BUSHELL ON THE BLOG

Dec 29, 2024. I’m chatting to brilliant musical comedian Bill Bailey in today’s Sunday Express Review and talking telly with Neville Staple from The Specials. Plus there’s my verdict on the BBC’s Xmas Day line-up in the reborn Bushell On The Box. Here’s Bill online.



Dec 27 2024. Did Gavin & Stacey save Christmas TV? Too right they did. Here's my verdict on BBC1’s Xmas Day line-up.



And my pick of 2024’s finest albums is in today’s Daily Express and Daily Mirror, and also online here. From Beyonce to Cock Sparrer…



Dec 22. Bushell on the Box is back in print in today’s Sunday Express Review and uncensored online here. Plus the Gavin & Stacey cast chat about their Xmas Day finale here, and I’m talking telly with Irwin Sparkes of indie-pop wallahs the Hoosiers.



Dec 20. Four of the best boxsets of the year – from Bryan Ferry, David Bowie, Motorhead and The Orb. All reviewed in today’s Daily Express and Daily Mirror; plus those crazy diamonds the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band online here.



Dec 15. ’Tis the season to be Carly… I’m chatting to Xmas-loving soprano Carly Paoli in today’s Sunday Express Review & talking telly with ex-EastEnders star Kellie Shirley, even though she’s a devoted Palace fan. The Carly feature will be online here very soon…



Dec 13. Jingle hell? Or bushels of Xmas joy? A festive special of album reviews in today’s Daily Mirror and Daily Express, with releases from Carly Paoli, The Unthanks, Jethro Tull and for King + Country who just sold out two nights at Indigo at the O2. My review on that will follow.



Dec 12. So sorry to hear we have lost loveable comic Duncan Norvelle. It was my pleasure to introduce him on stage last year at the Gaiety Bar in Southsea when we filmed Proper Comedians for Ustreme. If the audience reception had been any warmer, they’d have melted his wheelchair tyres – they gave him a standing ovation both nights. The loveable “chase me” star made the first and best Blind Date pilot but ITV passed him over. Angels are chasing him now. My condolences to his wife Linda and Duncan’s family.



Dec 9. Here is a longer version of my Dave Vanian interview.



Dec 8. I’m chatting to iconic punk rock pioneer Dave Vanian of The Damned in today’s Sunday Express Review – they’re on tour now – and talking telly with best-selling children’s author Liz Pichon. A longer version of the big interview will be online tomorrow.



Dec 7. Thanks to everyone who came to the Gonads’ last pub show at the Dublin Castle last night. It’s a shame to semi-retire as a gigging band, but it’s not quite the end yet. There will be more music from us, and you will be able to see us at Rebellion next year. Cheers.



Last Saturday I gave ITV both barrels. Today the BBC gets it.



Dec 6. Today’s album reviews – diving deep with Tori Amos, plus new releases from Kendrick Lamar, Lauren Mayberry, Katie Melua and Brooks & Dunn. All in today’s Daily Express & Daily Mirror and online here.

Dec 1. I’m chatting to Andre Rieu, Holland’s jovial King of the Waltz in today’s Sunday Express Review and talking telly with England’s Queen of the West End (and closet rocker) Kerry Ellis. Here’s Andre online.



Nov 30. British telly is too reliant on creaky old formats. Gutless commissions and an over-abundance of virtue-signalling are ripping the guts out of old-school TV and hastening its decline. Where are the new ideas?



Nov 29. Today’s album releases – Elkie Brooks, live & acoustic, Total Tommy & Aisha Badru, plus a tasty reboot from UFO and U2’s new ‘shadow album’ Reviewed here…



Gregg Wallace has stepped away from MasterChef following misconduct allegations. We don’t at this stage know the truth of them, but, based on what has leaked out so far, could it all stem from class differences? Wallace was a Millwall-supporting market trader turned greengrocer. His brand of earthy banter was never going to sit well with the more po-faced middle-class graduates fretting about pronouns and oldspeak (© George Orwell). The kind of nitwits who take jokes literally, like TV news editors… Old-fashioned blokes like Gregg have no place in a world where the British Board of Film Censors slaps a discrimination trigger warning on the Wicked movie lest green-skinned viewers (The Hulk? The Jolly Green Giant? Kermit the frog?) are affected by meanness towards the green characters.



Nov 27. Richard Coles’s chat with GK Barry about the lesbian practice of “scissoring” on I’m A Celeb must have sparked awkward conversations in living rooms around the country and puzzled High Court Judges everywhere. “What, pray tell, is scissoring?” “Rubbing your girlfriend up the wrong way, m’lud.”



Nov 25. Here are some of my latest punk interviews online. Jean-Jacque Burnel, Steve Diggle, Hugh Cornwell, and Paul Cook.



Here’s the Lucy Porter chat online. And here’s my opinion piece on the decline and possible fall of ITV.


Nov 24. I’m chatting to comedian Lucy Porter in today’s Sunday Express, and talking telly with national treasure Chris ‘Lukewarm’ Biggins – Nero in I, Claudius for those of you with long memories.



Nov 22. Here is my rather grumpy take on this year’s ITV bungle in the jungle, also known as Groundhog G’Day.



And here are today’s album reviews.



Sir Keir Starmer says he’d arrest Israeli PM Netanyahu. Unlikely. To do that, the globe-trotting goon would have to be in the country.



ITV paid Coleen Rooney a reported £1.5mill to spill the beans on being married to Wayne. Money well-spent? You decide. So far we’ve learnt that the couple went to the pictures for their first date, “But had a kiss around the church first.” Blessed are the flexible I suppose. And that he writes her poems. In fact here’s one he might have written about the elderly escort he once dallied with: ‘Coleen I am so sorry, I had a one-night stand/I paid a bit of money to get off with a gran/She wore a rubber catsuit, took out her teeth as well/Next time we’ll go alfresco/Down by the ship canal…’



Nov 17. Perfect! I’m chatting to comeback kids Fairground Attraction in today’s Sunday Express Review, and talking telly with country music’s rising star Janet Devlin. The Fairground interview will be online tomorrow



Good luck to the farmers protesting in London on Tuesday. Britain needs farmers, not Starmers. Pinocchio Reeves broke her word (again) and stabbed them in the back. Two-thirds of farms will be affected. Her inheritance tax U-turn will hurt our homegrown food supply at exactly the same time as Miliband is nobbling our energy security with Labour’s mad rush back to the Stone Age. Just what you want when the world is on the verge of war. Here’s a better idea: don’t persecute farmers, open up new North Sea oilfields, step up gas production and double the defence budget. It’d be easy to pay for. We’d just need to slash wasteful government spending. We could save a small fortune by not sending 470 delegates – by plane! – to COP every year. Rip up and reverse Reeves’s dismal budget. Scrap Miliband’s clueless department too. Get a few tips from Musk. He seems to know what he’s doing.



