SHAGGY - "Boombastic" 15 Jul 2013 The key to dealing with hot weather is economy of effort – do the things you really have to with the least possible fuss, and the rest of the time,…
BACK BACK BACK (Sort Of) 18 Aug 2016 Real life almost did for Popular this time - writing about the glittery 00s boom in 2016 felt like, well, writing about the jazz age in 1937 might have. Plus…
DJ SAMMY & YANOU ft DO - "Heaven" 23 Aug 2019 Before writing this entry I scoured the Internet to see if DJ Sammy had ever said or done anything interesting. I drew a blank. He’s the model of a jobbing…
Lost Property Office 2-2: An Olive In Sausage-Casing 24 Jan 2013 How can we follow last weeks wonderful tales of hands across the water and the stirring, beating heart of communist Cuba? Well mainly by being rude to an out of…
Lost Property Office 2: 1: The Margins Are Huge 17 Jan 2013 Welcome to the second series of The Lost Property Office, in which a guest comes into my office, full of lost items and uses it as a Proustian springboard for…
A Mad Man Shuts A Box 9 Feb 2015 Fans of long, chronological blog projects will know that when one actually finishes it's cause for no small celebration. Phil Sandifer's TARDIS Eruditorum reaches its final entry today, an essay…
INTRODUCING the FT Theatre Poll 2018! 1 Jan 2019 Hello and happy new year! It is I, Cameron Mackintosh, the world's most powerful and most 80s theatre producer. Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, CATS – I'm kind…
The Freaky Trigger Readers' Poll 2017: #30-#21 10 Jan 2018 "Hullo! I'm Hero, the naughty hedgehog mascot of the 2017 World Athletics Championships. You thought I was mute, didn't you, just because I was holding up all those Bangface-style signs?…
About the Author
Tom invented Freaky Trigger on a bus journey in the mid-90s. A page about what he's up to can be found here
22 Aug 2006
Despite a brief cameo by Michael Schumacher Car, the filum Cars steers clear of German cars. Oh, there’s a VW campervan, but that is a hippy, with a typical hippy accent (its your grandad’s idea of a hippy at that, straight out of early seventies films). Equally British cars barely get a look-in. So there […]
2 Jan 2001
On Skykicking last week, Tim touched, popwise, on the continuing cultural battle over what the eighties were or are or mean or meant. The story of mainstream rock and politics in the 1990s was among other things the story of a similar battle, that time over the sixties. On the one hand you had the […]
20 Jun 2005
Last week saw the release of not one, but two films about previous films. And I don’t mean Batman Begins (which should be retitled Batman Starts for Essex). Inside Deep Throat, a documentary about the making of and the effect of notorious porn film Deep Throat. And Baadasssss!, Mario Van Peebles film about the making […]
4 Jul 2018
An intriguing group for this third Pop World Cup match, with two of the sleeping giants of pop football – Sweden and South Korea – lined up against the always capable Germany and dark horses Mexico. Group of death? In a sense, they are all groups of death when YOU have the casting vote. Pick […]
15 Aug 2006
The Notorious Bettie Page is a film about the good old days of porn. You know, when it wasn’t exploitative, and all the girls portrayed within were not only fun loving conspirators in an art project, but believed in Jeebus too. Most film about porn are about the good old days. Inside Deep Throat told […]
3 Oct 2004
In search of Squirrel – Part two (warning, contains graphic images) Some of you may remember this article I wrote some time ago about my “failure” as a vegetarian and my quest for the different. Well, I’ve done it. Squirrel had become a bit of an obsession, I’d chased up all sorts of alleys (Julian […]
15 Aug 2007
On my eleventh birthday I received a copy of a tape called “Rave ’92” through the post from my sister Grace, who was away at university. It was the second tape she had made for me whilst she was away, (the first being a random mix of grebo, soul, indie and ‘Love Shack’ by the […]