Hunt, meant that a similar film about Sheene was inevitable. They both won their first world titles in 1976, but Sheene was by far the bigger star. Every schoolboy of my vintage wanted to be […]

Wonderful documentary on Channel 4 last night called Britain’s Weirdest Council Houses featuring some properly eccentric, creative oddballs who’ve turned their humble abodes into something quite extraordinary. It reminded me how much I miss the council estate glamour of my childhood. The neat streets of bricks and mortar – as opposed to the grim forbidding […]

…..is that it can give you a deep, bassy voice that you don’t normally possess. All blokes want a deep voice and the reason is very simple. If you do an impression of a eunuch, you immediately adopt a high-pitched voice. So a deep voice suggests the very opposite. Mine is so husky at the […]

I’ve been invited to a 90s party. A young person with a beard tells me I’ll love it because I’d have been out there “clubbing back in the day”. He added that they’ll be playing all the “oldies”. Oldies? To me this means music from the 60s, not the 90s. This was the decade that […]