Here’s what else I’d do: 1) simplify our absurdly complex tax code 2) stop persecuting people who tweet comments the middle class Left don’t like 3) Make our jails emptier by releasing thought-criminals, deporting foreign scumbags and hanging child murderers, wife-killers and rapists; a length of rope is still cheap 4) Stop mass immigration for a generation and deport all fake asylum seekers 5) Employ teachers in our schools who aren’t self-loathing ninnies. (And you wonder why they don’t ask me on Question Time…)



Nov 16. And the loser of the big Paul vs Tyson fight was… anyone who watched it.



Nov 15. Giddy up! Janet Devlin weds classic country to modern problems on her warm and witty Emotional Rodeo, plus new albums from Linkin Park & LiVES, & a superb Melody Gardot set, all reviewed in today’s Express and Mirror. And here’s Janet Devlin on how the Samaritans saved her life – and could save yours https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/music/1976000/janet-devlin-xfactor-samaritans.



Nov 14. RIP UK wrestling legend Brian ‘Goldbelt’ Maxine, who died on Tuesday aged 86. Cheshire-born Maxine was one of the greatest stars of wrestling’s golden age. A regular on TV’s World Of Sport in the 1970s, he was British welterweight champion from 1969 to 1971 and became British middleweight champ in 1971, making him the first post-war wrestler to hold championship belts in two weight categories simultaneously. He famously became Debbie Harry’s wrestling coach, training the Blondie star for her part in the 1980s stage musical Teaneck Tanzi: The Venus Flytrap. In her memoir, Harry recalled: “We had a wrestling coach named Brian Maxine who had a massive, muscular, no neck upper body and a perfectly busted up nose. Brian had been a British Champion for years and he was very serious about his job as a coach. For weeks he taught us how to do the holds, make the jumps, take the falls, and do all the different wrestling moves that we did in the show.” After his wrestling career ended, Brian became a cabaret artist recording three albums with folk group Fairport Convention as his backing band. He appeared in the Roman Polanski film Pirates, and continued to get bookings for popular TV entertainment programmes like The Kenny Everett Television Show. Brian, who died after a long battle with dementia, was inducted into the British Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2018 at The Bridges Reunion. Earlier this year, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award at The Annual Wrestlers Lunch.



Nov 13. I’m absolutely on the side of Allison Pearson. The ham-fisted over-reaction of Essex police to one long-deleted tweet is bonkers, illogical and worrying for all of us who still value free speech. (But that said, can people who haven’t read any Kafka please stop using the word “Kafka-esque”? Labour’s brave new [grey] world is more Bradbury, with a side order of Orwell. Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, about a man who wakes up to find he’s turned into a giant insect, may be relevant today though. Anyone who voted Labour expecting to get a grown-up national government woke up to find themselves ruled by joyless Nannies with their heads full of minority interests and student politics.



Nov 10. Remembrance Sunday. Never forget the sacrifice. Donate to the Royal British Legion if you can.



I’m chatting to those bantering buddies Ball & Boe in today’s Sunday Express Review for the West End stars’ new album, and talking telly with children’s TV tech wiz Maddie Moate.



Nov 9. My updated review of Channel 4's tediously biased US election night coverage is now online …



Nov 8. Today’s album reviews: Primal Scream. Laura Marling. Scions and Rick Wakeman’s Yes sonata. Where early Primal Scream channelled the psychedelic sixties, their 12th album draws on Motown and early 70s Philadelphia soul. It’s as if the Delfonics and the Temptations had grown up in the Glasgow tenements losing a little joie de vivre in the process. You can read it online here.

Did you watch British TV’s embarrassing coverage of the US Presidential election? Once journalists tasked with covering huge news events prided themselves on their detachment and impartiality. These days TV’s elite broadcasters see themselves as celebrity activists whose views and prejudices must hold sway. Emily Maitlis and Krishnan Guru-Murphy’s approach on America Decides (Channel 4, Wednesday) was less even-handed than a Captain Hook Convention. Forget irreverence and ribbing, what we got from their marathon eight-hour over-night special was a weighted diatribe against Trump. The only second term they wanted the Donald to serve was a jail term. We got allegations, insults, and regurgitated scandals but neither of them once questioned Kamala Harris’s record. They didn’t ask about her changing her mind on key issues; for example, in 2020, Kamala advocated decriminalising border crossings and banning fracking. They didn’t wonder if her one-time allegiance to all things woke, including defunding the police, might have turned off millions of floating voters. The closest Maitlis came to querying her candidacy was to ask: “Has she run a strong enough campaign?” Which was hardly up there with questions like, “What do you fear most from a Trump victory?” Or asking former Prime Minister Boris Johnson “Would you have any fears for the ladies in your life?” if they were in the President’s company. Would she have asked that of Clinton?



Maitlis got grumpier and more graceless as the night progressed, haranguing anyone she suspected wasn’t entirely onside with Team Harris. At the death, Guru-Murphy had to tell the former BBC TV news presenter and Newsnight anchor to stop swearing after she branded President Trump “bat-shit crazy”. Emily, and her Martini earrings, left the room.



Dundee-born actor Brian Cox captured the vibe of the show perfectly when he said: “We have to make sure he doesn’t get in…he’s crazy, he’s insane, he wants to be a dictator…” We, Brian? Surely American elections should be decided by American voters, not Channel 4 and their virtue-signalling battalion of luvvies. It took former White House press secretary Sean Spicer to restore a little balance by reminding us that the Democrats had tried to kick Trump off the ballot papers. Not so democratic, then. The constant claims, common to all the TV coverage, that the election was “extremely close… on a knife-edge… too close to call” turned out to be hogwash too.



