Curry with my friend Simon at the Indian YMCA….

We’ve being going there so long I think they now believe that we really are students from India. The conversation got round to Indian music and why, given the large and vibrant nature of Indian communities in this country, there isn’t a bigger UK Indian music scene. Well, there very nearly was. Cornershop topped the charts in 1998. Shortly afterwards though, the BBC launched their Asian Network. So instead of playing this sort of music on Radio 1, they labelled it “Asian” and shoved it on to a minority station. In their horrible desire to highlight our differences and divide our united kingdom, the BBC may have robbed us of some great British Asian music. But they were too late to rob us of this….