FT Advent Calendar Of Christmas TV Specials: December 6th 6 Dec 2011 The best bit about Christmas specials is the sugar-coated MORAL at the end of the story where the authority figures remind the children that the holidays are about Giving and…
FT Advent Calendar of Xmas TV Specials: December 2nd 2 Dec 2011 This one was repeated last year, and is a classic of its era, and I think we would all agree that sometimes it behooves a TV Christmas Special to ask…
FT Advent Calendar Of Christmas TV Specials: December 5th 6 Dec 2011 Christmas specials aren't just the province of television. Every year all sorts of media throw Santa coated tat at us left, right and centre. All it takes is to go…
FT Advent Calendar Of Christmas TV Specials: December 3rd 3 Dec 2011 Christmas is a time for the children, which means it's also a time for endless kids' TV specials. More than ever, in the age of the "DVD movie" stocking-stuffer. But…
The Freaky Trigger Readers' Poll 2014: #20-#11 14 Jan 2015 "Greetings! I'm Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity. You may remember me from one of this week's University Challenge bonus rounds where one of the teams failed to recognise me at…
Poptimism presents... Club Action POPULAR SPECIAL 26 Nov 2012 It's been 60 years since Al Martino was the UK's first #1 record*! To celebrate this sensational sexagenary, DJ Chlorine and The Barnet Ape will be playing only #1s all…
About the Author
writer and editor bit by bit fashioning a history of the UK music press HERE https://www.patreon.com/marksink3r/posts
1 Oct 2002
Introduction It was about 2 in the morning and I was trying to get a handle on Alexander the Great. I had a final exam coming up and I’d missed half the syllabus – and something else was missing; a way into the man’s head. Alexander had single-handedly destroyed the world’s largest Empire and put […]
11 Jan 2016
I wrote a thing for here about David Bowie and how I felt about him and what he meant to me, but then Pitchfork kindly decided they wanted to run it, so it’s below. (Original title: He Could Be Dead, He Could Be Not, He Could Be You). And to any other good pieces I […]
2 Feb 2001
The Usual Excuses Bowery Electric’s “Freedom Fighter” is bewitching and worrying, and not just because it was made by a band I’d put down as America’s most useless. In fact the beat Bowery Electric use on “Freedom Fighter” sounds as familiar as ever, but that for once works in the song’s favour, in the same […]
8 Jun 2010
Here we are, at last. Here we stand at the summit of Pop Football achievement, looking back at 63 matches: some wonderful, some perplexing, some illuminating, very few boring. We’ve heard so much pop, enjoyed so many marvellous moments, and we have 30 losing managers to thank for all their research and taste. Never mind […]
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 […]
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 […]
10 Mar 2015
This is a post listing the records I’m listening to for my YEAR OF ROCKISM**, as outlined here (cut and pasted from Tumblr): I’m going to listen to one album on a once-a-day basis for a week, a different one each week. Not in order to write about them or anything, unless I decide I […]