Impartiality is tough to achieve these days, but the much-maligned GB News managed it far better than C4 or the BBC, whose efforts on election night coverage was surprisingly underwhelming. Viewers hoping for fair-play and balance will have been disappointed by ITV too. At one point, host Tom Bradby branded Trump “a fascist”. There’s impartial for you. A few hours later Good Morning Britain (ITV, Thursday) saw Susanna Reid, at her most sanctimonious. “He’s a convicted criminal,” she fumed. I’m not Piers Morgan’s biggest fan – he is – but it reminded viewers how much the show needed Piers as a counter-balance to all this red-faced media class indignity. Few things on earth are smaller than the egos of big-shot TV presenters. Peter Crouch, King Kong, Ben Nevis… all these giants are dwarfed into insignificance by the sheer scale of their self-importance and self-righteous conceit.



It was a bad election for pampered, multi-millionaire, Trump-bashing celebrities like J-Lo, Oprah and Cardi B. Floating voters largely ignored them and handed Trump the greatest come-back since Lazarus. Or at least since Grover Cleveland in the 19th Century. It was also a bad election for puffed-up British podcasters like Alastair ‘Dodgy Dossier’ Campbell and Tory wet Rory Stewart. The gulf between their predictions and the actual result mirrors the disconnect between the commentariat and the general public over Brexit, and explains the robust rise of Reform UK. Satire didn’t blossom either. America’s now-dismal live topical ‘comedy’ show Saturday Night Live (Sky Comedy, Sunday) had Kamala as a surprise guest last weekend and gave her the easiest ride this side of a kindergarten playground. In a short skit, Harris told her mirror-image (played by comedian Maya Rudolph): “It’s nice to see you Kamala, and I’m just here to remind you, you got this.” Whoops.



Nov 4. Sad to hear we’ve lost Quincy Jones at 91. The Chicago-born carpenter’s son was best known for producing and arranging Michael Jackson’s biggest sellers (not least on Thriller and BAD) but before that he’d worked with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie and Sinatra. He also composed the soundtrack to The Italian Job – incredibly Get A Bloomin’ Move On (The Self Preservation Society), a song loaded with Cockney rhyming slang, was entirely Quincy’s work. His other film scores included In The Heat Of The Night and The Getaway, he won an Emmy for TV’s Roots and wrote the TV themes for Ironside and Sanford & Son, the US version of Steptoe & Son. Gifted beyond belief.



Nov 3. I’m chatting to that pearl of a singer Elkie Brooks in today’s Sunday Express Review, talking TV with Murray Head and reviving the spirit of Bushell On The Box with my thoughts on last week’s telly – that’s online too.



Nov 1st. This might upset a few Goths, but the miserable new Cure album bored the hell out of me. Read all about in today’s Express and Mirror or online here. Other reviews include: the return of the Quireboys, Andrea Bocelli’s all-star duets comp and the 20th anniversary repackage of Green Day’s game-changing American Idiot. You’ll have your own choice of American political idiot of course, but bungling Biden and cackling Kamala take some beating.



Oct 31. Remember Starmer saying the first lever his government would reach for would be “the growth lever”. Another porky. They’ve gone straight for the tax lever as you knew they would. Reeves, the Ivor Biggins of finance, has jerked it so hard – £40billion! – that even the OBR felt moved to point out that her budget won’t create growth, but it will lower wages. The only growth we’ll see will be in the use of AI by firms who won’t be hiring as many workers as they would otherwise have done, and in the national debt burden now she’s fiddled the books to take us deeper into the red.



Oct 30. So sad to hear we’ve lost Teri Garr, a wonderful actress who did comedy and drama with peerless aplomb. Her comic timing was superb and she could adlib with the best. I remember her primarily as Inga from Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein although she made her TV debut in Star Trek (as Roberta Lincoln) years before. Teri also sparkled in Tootsie – her only Oscar nomination. She died of complications of the multiple sclerosis she’d suffered from since the 1980s. In her autobiography Garr called MS a “sneaky” disease, saying “like some of my boyfriends it has a tendency to show up at the most awkward times and then to disappear entirely.” RIP.



Oct 27. I had a lot of fun chatting to the sharp and quick-witted bestselling American crime author Patricia Cornwell for today’s Sunday Express Review. Her great forensic crime-busting character Kay Scarpetta comes to Amazon Prime next year with Nicole Kidman in the lead role. I’m also talking telly with vampire-obsessed Britain’s Got Talent winner Sydnie Christmas.



Oct 25. New albums from Razorlight, Tears For Fears, Pixies & Allie X, all reviewed in today’s Express and Mirror. It will be online soon.



How much worse can the ‘Labour’ Party get? Starmer and co are tying themselves up in great knots of waffle and baloney as they attempt to define the “working people” they promised not to hit with tax rises. Bad enough Sir Keir didn’t know what a woman was, now the Labour leader is baffled by the word ‘worker’. In fairness, he’s never been either.



Ministerial contortions are almost on a par with the Cirque du Soleil. Cut through the tangled web of tosh though and it looks certain that Chancellor Rachel Reeves will be coming after anyone who has a few bob tucked away for a rainy day. Labour used to be about improving the lot of the working class, ‘workers by hand or brain’. Now their goal is to punish anyone who works hard and saves, or runs a small business, or is a self-employed craftsman, in order to hand their hard-earned dosh to the reckless, work shy and undeserving. How can a ‘party of the workers’ punish plumbers, hairdressers, and sparks for grafting? Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your savings.



Oct 22. My chat with Ant Middleton is now online.



Oct 21. So sad to hear that rock singer Paul Di’Anno has died. He was a great character in the early days of Iron Maiden, a proper wide boy, devoted to WHUFC, funny and fervent. He wore a Ska pork pie hat on stage at some early metal gigs to wind-up purists, and once pulled a nurse so the band would have somewhere to stay while they were recording the Soundhouse Tapes (she gave him a dose – “And her a nurse an’ all!” he told me, in shock and disbelief). Paul, who was 66, joined Maiden in 1978 and was elbowed in 81 in favour of Bruce Dickinson whose voice was deemed more suited to US rock radio. Paul, whose real surname was Andrews, very nearly recorded with the Cockney Rejects in the 80s, when Jeff stepped away from the band. Sadly, he went off the rails, getting banged up for four months in LA in 1993 after assaulting his girlfriend with a knife while coked out of his skull. He was deported back home once he’d done his bird but served another two months in a British nick in 2011 for benefit fraud. Paul made a living in bands like Battlezone and the Killers, and his 2010 autobiography, The Beast, is full of riotous and unsavoury tales. But he never again hit the heights of heavy metal mayhem that he reached with Steve ‘Harry’ Harris and the mighty Maiden crew.



