The FT Top 25 Pubs of the 00s No 1: The Cross Kings 8 Jul 2010 Not really. Really not, with that mural downstairs. But nevertheless this is here as a placeholder until the real number one turns up for a reason. Namely that The Cross…
Casserole Science (With Built In Profit) 9 Jun 2009 Good old Tesco's: Britain's biggest and richest supermarket. Not only are they able to still eek out impressive profits in these dark financial days, but they also seem to be…
FALCO – “Rock Me Amadeus” 20 Nov 2009 The lyrics to "Rock Me Amadeus" cast Wolfgang M as casanova and punker, not that 95% of its English-speaking audience cared. We just got off on the bug-eyed spit-shower of…
“The Eleventh Hour” Reviewed By Lytton, Age 3 1/4 3 Apr 2010 As ever, BEWARE SPOILERS! "There was a little girl. The policewoman went into the scary room and she saw the shark, it went round and round. There was a man…
911 – “A Little Bit More” 4 Sep 2014 The formation of minor boyband 911 is a telling vignette of how pop in the late 90s was working. The general boyband narrative is one where a managerial Svengali recruits…
NARNIA WEEK: He’s not a tame lion 8 Jan 2011 But he can cha-cha-cha with the best of them! See also: Eustace the dragon makes a sandcastle while he's waiting for a lift and Reepicheep advertising sun lotion.
About the Author
Duke of the Rotten Underfelting of All Culture, Marquis of the Mothed Marches, gorgeous as the fifth moon and terrible as a tummy with hammers, i bind your gnomes to slake my bed: ALL SHALL LOVE ME AND DESPAIR
18 Aug 2006
The man who invented the Gala Pie is a hero of mine. Not just because he took one of natures nicest foodstuff (namely the pork pie) and made it even better. He made it better by the addition of the hard boiled egg. But not just any old hard boiled egg. No, not only did […]
29 Sep 2014
#817, 21st February 1999 How was I supposed to know that something wasn’t right? It was a gilded age: the commercial zenith of the music industry at the end of the 20th century. In America, its apex as a money-making force came in 1999 when – adjusted for inflation – $71 per head was spent […]
24 Nov 2006
Tarmac? What kind of a brand is that, its just the pavement, right? Wrong my friends. Tarmac is a brand and an awe-inspiring dominant one at that. I love brands whose names are synonymous with their main product, it shows an awesome degree of brand dominance when the brand name becomes subsumed into language. But […]
22 Jan 2009
This is a graph – done by anatol_merklich off the Poptimists LiveJournal community, so massive thanks to him – showing the number of new entries in the UK singles chart for each year from 1952 to the present.
4 Sep 2009
#543, 15th December 1984, video “Do They Know It’s Christmas” is significant in one way, and insignificant in another. First, it raised a lot of awareness and money and established the pop single as an excellent mechanism for doing those things. This was significant. Gargantuan “supergroups” like this fell out of favour but charity records […]
21 May 2008
I give marks out of 10 to every song – based on whatever criteria you like, here’s your opportunity to say what you’d have given more than 6 to from 1976. Tick as many as you like. And use the comments to discuss the year as a whole, if you like.
21 Dec 2009
Well, that’s that: the machine has been given a good beating and we can look forward to “Bulls On Parade” on the festive Argos ad next year. I will admit I didn’t think the RATM crew could do it: I was wrong. But as the dust settles on this most fractious and increasingly entertaining Christmas […]
