POPTIMISM SPECIAL EDITION: Unedited notes on Top Of The Pops, BBC1, 7.30PM, 16th April 2004.
Joe – trad loverman stuff, looks quite saturnine, R&B always a bit hampered by the live thing, cold brit fish like me want to hear the drum sounds[…]

Harsh! Football’s real actual fashion police take a hardline stand. I’m not sure what advantage the one-piece kit could have given Cameroon anyway – it would make shirt-tugging harder, I suppose.[…]

Mars has also just launched its Mars Delight brand extension, which I tried out this afternoon. Two skimpy finger-biscuits in a long wrapper, it’s clearly a light summery kind of chocolate snack, over in four bites, and just as well since even […]

I am still not sold by the name. Bisc & seems like a range made in marketing hell without any real sense of where it sits in the real world. It is a biscuit, the kind of thing which would be nice with a cup of coffee. AND it is a choclate bar. Y[…]

More French toss in the cinema, I don’t know why I still see go and see French films. Les Diables is the latest piece of shocking French cinema trying to titilate and teach us big things. Except the portrayal of an autistic girl is all wrong, w[…]

Simon Reynolds’ Curious Transformation: I’d love to confirm that my pop life is this full of energetic glee but it’s just not so. Actually my Poptimism hides a dirty secret, namely that I never really listen to the radio (aside the […]

Okay, On The Beach is a nice elegaic title for it, but why? There is barely any beach action at all. The point of Shute’s novel is that there is no action full stop, just three hundred pages of post nuclear war fatalism. Emotional speculative f[…]

Under self command of Must Watch More Television, I settled down to Murder City last night. I like crime fiction, though less taken by police proceedurals, especially the cosy two hour ITV jolly old game variety. Well Murder City certainly isn’[…]

Amateur theatre is an effervescent affair, where teachers, professors and investment bankers gather and express. Here are found mannish giants tottering in maid’s outfits and septa-centarian biblical boat-keepers confessing to divine misrepres[…]