Garry BushellOct 20. I had a fine nostalgic time with old pals at yesterday’s launch of Angels With Dirty Faces, at Oi Oi The Shop in Camden. French snapper Riton’s high-quality street-punk photo-book includes new snaps of everyone from Pauline Black to Sheer Terror’s Paul Bearer, via Lars Fredericksen and Jeff Turner – all survivors drawn from a Zenn diagram of the Oi, 2-Tone and hardcore scenes which flourished in the space created after the Pistols had kicked the music industry doors wide open and the peasants stormed the palace. For a brief while, everything seemed possible. Good to see younger faces like the amazing Amiee Allen of The Interrupters in the book too. It was my pleasure to write one of the forewords.



I’m chatting to former special forces soldier, adventurer, author and TV star Ant Middleton in today’s Sunday Express Review and talking telly with singer-songwriter Julia Fordham.



October 18. New albums from Jerry Cantrell of Alice In Chains, Kylie Minogue & Riley Green are all reviewed in today’s Daily Express and Daily Mirror, plus the 60s are back with The Animals debut LP re-booted & The Yardbirds’ BBC recordings released in full (minus the Clapton era, which the cultural vandals dumbly wiped).



Oct 13. Donegal’s own Daniel O’Donnell tells me about his 40 years of success, and why he did an acoustic gig through a megaphone in Middlesbrough, in today’s Sunday Express Review & I’m talking telly with Mortal Engines author Philip Reeve.



Oct 11. Paul Heaton’s new solo album, a perfect ten for Samara Joy, a mammoth Rory Gallagher collection, and the full-length debut from BGT winner Sydnie Christmas – all reviewed in today’s Express and Mirror.



So sad to see Hurricane Milton devastating my favourite part of Florida. We’re not safe from looming destruction here either. We’re only days away from Hurricane Reeves’s budget. That’s going to be a proper twister.



Oct 10. The BBC weather app warned Britain to brace itself for “15,759mph winds” and “overnight temperatures of 404C.” That’s hotter than it is on the surface of Mercury! A cock-up of course, but what odds Greta was saying “See, I told you so!” and Starmer’s shower were minutes away from declaring a new lockdown? My favourite BBC glitch happened ten years ago when a technical malfunction meant we were seeing two of Helen Willetts. (My old self would have added that I see double every time Carol Kirkwood was on screen but I’m above that sort of thing now.)



Oct 6. I go behind the scenes at the Royal Opera House to unpick the magic of Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland with two young ballerinas in today’s Sunday Express Review & talk telly with south London’s 80s pop princess Kim Wilde. I saw the Royal Ballet production yesterday, it’s big on mesmerising moments, a little too long and a bit light on plot – but in fairness so was the book. Brilliant Lauren Cuthbertson steals the show as the crackpot Queen of Hearts, the maddest monarch since Shakespeare’s Lear.



Random other things I enjoyed this week: Shifty’s Boys by Chris Offutt, Industry’s return on BBC1 and a bottle of Vinha do Fava, a perky Portuguese red. Felicidades ao beber!



Oct 5. Bushell On The Box has been in newspapers, on TV, on radio & a streaming service. Now it’s looking for a new home. Seriously. Any medium considered. Even Sally Morgan.



Oct 4. Coldplay shoot for the moon, Fairground Attraction’s classy comeback, Lady Gaga’s big-band Joker sequel ‘companion’ album & mighty Alison Moyet celebrates her 40year career – all reviewed in today’s Express and Mirror. I remember Alison singing with the Little Roosters in 1979, she was so good Garrie Lammin confined her to backing vocals rather than let her share the spotlight. If only he’d pushed her to the fore…



This rotten government aren’t just reckless, they’re hopelessly naïve. Bad enough that they’re putting our energy supplies at long-term risk, they’ve now given away the Chagos Islands, a strategically vital British overseas territory, to Mauritius which a) has no claim to them and b) is a loyal ally of China. It’s madness. Our mix of gullible politicians and self-loathing civil servants is disastrous. Their motto seems to be: England – wrong, anyone else – right. The same class of mugs also believed Beijing’s phoney assurances about Hong Kong in the late 90s. Watch your back, Gibraltar. As with Miliband, with this ‘Labour’ government ideology and virtue-signalling trump reality.



Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown just rang. He is challenging Keir Starmer to see his act after being banned him from playing the Doncaster Dome run by a Labour council. In a cheeky reference to the “free-gear Keir” scandal, Roy has offered the Prime Minister “free tickets and a freebie pie and a pint at half-time” if he comes, adding, “He can have one of my old suits as well, and me goggles. But he can’t have me helmet.” Allegations about Starmer’s own helmet are currently being suppressed by news outlets.



Oct 3. What about those Tory leadership hopefuls? I haven't seen so many unknown and underperforming faces since the last run of Celebrity Mastermind. Get your no-confidence letters in early.



Oct 2. I’m off to the Royal Opera House today. All will be explained on Sunday. But let’s just say I hope my tutu still fits.



October 1st. Great night at the Punk Rock Curry Club. The rowdy but friendly 22-strong throng brought a lot of business to several Wapping pubs and the Halal Restaurant in St Marks Street. It would have been 23 but Steve Kent, my old Gonads and Prole songwriting partner, disappeared into the East End equivalent of the Bermuda triangle. I’ve forgotten her name… I started this club in the 90s with three good friends, author John King, the late Fatty Lol (boss of Moon Ska Europe and pioneer of p-rock) and a KC we must refer to only as Judge Shed. It’s grown into a joyful habit enjoyed over the years by everyone from Lars Frederiksen to Buster Bloodvessel.



Sept 29. The great Gateshead-born conductor John Wilson is our Sunday Express Review cover star, ahead of his Rodgers & Hammerstein 2025 tour with the Sinfonia of London, and I’m talking telly with Sixties survivor Colin Blunstone of the Zombies.



