The Romans
The Romans is another Dr. Who historical story, as clownish and clumsy as The Aztecs is weighty and intelligent. The show is a wretched mix of leaden drama (the most unconvincing gladiator fighting you’ll ever see) and feeble slapst[…]

We’re far too lazy/jaded/secretly into Bennet to do the ‘clever writing about pop’ thing any more, so it’s a good thing that some people still manage it.[…]

Save the Cheeky Girls!
There are two good reasons why this single must come out.
i. The Cheeky Girls are exactly tawdry enough for Christmas (and NO OTHER time of year, bog off Cheeky Flamenco et al.). “Have A Cheeky Christmas” slowly rev[…]

The Shopping CD
Many thanks to the comments box crew who came through splendidly. The actual CD, to be played between rounds at the quiz tomorrow, goes a little something like this:
1. PET SHOP BOYS – “Shopping”
2. SMOKEY ROBINSON A[…]

Help wanted – attention comments box massive. I’m compering a quiz on Wednesday night at work. The theme is ‘shopping’. I’m putting together a CD-R of shopping- and spending-related tunage to play in between rounds while[…]

Pop Factor: 709 Controversy Factor: 255
Trying to be Madonna is a noble and not uncommon aim for our pop stars. Britney tries, Christina tries – you could probably make a case for Robbie trying, and let’s not even consider the efforts o[…]

It’s that time of year when ‘pub awards’ start to be handed out. Will the Freaky Trigger collective be giving a pub award? Yes they will, just as soon as we think of a sufficiently preposterous scientific way of judging it. However,[…]

Bee-covered sodomising asteroid: is the use of the term “nuclear winter” here because
i) this has become a real actual science name for any long-term post-explosive atmospheric temperature drop.
ii) this has become a lazy shorthand for an[…]

RIP VHS: Marky Mark Lawson on the downfall of VHS. I can’t comment on the ‘common culture’ stuff as I was just a kid back then, but his evocations of overwritten and thick-piled videotape labels obscure one key aspect of the video: […]

“Igniting kids’ interest in history”: actually history is one of the genres better served by computer games. Well, military history, anyway, but games like Civilisation stand or fall by how plausible a timeline their game mechanics […]