Finally, the moment of ABSOLUTE POP TRUTH is upon us! And my goodness, what a nail-biter of a contest this has been. Halfway through the voting, two decades broke decisively ahead of the pack, establishing a lead that proved impossible to catch up wi[…]

A raw-milk hard cow’s cheese made in Wisconsin, and bought from Neal’s Yard Dairy.
Inside this wedge of cheese the paste’s a bright yellow, scattered with the white dots that promise lactic acid crunch, and with cracks running the […]

Resonance FM 104.4 in London has been airing our breathless coverage of every Pop World Cup match since it started way back in whenever it was, and the last half-hour roundup goes out this Saturday at 16:00. Peter Baran and Roger Bozack will analyze […]

Nigeria 3 Germany 1
The Pop City Stadium in Johannesburg is awash in white and green tickertape; the team jog around the perimeter bearing manager Matt DC aloft upon their shoulders; a continent rejoices as for the first time an African nation has wo[…]

Before we get to the final rankings for our six decades, which I’ll be posting in the next couple of days or so, here are the final totals for each round.
Round One: The Number 10s.
246 points, average score 4.82: Kelis – Acapella (2010)
&#82[…]

A pasturised goats cheese from Hertfordshire, bought from Neal’s Yard Dairy.
Childwickbury always makes me think of the moon; it’s a round of pure white, incredibly young cheese. It’s damp and crumbly, an adolescent creature existi[…]

One of the unfortunate results of having grown up in a world where MySpace existed while I was still underage* is that my previous internet selves occasionally rear their ugly heads and bite me. I had the revelation several years ago that I ought to […]

Tom Ewing joins Peter Baran and Roger Bozack in the broadcast booth for the simulcast of the championship match between Germany and Nigeria and gets raked over the coals about this year’s voting irregularities. Well, not so much raked as polite[…]

It took me a while to get the hang of my first kabuki show. A lot of it is very alien. The music is drums, very loud clappers and samisen, which sounds like an out-of-tune banjo, which is clearly my problem with their very different scales rather tha[…]

Ah controversy. So many people court you but when is the wedding? I have always found the ideas of religions advertising to be a bit odd*, though even I cannot help but smuggle a small smile when I think of cheap posters saying Carpenter Seeks Joiner[…]