Sept 28. Where can I report a new Strictly bullying scandal? I keep being forced to watch it. Come on Chris!



Sept 27. Today’s reviews: the enduring magic of Thin Lizzy’s 1976 album double-whammy, new releases from Keith Urban and Pixie Lott, plus Rhoda Dakar reboots her 2014 Sings The Bodysnatchers (the songs are from the band’s debut LP which was never released back in those glorious 2-Tone days).



Sept 25. Free-Gear Keir has defended borrowing an £18million penthouse flat from the Labour donor Waheed Alli during the election, saying he took the offer to help his 16-year-old son study for his GCSEs. That’s nice. For someone so dead set against privileged educations, Starmer clearly revels in helping himself to all kinds of privileges. Politics is about service, he said. Yeah. Self-service.



At the conference yesterday Starmer also said that “Britain is no longer sure of itself. Our story is uncertain, the hope beaten out of us.” Really? Most of us are pretty sure of our story, despite the best efforts of wet middle-class teachers, preachers, leaches, politicians and journalists. As for beating the hope out of us, Starmer and Reeves are so gloomy it’s a wonder they’re not parading down Oxford Street with placards proclaiming ‘The end of the world is nigh’. That other dozy doom-monger Milliband is just as dangerous. He’ll have us sitting through blackouts by the end of this Parliament.



Sept 24. Well done Keir Starmer for calling for the return of the sausages. The humble British banger has fought off Eurocrats, vegans, and nannying politicians. Now it’s back in the headlines thanks to the PM’s slip of the tongue at Labour Conference, when he said: “I call again for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the return of the sausages – the hostages – and a recommitment to the two-state solution.” This proves Two-Tier, Free-Gear Keir is a real winner. Sorry wiener. A real wiener. But I suppose it takes our minds off his free suits. And in fairness John Prescott misspoke a lot wurst.



PS. Starmer doesn’t seem to realise the people least committed to “the two-state solution” are the Palestinians themselves. They’ve been offered it multiple times, most memorably in 1949, 1967, 1978, 2005, 2008 and 2014. PLO leaders and the Arab League have always rejected it. The Middle East is far more complex than politicians and protestors make it sound. Anyone wanting a clearer picture should start with Simon Sebag Montefiore’s 2011 book Jerusalem: The Biography. It tells the history of the Holy City from its village beginnings, via the Canaanites, Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians etc all the way through to through to the Ottomans, us, Jordanians and finally the Israelis again.



Sept 22. A huge pleasure to chat to loveable rogue Steve Diggle of the Buzzcocks in today’s Sunday Express Review (almost 46 years to the day since I first interviewed him); plus I’m talking telly with 80s pop giant Nik Kershaw. Diggle is plugging his memoir, Autonomy, a must-read for fans of early punk rock; Nik’s touring the UK.



Sept 20. Today’s album reviews: old gold from Fleetwood Mac & magnificent London rockers The Faces, new releases from Tom Walker and The Calamatix, and a posthumous release from Kool & The Gang’s multi-talented George ‘Funky’ Brown. Only in today’s Express and Mirror.



Sept 15. The King will come! Wishbone Ash’s Andy Powell is our Sunday Express Review cover star today, blowin’ free of course, and I’m talking telly with pop ledge Leo Sayer. Both are touring poor benighted Blighty. (I’ve still got Argus in the loft).



Sept 13. A mixed bag of albums today, with new releases from Snow Patrol, Lainey Wilson, and Dave Gilmour, plus a posthumous goodie from late dub king Lee Scratch Perry, working with Youth of Killing Joke (who was in Jimmy Lydon’s 4 Be 2s when I first met him). Reviewed in the usual places.



Sept 8. I felt privileged to chat to Booker T Jones of Booker T & The MGs for today’s Sunday Express Review, and also to talk telly with Aswad’s Tony Gad. Booker T pretty much invented the Memphis Soul sound. He and Steve Cropper co-wrote and played on a feast of Stax hits with artists including immortal soul hits by Otis Redding, Eddie Floyd and Sam & Dave. Jones’s fan club stretches from the Beatles and Dylan to Neil Young and John Fogerty. The man is a musical genius and he’s playing Ronnie Scott’s next month.

Sept 6. LL Cool J leads the new album charge today, chased hard by Moggs Motel, led by UFO’s immortal (Immoral surely? – Ed) Phil Mogg, country sensation Ella Langley and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. All reviewed in today’s Daily Express and Daily Mirror.



Sept 4. The 1700-page Grenfell Tower report tells us what most people already knew: the cladding on the tragic West London tower block was flammable and the local council were useless. Why did it take seven years and £170million to reach that obvious conclusion? It seems to me that these hugely expensive marathon inquiries – where over-paid lawyers, judges and civil servants deliberate for donkey’s years to finally tell us that 2 plus 2 equals 4 – is government’s way of kicking the can of responsibility down the road (enriching already-rich barristers and bureaucrats in the process). The buck should stop with politicians but somehow they always seem to swerve the blame.



Sept 1. Sharleen Spiteri of Texas is today’s Sunday Express Review cover star, saying what she wants ahead of their UK arena tour, and I’m talking telly with actress and poetry anthologist Allie Esiri.



August 31. Sir Keir Starmer has had a portrait of Baroness Thatcher removed from the Downing Street study. Quite right. It must have rubbed him up the wrong way to be in the same room as a real radical…



Imagine the hell of sharing a confined space with a joyless tyrant intent on silencing the working class and sowing the seeds of economic disaster, said the portrait.



Aug 30. This week’s album reviews: a perfectly timed re-release of Oasis’s game-changing debut, Definitely Maybe, plus newbies from Fontaines DC, Thomas Rhett & Zedd, only in today’s Daily Mirror & Daily Express.



Aug 29. With all the problems facing us, grey berk Starmer’s big idea is to ban smoking in beer gardens – another huge blow to our struggling pub trade. Does this mean they’ll ban people puffing on spliffs at Notting Hill Carnival? Don’t hold your breath. I don’t smoke but you know that after smokers, the lemon-sucking Nannies will come for the drinkers, and then we’re five months away from a ban on chip shops…



Wasn’t it Auberon Waugh who said smokers were the NHS’s greatest boon? They pay more tax and conk out early. How long before we’re swathed in bubble-wrap from birth?



