Christmas songs are a good thing, no? Well, if you like Christmas they are. If you don’t then no doubt somewhere on the web there is an MP3 of Will Oldham playing ‘We Three Kings’ on a zither that you can adopt as your ‘favour[…]

I’m sure most rock stars were better when they were dorks, but luckily for them we don’t usually get to see that. With Depeche it was all terribly public, and I can’t think why anyone with the vaguest affection for their gauche Goth[…]

SEND FOR THE HATING TABLETS! My annual battle with misogyny gets underway with the release of this year’s Lambrini adverts. You know the form by now: three women enjoying ‘girly night out/in’ with bottle of stomach-wrenching pear pl[…]

KATE RYAN – “Libertine”
Sometimes the English Channel seems wider than ever. In France a libertine seems to mean “smouldering pop princess with a great line in trancey synth riffs”. In England it means “junkie with[…]

My interest in old adventure fiction continues to grow with a rediscovery of a pile of John Buchan books I’d been given for Christmas years ago and turned my nose up at. I thought I’d kick off with The Thirty-Nine Steps, but I couldn&#821[…]

HOW TO DO A TOP ALBUMS LIST: inspired by Pitchfork’s revision of its own Top 100 90s albums list (and don’t think I don’t sympathise with them).
1. Assemble ‘staff’.
2. Go to pub.
3. Drink a lot.
4. When all are drunk en[…]

It’s back!: Gabba/AMP/ has become Gabba/Pod/, and it’s taken me weeks to notice, seemingly. But now I have I can rejoice with everyone else (also! a votes and comments system! kewl! and a membership system I haven’t worked out yet).[…]

Of course having gone to McDonalds’ I could hardly pass up the opportunity to sample the BIG TASTY, a.k.a. the McBritish – the megaburger available exclusively to UK residents. It’s an interesting choice for a Brit-branded burger si[…]

NATION UNITES IN FAINTLY DUTIFUL REJOICING!: Good work our boys etc. etc., and it was all very exciting, but I have to say I can’t detect as yet the mass uplifting of the national spirit that some might have expected. Isabel and I went shopping[…]

The least welcoming, most alienating place I have ever eaten in London is the top floor of the Oxford Street MacDonald’s (the branch near Borders). I missed lunch on Friday because of a meeting and didn’t get a chance to eat until 4PM, at[…]