Context is everything, so it was interesting to find my old copy of Something Beginning With O by Kevin Pearce on top of a cupboard in my mother-in-law’s house. Unlike said cupboard, the world has changed a lot over the ten years (or thereabout[…]

New tv ad for Woolworths last nite: two OAPs cooing over the cd of Permission to Land: ‘Let’s buy it, dear’ it’ll be just like the old days!’. Cut to Ver ‘Ness on the bridge of their spaceship in full stadium handc[…]

‘Camden Joy’ could be the title of some imaginary anthology of Chris Roberts reviews from Melody Maker 1987-1990, and Camden Joy the author is almost as good as that. I first came across him a few years ago when I found a heavily marked-d[…]

From NewPop to… NowPop, and what are we to make of Green Gartside hovering around ‘Someday’ like a very discreet but expensive perfume on the imminent Kylie lp? From the minimal techno of first single ‘Slow’ to the impeccabl[…]

Ahead of forthcoming greatest hits album PopArt, the Pet Shop Boys have put up a streaming preview of the token unreleased track ‘Paris City Boy’. If you were expecting a return to the Desireless/Princess Stephanie francophone glories of […]

Despite the increasingly obsessive reporting of the BBC News Technology section, I don’t believe that we’re overwhelmed by information pollution. Adverts, spam, pop-ups and so on are a matter of technique rather than overload. In fact, […]

Is it our fault subversion is dead? If our interaction with the media of derision (I’m thinking Graham Norton here) is causal, rather then symbiotic, then the prognosis for satire is bleak. Researchers and developers of reality humiliation ha[…]

Condiments I Have Known #2: Hellman’s MayonnaiseThere’s a general rule of thumb in our house that if there’s a food product you like and buy regularly from the supermarket, try making it from scratch at home and see how much better […]

It’s almost certainly just over-excitement, but here I am at last eating at one of those Japanese sushi-snack bars where the food goes past you on a little conveyor belt (Kulu Kulu on Brewer Street). It’s like watching Grand Prix – […]

Further to Mark’s point b2 below: The visuals at one point were particularly noteworthy. Voiceover: Such-and-such spent ages looking for an equation. Cue pic of (absurdly handsome) actor leafing through a tome apparently at random, searching, a[…]