Aug 27. What a load of flannel from that shifty dullard Starmer today. Two-Tier Kier, a proven lawyer, claimed Labour has “achieved more in seven weeks than the Tories did in seven years”. True if by achievements you mean cranking up energy bills, picking pensioners’ pockets, boosting inflation, and springing violent criminals so he can bang up people who tweeted something daft at gin o’clock instead. He had nothing at all to say on immigration, not a word, and clearly hasn’t the faintest idea how to re-charge the economy. Coherent strategy is not Starmer’s business. All he has to offer are tax rises, gloom and thoughtcrime laws. No wonder his approval ratings are going down like the Belgrano. He thinks he’ll be in power for ten years; he’ll be lucky to have a majority in two. Welcome to the age of beige.



Aug 25. I’m chatting to Sonja Kristina of Curved Air in today’s Sunday Express Review and talking telly with Barry Whitwam of 60s legends Herman’s Hermits…



Good news. Slow Horses is back on Apple TV from 4th September.



Aug 24. Every time I go to hospital something peculiar happens. I spent a few hours in urgent care yesterday and at one point, just 90 minutes in, I thought they’d called out my name. What an optimistic fool. I went up, the nurse took me through and then she gave me a quizzical look. It turned out that the name she’d called was something like Gamze Kushal who was a) Middle Eastern and b) female. Not me. I think the beard gave it away. Hers was bushier. When I eventually did get called, the doc gave me antibiotics, anti-inflammatory pills and Omeprazole and said “if it is no better by Tuesday, don’t come back here!” He meant to say “Don’t come here because we can’t help, go to the PRU instead” but it came out like he couldn’t be arsed to deal with me. It reminded me of when my dear old Chinese friend Tim Hung, RIP, used to snap “You come my restaurant, you have one drink, then you go”. He meant “Come to my restaurant for a drink, you don’t have to stay long,” but it never came out like that. Cultural misunderstandings. One of the joys of London life.



Aug 23. This week’s album reviews: Post Malone teams up with country music idols in his latest whisky-soaked, hell-raisin’ genre-switch, plus new releases from Stax legend Steve Cropper, The Script and US folk duo Gillian Welch & David Rawlings – only in today’s Daily Express and Daily Mirror.



Aug 22. A quick update, for those who have been asking – I’m on course for the new Harry Tyler novel to finally be published in Summer 2025. Sorry for the delay.



Aug 21. RIP John Clegg, better known as ‘La-Di-Da’ Gunner Graham in Ain’t Half Hot, Mum (another classic sitcom we’re no longer allowed to watch for the usual achingly earnest liberal-guilt-tripping middle class balderdash).



Anyone else watching DNC clips on the news today and thinking Michelle Obama would have made a better Democratic candidate than Kamala? She’s sharper, she’s more charismatic and crucially she isn’t desperately trying to disown every single policy she espoused until about a month ago.



Good news. Amyl & The Sniffers release their new album Cartoon Darkness in October.



Aug 20. The National Gallery is blowing £80,000 on “influencers”. Who needs an influencer to tell them great art is worth a look? The NG has works by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Botticello, Da Vinci… it’s more than just a neat new place to take selfies.



Aug 19. Labour have given senior civil service jobs to four donors. Just in case you thought they were any better than the last lot.



Misogyny will be treated as “terrorism” under Labour, says Yvette Cooper. This could have grave repercussions. Not least for Punch & Judy… But hold on. Violence against women is already a crime, and terrorism is the use of extreme violence to undermine democracy. Why muddy the waters? Stupid question. All waters must be muddied in the brave new world of identity politics and liberal double-think. Which is why Labour are in no hurry to tackle misogynistic communities who systematically degrade women and treat them as second-class citizens…But given how chummy some politicians are with actual former terrorists and their apologists, you can understand them wanting to keep that water as clear as Jumbo’s mud bath.



Aug 18. I’m chatting to former Genesis guitar maestro Steve Hackett in today’s Sunday Express Review; I’m also talking telly with Paula Cole and unexpectedly standing in for the TV reviews after a bout of food poisoning… never say die, and all that.



Aug 11. I’m chatting with David ‘Diddy’ Hamilton in today’s Sunday Express, talking telly with excellent Irish author Donal Ryan, and also reviewing the week’s TV.



Aug 10. With all the uncertainty in the world, it can only be a matter of time before the powers-that-bleat try to lock us down again. What do you reckon it will be this time? A new strain of Covid? Another try with monkey pox? The sunshine? UFOs? If it is aliens, can they please be three-breasted Draylaxians from Star Trek, or Eccentrica Gallumbits from the even earlier Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (she reckoned Zaphod Beeblebrox was “the best bang since the big one”)? Beam me up.



Aug 8. Riots. The Left hate them. Except for the Poll Tax riots, the Brixton riots, Broadwater Farm, Grosvenor Square, the Carnival against Capitalism… it’s a long list. Tariq Ali, once of the International Marxist Group, wrote a memoir called Street Fighting Years which was enthusiastically published by what is now HarperCollins, one of the most respectable publishing houses in Britain. The Clash, the original proponents of the ‘white riot’, signed to CBS, one of the biggest record labels in the US, and therefore very much ‘The Man’. It’s so much easier to be a rebel with big business backing. At least Crass did it d-i-y… But the moral is clear – leftwing riots good; anything else, evil personified.



I don’t mean to play down what happened in Southport. But the mass media’s reactions to the riots were deranged. The BBC immediately blamed the English Defence League – who don’t exist – and newspapers followed suit. Then the Daily Mail praised a crowd in East London holding aloft a sea of SWP placards as a sign of national unity. That’s the same SWP who advocate armed revolution, back Hamas to the hilt, and walk arm-in-arm with clerical fascists who believe women should be kept covered up and in their place. A nice crowd.



