So negativity is the new black, and as ever it is easier to cream the crap from the good, than list the best of the year. I saw 120 films in the cinema last year and 154 on DVD, of which it turns out about 131 were officially released last year. But […]

“What were the skies like when you were young?”
I think everyone hears a record in their youth which suddenly reveals a whole new world of possibilities. It could be a three minute punk song, where simplicity and lyrical fervour suddenly make the[…]

I am not in the business of wishing Christmas away already, but there is one festive highlight which is still not done to death by the BBC, namely the annual festive pub crawl. Between Christmas and New Year the thoughts go to drinking, and what is n[…]

When I was little, what I really liked about Christmas was being able to stay up late, and sometimes, if I was lucky catch an episode of Tales Of The Unexpected or one of those weird portmanteau horror movies. I caught Dr Terror’s House Of Horr[…]

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 back to the Victorian age and there is Dickens knocking out a Christmas Carol, a[…]

Here on FT we love puns. We don’t mean to but we do. And behind today’s hastily arranged advent calendar window is probably the greatest pun to grace a TV Christmas Special ever. Even better than One Foot In The Algarve. Not necessarily t[…]

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 tough questions about consumerism at a festive period. But what Christmas Special looks like this?

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We love the 1st of December, when we get to go to FT to open the little Windows* that mark down the passage of time towards Christmas with a little nugget of something special. Something very special this year, namely an advent calendar of TV Christm[…]

It feels a bit wrong, me being the one to write about Dexy’s. I have friends who are much much bigger fans, I have already written about the other Dexy’s track on this list – Come On Eileen. And for a very long time, until I picked […]

53: The Box (DVD)
I missed The Box in the cinema, it being my year without film. It is the kind of film I would normally jump at, liking claustrophobic paranoid fantasies, films based on Twilight Zone episodes, Cameron Diaz, James Marsden and even no[…]