Category Archives: Worlds Shortest Radio Show

I did last year. Pulled over on the Harrow Road after going to see Ivy and Basil. They’re a Jamaican couple who used to live round the corner and Ivy was one of my mum’s oldest friends. Their house is always full of music, laughter and far too many decorations. I go every Christmas and […]

Nat King Cole’s version is definitive one – the one we all adore but have savoured a hundred times before. Sometimes it’s good to try a different recipe. Last night I tried one of those Heston Blumenthal mini-Christmas puddings with the clementine hidden inside and it was gorgeous. The Christmas Song made to this recipe […]

If it’s a person you want for Christmas, you have to ask that person yourself. This is the one time of the year when you can be a bit bolder than usual. What’s the worst that can happen? Your entreaty will be declined. But what if it isn’t? What if those feelings are mutual? What […]

That we became a more caring, sharing society under the Tories. Not that the Thatcher government can take any credit – they just happened to be in power when Bob Geldof changed the world. It’s impossible to exaggerate the effect this record had. Yes, there had always been sponsored walks and people sitting in bathtubs […]

In the late 80s, her Sunday night show on Radio 1 was essential listening. Miss P was the first DJ to bring reggae to a national audience and, because her programme was on quite late, she played a lot of Lover’s Rock. This slower, more romantic style of reggae was perfect for an end-of-the weekend […]

He was a strict old-fashioned Irish priest who taught us Latin and, not surprisingly, seldom mentioned the UK singles chart. But when the Christmas chart of 1973 featured, not just Slade, T.Rex and Alvin Stardust, but a bunch of folkies singing an ancient medieval carol entirely in Latin, he told us that this was proof […]

And he said that if anyone was going to be a huge star, it was……….Andrew Ridgeley. No one, apparently, ever thought that George Michael would be famous. And without Andrew, he almost certainly wouldn’t have been. According to Tom, it was Ridgeley who was the driving force behind Wham – extrovert and charismatic in a […]

No, no, you’re missing the point. Christmas isn’t supposed to “little”, it supposed to be huge. For me, it’s not commercial enough. I love everything about it. We make contact with people we haven’t seen for ages, we have big parties, we do kind things for each other, we decorate and illuminate both our homes […]

Or is it the BBC’s insidious anti-London bias? Whatever the reason,”The People’s Songs”, Radio 2’s otherwise excellent series, which finished last night, has had a distinct lack of Southern accents. The series documents post-war British history with popular songs and the attendant memories of ordinary Britons. Considering London and the South East has the UK’s […]

Office party, balloons, poppers, paper hats at jaunty angles, too much Asti Spumante and the store cupboard with Chloe from accounts. Home at 3am. No phone. One shoe. Pretending the following morning that you can’t remember a thing. And it all starts with this record. So go on, join the drunken conga. It’s what the […]