I don’t support these riots. You can’t support mobs intent on burning down places of worship etc. But we can and should ask why it happened. The Southport murders were one of the most horrific crimes this country has seen for years. Fake news on social media threw petrol on the fire of understandable rage and frustration. So why did people believe it so readily? Possibly because politicians, and the authorities, have form for lying to us about Islamist crimes and trying to hush them up. When ethnic communities riot, the Left are quick to blame social issues. This time around, they were happy to brand the rioters “far-right thugs”, which quickly translated by the equally odious far-Left into “Nazis” and “the fash” (with the subtext of ‘So therefore we don’t need to address their concerns’). In truth though, fascism in this country is of very little consequence. There is no significant far-right party anywhere in the United Kingdom, and certainly none with enough support to mobilise thousands.



Most British people of all faiths, and none, are essentially decent. We don’t want to see Tariq’s street-fights, or the National Front marching or the Angry Brigade’s bombs and arson. Like the vast majority of hard-working, law-abiding British Muslims, we want to get on with our lives in peace. But increasingly anyone with serious concerns about immigration levels will be labelled “far-right” as a means of belittling them and their concerns. (Listen to Dominic Frisby’s song, We’re All Far-Right Now). Sadiq Khan called the anti-ULEZ protestors “far-right”, Brexit campaigners were tarred with the same brush, with the media, almost as one, neglecting to mention those on the Eurosceptic Left who had argued consistently and passionately against the European project from the Common Market to the EU membership – Tony Benn, Michael Foot, Bob Crow, Ernest Bevan, Kate Hoey. Even poor old Rees-Mogg, formerly the Minister for the 18th Century, is branded “far-right” by the politically illiterate.



Two-tier policing is clearly happening. Take the riots in Harehills, Leeds, where the mob overturned a cop car and ran amok while the police retreated. Look how leniently they treated the masked Muslims who wandered around Bordesley Green, Birmingham brandishing weapons and beat the hell out of white man outside the Clumsy Swan pub. Look at the Midlands cop who advised Asian protesters to conceal their weapons. Ever since October 7th the Met have allowed demonstrators to march through London calling for jihad… It’s hard not to conclude it’s one rule for them, and another one for us. But this isn’t new. I was in a pie and mash shop in Shadwell, with my fragrant friend Antonella Lazzeri in the late 90s, when an old Cockney woman came up to me in tears. Why so? Because she said whenever there was a disagreement between local Cockneys and local Muslims, the Labour Party – the party she had voted for all her life – always took the side of the Muslims no matter who was in the right. Who spoke up for them now?



Many people in South Yorkshire and Greater Manchester were even more disgusted when politicians, senior cops and social workers covered up the mass grooming of English children. If you want to know why people don’t trust the authorities, that’s the answer in a nutshell. They’d rather close an issue down with lies than tell the inconvenient truth. (See also Covid and the Chinese lab, economic migrants posing as refugees etc). Islamist killers, and there have been many, are always painted as lone wolves for fear of people reaching the ‘wrong’ conclusions. Innocents are sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. It’s called “managing the narrative”.



Immigration can be a good thing. I’ve known many people from the subcontinent, for example, who embrace our values and way of life. Controlled waves of immigration enrich our culture, and our diets. Uncontrolled immigration, cynically exploited, is something entirely different.



We use the word “fascist” too lightly and too freely in this country. Fascism is a dead duck here. If there were a man of Mosley’s brains and oratory in the wings – and there isn’t – he would swiftly be building disciplined party branches in areas blighted by rising unemployment, soul-sapping welfarism, and collapsing hope. He’d be targeting people who feel left behind by both the economy and the self-satisfied political class who ignore their genuine concerns, dismiss their beliefs and piddle on their dreams.



Tommy Robinson, once jailed for mortgage fraud, is no Mosley, but by and large his marchers aren’t fascists. How do I know this? Because I know two people who went on the last London march – one was a life-long Bennite, the other voted for Corbyn. Working class people of all political backgrounds and ethnicities have got the hump and it’ll take a better man than Starmer and his eco-loon buddies to get their support. Sir Keir wasn’t painting himself as tough on rioters during the violent BLM demoes. Two days after a policewoman was injured – she’d suffered a collapsed lung, a broken collarbone and broken ribs – he had posed for pictures taking the knee. Starmer’s toughness is selective. Watch him use these short-lived disturbances to crack down on Labour’s real enemies – free speech, open debate, and national pride.



July 17. Can we talk about the new government? My family, growing up in southeast London, were rock-solid Labour supporters, and I joined the party in the 1980s after leaving the International Socialists (SWP). My sympathies have always been with honest working-class people fighting to get by and build a better life for their kids. But the King’s speech makes it crystal clear that Starmer’s Labour aren’t in the business of improving our lives. Look at the evidence:



They want to fight crime by releasing criminals. They want to create growth – “economic dynamism” – by smothering businesses in red tape. They want to build houses to meet demand caused by mass immigration, but won’t say that because they have no intention of reducing legal or illegal migration into the country.



Worse, they’ve got that reckless nerd Ed Miliband blocking new gas fields and North Sea oil drilling. But Ed’s plan to go carbon neutral by 2030 is bonkers, largely because our weather is unreliable. We will still need a guaranteed power supply for when the wind drops and it gets cloudy outside; which means we will end up having to import it from abroad…until we build more nuclear power stations. Like most of Labour’s plans, it is a triumph of ideology over rational thinking. And potentially disastrous too. What we should be doing is boosting North Sea oil and gas production, accelerating waste-to- energy conversion, investing in nuclear fusion and carbon capture, and taking a more rational look at fracking. In an increasingly hostile world we will need more self-sufficiency, not less. That means re-industrialisation, not deindustrialisation.



It also means building up our armed forces. Like the useless Tories, Labour quite like to rattle their sabres, but they shy away from investing in the military. And, by the way, who would sign up to fight for King & Country, knowing that down the line ‘leftwing’ lawyers are going to come after you at the behest of Sinn Fein apologists and the rest? If you don’t end up living on the streets, that is. How is it right that we release terrorists while betraying our veterans, sent into Northern Ireland by a Labour government? The only wars Labour are prepared to fight are against motorists, shop-owners and small businesses.



