This show baffles me a bit. Playing it—and I use ‘playing’ in the loosest sense; this is barely a game at all—involves no skill whatsoever. No intelligence (or, more specifically,no general knowledge), no memory-skills, nothing physical. In f[…]

or have the insults and heckles of teenaged hoodlums gone somewhat downhill recently? Here are some, entirely true, examples of abuse hurled at me recently on the streets of Glasgow.
4. “Here, mate, d’ye want a chip?”: This one puzz[…]

Like many bipedal mammals, I walk. It is an activity that I enjoy and at which, over the years, I have come to display a certain amount of skill—I can now, for example, walk up stairs or steep inclines, where before this required great effort. Even[…]

The most minor of all irritants, picture the scene: I, the consumer, have made my way to the till with my purchase. Having handed over my e.g. tenner, I am waiting for a receipt and some change in return. But how does the cashier present this to me, […]

Jerry the Nipper on broken hearts, epic soundtracks and the immortal majesty of Baxendale
When your heart is not so much broken as subject to a spectacular compound fracture… When the plans you conscientiously drafted for months now seem as grandio[…]

WORDS AND MUSIC
A HISTORY OF POP IN THE SHAPE OF A CITY
BLOOMSBURY, £12.99, ISBN: 0747557780
If an ideal pop journal were to give me 1,864 words to take a tour of Paul Morley’s new ‘history of pop in the shape of a city’, there mig[…]