Category Archives: Worlds Shortest Radio Show

I know it was a couple of weeks ago but for some reason, I’ve only just found out. Apparently, Glenn Miller’s disappeared too. Harold Ramis was a great writer, actor and director, most famous (though not that famous) as “the other one” in Ghostbusters alongside Dan Ackroyd and Bill Murray. Ghostbusters owes an awful lot […]

The venue on which The Fast Show must have based “Jazz Club”. My friend Will Awdry plays drums with the Philip Dodd Quartet. But not very often. They convene just once a year for a closed session, complete with bangers & mash, down at the 606 and it is sublime. I don’t really “get” jazz. […]

Older readers will (just about) remember the Top of the Pops compilation albums of the 1970s. Back then, because of licensing issues, compilations could not feature the original artists, so instead they used cover versions by anonymous session singers. One such singer was Reginald Dwight. Apparently, he did quite a few: Spirit in the Sky, […]

I’m giving up the work of Ronan Keating. I’m just continuing the great lenten tradition of people giving up things they’re not that bothered with anyway. They often give up chocolate because they want to lose a bit of weight. Or maybe alcohol because lent is a good excuse for a de-tox. It’s usually more […]

My friend Brian Jones brings me news of how they celebrate the day before lent in Sweden. In a land more associated with sensible things like flat-pack furniture and the invention of the seat belt, they’ll be troughing into semlor. These confections are – get this – large sweet buns, crammed full of almond paste, […]

12 Years a Slave. Of course it did. Its triumph at the Oscars was never in doubt. But have you noticed that, because of its subject matter, any criticism is tacitly forbidden? No one dares say that it was a film they admired rather than actually enjoyed. And certainly not that it was unremittingly grim, […]

Great show last night at the Soho Theatre in which, with world-weary wit, Arthur really does sing the songs of Leonard Cohen. Arthur Smith is the great survivor of the 1980s alternative comedy scene. He may not have achieved the fame nor amassed the fortunes of his arena sell-out contemporaries, but his renown is of […]

About DIY and home improvements. I don’t want to live in a slum but I’d much be happier in a hotel, a pre-Thatcher London council house or a rented apartment in Berlin with a bicycle secured to the balcony. However, since the UK is a country obsessed with owning and improving property, and you have […]

By which I mean Islington – London, N1. But those native to the area always call it “The Angel”. A couple of miles up the road, locals still refer to Arsenal tube station as “Gillespie Road”. And these little quirks aren’t confined to North London. People from Greenwich refer to their neighbourhood as “Grinnidge” while […]

Musically, that is. Growing up, I was obsessed with music and spent all my spare cash in record shops. But in my life, as in most people’s, that obsession gets eased out by work, mortgages, children and, well, life. So almost unconsciously, we tend to switch off the sharp antenna that always picked up new […]