Category Archives: Worlds Shortest Radio Show

These were two nightclubs in Harrow, hugely popular in the 1980s. And they weren’t the only ones. There was The Bandwagon in Kingsbury, Oscars in Greenford and the Royalty in Southgate. Further afield, we went over to Cheeky Pete’s in Richmond and the Lacey Lady in Ilford. Practically every suburb in London once had a […]

A new Johnny Cash album was released this week called Out Among The Stars compiled from old tapes, thought lost for more than 30 years, that were found quite recently in an attic. For me, this is the stand-out track. Stripped back and simple, it proves once again that all Johnny Cash ever needed were […]

Tomorrow we celebrate the birthdays of both Celine Dion and Jessie J but I think it has to be today to honour the 70th birthday of Diana Ross, the diva’s diva. Her ‘journey” has all the classic elements – raised in the slums of Detroit but with a fragile beauty and sweet, pure voice that […]

Despite the admirable advances of feminism, there’s one area of the workplace that is still totally male-dominated: the playing of electric guitars. Think of the thousands of times you’ve seen this instrument played and it’s always by a man. Ironically the body of an electric guitar is said to reflect the waist and curves of […]

Off to South East Asia today for a few weeks as part of his gap year. So different from me. The only roads I hit at his age were the Westway and the North Circular, so this track is for him. This version is particularly appropriate because he too is a “Big Youth”. The only […]

Sunday breakfast has become my favourite meal in the world. But only recently. The English Breakfast was always a bit unimaginative, even when it was nicely done. And invariably, it wasn’t. Fortunately, there’s been a profusion of Australian and New Zealand style cafes all over London to provide a much-needed alternative. How can sausage, egg […]

Not strictly true. I saw her perform live at the first Comic Relief Show in 1986. She sang a “comedy number” with Rowan Atkinson which wasn’t quite as good as this sublime duet with Peter Gabriel from the same year. Kate Bush is almost universally admired. When she first came to fame with Wuthering Heights, […]

Radio 2 DJ Richard Allinson and I had kids at the same school and, at the school fete, we always did the music. He played a few, I played a few and so on. I was playing this just as the headmaster joined the adjacent queue for a hot dog. He was loving it – […]

Well, not me but my place of birth – London NW2. In yesterday’s budget, the Chancellor promised funding for a £4.5bn regeneration of Cricklewood. Most of my schoolmates’ parents were Irish but my mum was a real Londoner. She came from one of those huge, old-fashioned families that don’t exist any more. So as a […]

It’s 30 years since the first broadcast of Spitting Image, the greatest satirical TV programme ever made and there’s a documentary to celebrate this on BBC Four tomorrow night. I was talking to John Lloyd, who produced Spitting Image and mentioned the old maxim of politics being “Show business for ugly people”. He said that, […]