Freaky Trigger and the Lollards of Pop - Week 7

The latest, greatest installment of Freaky Trigger’s adventures on the electromagnetic spectrum, as originally broadcast between 12 and 1pm on Resonance 104.4FM.  Featuring, among other things: Agatha Christie’s fear of zips, the peculiar customs of New York bar goers, euphemisms for food, and a lot of talking over three different versions of Cobrastyle.

Freaky Trigger and the Lollards of Pop - Week 6

The next installment of our radio show, as broadcast between 12 and 1pm on Resonance 104.4FM, every Sunday. This week’s show includes: favourite streets, hoaxers throughout history, a discourse on comping and what to do if your baby gets replaced by a changeling.

And don’t forget - you can enter our competition for a special FreakyTrigger and the Lollards Of Pop goodie bag right here. In ten words or less complete this sentence:

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Freaky Trigger and the Lollards of Pop - Week 5

The latest installment of Freaky Trigger’s radio diversification project, as broadcast earlier today between 12 and 1pm, on Resonance 104.4FM. Featuring, among other things: punctuating bandnames, the seed catalogues of the mind, economy fish fingers, therapeutic smells and even more drug-based truths.

Freaky Trigger and the Lollards of Pop - Week 4

The fourth installment in the continuing radio adventures of Freaky Trigger, as originally broadcast earlier today on Resonance 104.4FM between 12pm and 1pm. This weeks show features Dr Pub on food, the grammar of wishing, Judith Chalmers ‘07, artificial languages and even more Truth about Drugs.

Freaky Trigger and the Lollards of Pop - Week 3

The third in the ongoing series of Lollardry, as broadcast earlier this afternoon between 12 and 1. This week’s edition includes: the puzzle craze of the eighties, the definition of emo, the truth about drugs, gimmicky shoes and movie twists that actually work.

Freaky Trigger and the Lollards of Pop - Week 2

This week’s edition of Lollardry, as broadcast earlier this afternoon between 12 and 1. Featuring, amongst other things: new math(s), Egyptian deities without portfolio, communist weasels, an official US government response to Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos, and the relationship between low quality indie-dance and high quality snacks.

Two Mug Fannydangle

In my many years of drinking and brewing tea I have occasionally been accused of fussiness. I admit that there is probably some truth in this accusation. I am rather fond of the warming of pots. I do dislike the misordering of mug filling. Hell, I’ve even been known to complain about the quality of water. But in the pernickity tea making stakes I’ve got nothing on Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall

Kingsmill Bread Is Rubbish

Kingsmill Bread Is Rubbish

The world of the premium white sliced loaf is an odd one.

On the one hand we have Hovis. It’s sold as being bread. Not posh bread, just bread. Which is it all it is, really. A bit more expensive, but at heart it’s white sliced, only more so. Nice and moist, fine texture, tastes a bit more bready than Tesco Value, makes a good bacon butty. These are all obviously good things, and it’s what I end up buying more often than not.

And then we have Kingsmill. Launched into the world by the faintly ridiculous ‘Bread and Butler’ advertising campaign, the Kingsmill brand has always had a specifically posh aura about it. This is embodied in the bread itself. Rather than adopt the Hovis white-sliced-only-better approach, it aspires to the condition of your actual traditional square tin loaf ie Proper Posh Bread. It does this by having a drier, coarser texture and, as Dave B points out below, smelling of fish.

Now, the latter is obviously a serious misstep unless you happen to be making fish finger sarnies, but it’s the former that really gets to me. Yes, Proper Posh Bread is a bit drier than sliced white, but it’s also more elastic. This means it can cope with a serious bit of buttering. Kingsmill can’t. Unless your butter is on the point of melting its weirdly textured slices tear as soon as they makes contact with your knife. It’s a sandwich bread that you can’t actually make sandwiches with. Marvellous.

In conclusion: Kingsmill = rub. So why is it that whenever I am forced to do a bit of emergency bread shopping it’s so much easier to find than Hovis? Do we live in a nation of snobs who like their sandwiches torn and smelling of fish? Or is there some sinister cartel forcing corner shops and Paddington Sainsburys to stock nothing but Kingsmill?

APPLE CRISPS 2!

APPLE CRISPS 2! Or more accurately: Apple flavoured crisps.

The M&S crisp range has recently undergone an overhaul and in doing so has broken the cardinal rule of crisp packet design: different flavour = different coloured packet. I’d noted the change but didn’t immediately register the implications of this crime against crisp identification. It was only when I got back to the office with my lunch last Tuesday that the full horror sank in.

I had accidentally bought a packet of Apple, Sage and Thyme flavoured crisps.

After getting over my initial shock that someone could have devised such an abomination, I came to the conclusion that it would be a serious dereliction of duty to the publog public to not sample them. So I opened the packet, and dived in.

Much to my surprise, they were perfectly edible. This was largely because someone seemed to have neglected to put any apple flavouring in. What was left was a vaguely authentic sage/thyme combination, a bit like the Seabrooks Garlic and Herb flavour minus the garlic.

This left me wondering why on earth they are being marketed as tasting of apple. I know the British public has a seemingly inexhaustable desire for novelty crisp varieties, but if you really wanted to push the flavour envelope into the fruit department surely strawberry would be the logical choice?

The Royal Oak and Simply Indian, Borough

The Royal Oak and Simply Indian, Borough

In some ways The Royal Oak is a bit of an oddity. It’s one of only two London pubs tied to Sussex brewery Harvey’s, and as such there is an inescapable association for me with some of the country pubs I frequented in my semi-bucolic youth. I have a suspicion that it secretly wants to be the Compton Arms, but its location down a side street in Borough puts pay to that, and what’s left is a fine boozer indeed.

The beer’s unsurprisingly good. The surroundings are comfy without being fussy. It’s even kept the two bar split, which is always a good thing in my pub book. However, what really makes it for me is that it manages to be both a locals pub and welcoming to strangers at the same time, an all too rare combination in London.

It is also happily just along the road from Simply Indian, which even more happily is unlicensed and lets you bring in big jugs of beer from the pub. So after a few pints our now rather intoxicated party rolled along the road with for a curry with a couple of jugs of the Harvest ale.

I don’t know if the place started out as an upmarket takeaway, until the owners decided to put a few tables out front, but it certainly feels that way. It’s none the worse for it either: basic, but done right, without either being self consciously minimalist or unwelcoming. The lamb samosas were just as good as Sarah said they would be, and my Goan green curry was nicely mouth puckeringly sour.

After such a fine combination of curry and ale, I was left wondering why pubs don’t collaborate with curry houses more often. It certainly makes more sense than the bafflingly common Thai/pub combination.