Lost Property Office 1: CSI: Max Factor 7 Mar 2012 Welcome to the new FreakyTrigger podcast (in association with SOAS Radio), a whimsical trip through the lost and found of life. We've been thinking of various audio projects for a…
Popular News 11 Apr 2012 Short version: Popular will be back on Friday and back to a regular schedule. Long version: Obviously Popular posts have been intermittent recently - to put it kindly. There are…
HIDDEN LANDSCAPES: THE PODCAST 8 May 2018 Five episodes are now up: Hazel Southwell and Mark Sinker talking through the story of the UK music press from two very different angles (bcz I am old and she…
Split And Polish 29 Apr 2012 So what was that poll all about then? (This poll, the one I linked on Twitter and Tumblr - a basic tick-the-box job on the best-selling music acts of last…
Popular Reader Question 8 Jan 2014 Hello - As I ramp up the posting frequency on Popular again (hopefully an ongoing trend, though I've said THAT before) I realise I have very little idea about a…
New Popular Entries: Where And When? 28 Jun 2015 Hello - just a quick note to reassure people that we haven't gone back to the bad old days of no updates. My situation is as follows - I've been…
The Great Cheddar Cheese Off 2015 : Part one 19 Dec 2015 Which country makes the best cheddar? This question has plagued us for millennia (possibly). But no longer, thanks to the brave and fearless scientists who gathered on a rainy afternoon to undertake…
About the Author
tafka pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør, 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 AND THEN SUBSCRIBE ---> https://www.patreon.com/marksink3r
12 Nov 2014
The Secret History Of Band Aid Everybody remembers Band Aid. And – despite everything – most people remember Band Aid 2. And now we have Band Aid 20 30. Which rather begs the question – why does nobody ever talk about Band Aids 3 to 29? Take a trip down memory lane as we remind […]
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 […]
13 May 2008
#394, 4th September 1976 In my teens I read a science fiction novel with a startlingly elegant twist. (I won’t mention the book’s name in case you come across it yourself.) It was about a brilliant scientist who vanishes: the book’s protagonist goes looking for clues to what happened, and becomes close to the scientist’s […]
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 […]
9 Jan 2004
Independence Day. Isn’t it marvellous? Hurrah hurrah let’s kill the stripper and those hippies! That’s the kind of morals I WANT from my films! Until the aliens bugger up by deciding just to kill EVERYBODY. Where’s the subtlety, the art, the je ne sais quoi indeed about that? Who cares when we have plucky heroes […]
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 […]
14 Nov 2006
In The Beginning There Was Nothingness. IF ONLY. In The Beginning There Was The Word. NOT THE BIRD FROM L7 PULLING DOWN HER KECKS AGAIN. But neither of these are strictly true. Because the first book of the Bible Of Badness is Genesis. And if you were ever to question how bad this Bible could […]
29 Oct 2010
#641, 3rd February 1990 Sinead O’Connor is one of the finest song interpreters not just because she thinks hard about the material and the feelings locked in it, but because she’s so good at placing songs into a situation. A great example of this is her version of “Chiquitita”, warm and homely where ABBA’s is […]