Category Archives: Worlds Shortest Radio Show

…there’s no denying that Cream were a fantastic band. Only three of them but Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker punched well above their weight in talent, influence and musical significance. In the late 60s, they turned rock music into a serious art form which was either a wonderful or awful thing. I think […]

…was the news that Wilko Johnson has recovered from pancreatic cancer. I’ve loved Dr Feelgood since buying Stupidity from Woolworth’s with my paper round money. Wilko invented that sharp, choppy guitar style that was the basis of their sound. A couple of years later, that very sound formed the basis of punk but for thirty-odd […]

All the papers reported the death yesterday of 70s glam star Alvin Stardust. But “Alvin” was just a joke name under which songwriter Peter Shelley had recorded “My Coo Ca Choo”. To Shelley’s astonishment, it entered the charts and the call came to appear on Top of The Pops. Shelley didn’t want to so he […]

I saw that sign outside a little farm out beyond Cockfosters. When my kids were small, they used to love going over there to pick their own strawberries. I was always very strict, telling them not to eat any before we’d paid for them because that was stealing. Unfortunately, I failed to practise what I […]

I’m usually dead against Radio 2’s policy of giving radio shows to celebrities just because they’re famous, but Idris is different. He was a DJ long before was an actor, playing at parties around the West African communities of East London. I worked with him on some Vodafone commercials last year then went to see […]

I found myself in the Mary Lou Room at the Groucho Club watching a live art exhibition. Sculptor Frances Segelman was sculpting a hermaphrodite artist called XXXora who lay semi-naked before her. During this, we had to listen to XXXora talking about the painful struggle of androgyny and dual sexuality and how her true catharsis […]

It’s a miserable, grey Monday and it hasn’t stopped raining. Rainy days and Mondays get everyone down. But the reason I’ve waited ages to play it is because we haven’t had a rainy Monday for a very long time. We’ve enjoyed a very good summer in 2014. As we did in 2013. So rainy days […]

It took him 15 minutes on the tube. He could have gone to Durham, Edinburgh, Trinity College Dublin or Girton College, Cambridge but no, he just couldn’t leave our capital city and now resides in the UCL halls just off Tottenham Court Road. He may not have got his brains from me, but he’s certainly […]

…was Jeremy Miles. I met him on my first day at my first job and I liked him immediately. The people I’d thitherto thought were posh were just suburban strivers from Pinner and Northwood who played golf and polished their Ford Granadas on a Sunday morning. But Jeremy was the real deal – flat in […]

So he’s been giving quite a few interviews. He was, of course, the first high-profile rugby player to come out as gay. I truly admire his courage and his candour. But I cannot understand why anyone is surprised that a rugby player might be gay. When I was a DJ, I played many a rugby […]