Ex-lawyer Starmer loves regulation. It’s one of the reasons he wants to align further with the EU. Labour clearly plan to mirror all those meddling, petty-minded Euro-laws and betray the majority who voted for our independence – even though the European economy is in a worse state than ours. For Labour, the dream of the EU trumps the reality. All their plans, from decarbonising the national grid to managing immigration, come direct from cloud cuckoo land. We will end up with slower growth, higher taxes, a bigger state, more bureaucracy, more indoctrination, and more people on welfare, while they disincentivise ambition and reward sloth. It’s the politics of the Blob and it spells national suicide. We need more common sense, more freedom, and more growth. That means real incentives to work, less taxation and less government.



June 29. Here’s my recent chat with Black Sabbath’s Terence ‘Geezer’ Butler, now online. Read how bassist and lyricist Geezer accidentally invented heavy metal with a little help from Gustav Holtz.



March 7 2024. Here is a mishmash of questions and answers from various recent interviews I’ve done with fanzines and students.



Who will you vote for at the next General Election?



None of the above.



You’ve promised us Sounds Of Glory volume three and four, where are they?



They’re coming. I’m putting them together carefully. No need to rush.



You’ve published 1979 Mod and 1979 Ska, when will we get 1980 Oi?



I’m taking special care with that one. I might film some of the interviews for posterity.



How is the new Harry Tyler novel coming along?



Pretty well, thanks. The skeleton of the book is now in place, and I’m slowly fleshing it out. The plot is more complex than usual, but there’s a simple, fast-moving story at its heart.



Growing up, did you feel more drawn to music or writing?



I bought my first single when I was seven or eight (My Boy Lollipop by Millie Small) and had my first stab at song-writing in 1969 aged 14. I was writing comedy sketches for my own amusement around that same time and with a group of friends, I created what would now be called a comedy zine the following year. So I think the honest answer is writing. But we also had a band and played our first gig (at a party in Lee Green) in 1971. My first published journalism was 1976 or 7 in the radical press. Then Temporary Hoarding and Rebel.



Did you ever get to interview one of your musical heroes?



Yes. Joe Strummer of The Clash, Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy, the great Ian Dury. I got tongue-tied initially with all of them.



What's it like being interviewed and reviewed knowing what the process is to be the person writing those articles?



Frustrating sometimes, especially when you say something that clearly invites a follow-up question and they just plough on through their list. It’s taught me to be cautious too though. I have always been open about things and you learn to be more guarded in interview situations when they come with a preconceived agenda. A throw-away line could sink a career, especially now.



Who would be your dream podcast guests?



I had some great guests on my old Radio Litopia show – Pauline Black, Roger Scruton, Lars Frederiksen, Steven Berkoff, Patti Boulaye... all hugely interesting and all very different... if I had a podcast, the dream guest list would include Bruce Springsteen, Dolly Parton, Eddie Murphy, Gal Gadot, Billy Connolly, Ashley McBryde, Micky Flanagan, Marcia Griffiths, Willie Nelson, Brigitte Bardot, Mick Miller, Peter Kay, Christine Peake, Barack and Michelle, Robert Plant, Beyonce, Chris Rock, Elton, and Pamela Anderson. Top that!



Who would you have at your fantasy dinner party of the dead?



Marie Lloyd, Max Miller, Francis Drake, Spike Milligan, Clement Atlee, Joan Rivers, Miles Davis, Dave Allen, Aretha Franklin, Tommy Trinder, Dorothy Parker, Hendrix, Churchill, Janis Joplin, Wat Tyler, Sophia Loren.



And who would perform?



The late Lucille Bogan, queen of filthy blues. Elvis. And Dylan, if he did the early stuff.



Have you got any favourite new authors?



Yeah, Jordan Harper and S.A. Crosby. Both beautiful writers.



Who are the greatest US comic book creations?



Daredevil, Batman... Deadman, Doctor Strange. I don’t think Marvel can claim to have created Thor.



What about British comic book creations?



Alan Moore’s Watchmen. Swamp Thing. Dan Dare. Judge Dredd. Sid the Sexist?



Do you wish people knew you more as a writer or musician?



I wish more people knew me as an author.



Have you ever tried to compile a Ska album?



I was working on an album of punk bands playing Ska songs and vice versa, but the project crashed during the pandemic.



How many Oi! albums have you compiled?



I did the four original albums, then in 2010, I put 30 Years Of Oi – Never Surrender together as a vinyl double album on Contra Records, and ten years later I compiled Oi! – 40 Years Untamed, on Pirates Press. I’m thinking of doing a 45th anniversary comp next year because it seems unlikely that many of the old guard will still be around by 2030. If I do, I’ll balance new bands and old as usual.



Is it true you were a revolutionary socialist?



A Trotskyist, yes. I joined the International Socialists when I was 17 or 18 but I got disillusioned with them by the mid-80s. I write about it at length in my autobiography. The seeds of doubt were sewn when they sent us to protect the Paedophile Information Exchange. Then there was their weaselly support for terrorists and their hostility to internal democracy. They had no tolerance for alternative views inside the party. They were a middle-class distortion of Bolshevism which itself was a distortion of Marx. They had no real principles. These days you see them marching arm in arm with people they would once have rightly called clerical fascists.



Is Islamophobia a problem?



What do you mean by it? The word is thrown about to close down debate. It’s possible to condemn Islamists without condemning Islam, just as it was possible to condemn the KKK without condemning Christianity. I’m not religious but I’m fairly certain mainstream Islam will liberalise over time just as Christianity did.



Is Communism possible?



I don’t think it’s ever been tried. Lenin turned Marx on his head to justify trying to create socialism in a peasant society. One flawed central tenet of Bolshevism is that after creating a state-run society (socialism) the state ‘will wither away’ into a communist paradise. In reality, the state gets bigger and stronger and more interfering. It won’t wither. Why would it wither? It has to be cut back and freedom of speech and individual rights have to be enshrined in law. As we see in post-‘socialist’ Russia and China, a better world is not inevitable.



What’s your guilty pleasure?



Watching Columbo episodes and old Seinfelds. But I don’t feel guilty.



Your all-time favourite TV shows? Five British, five Yank. And five from anywhere else.



The US ones, off the top of my head, are The Sopranos. Seinfeld. The Simpsons. Game Of Thrones and Star Trek: TNG. But there are so many more classics from Dallas to The Boys and Stranger Things. I loved Letterman, Leno, Frasier, Columbo, The Larry Sanders Show, Breaking Bad, The Wire... so my Top 5 today might change tomorrow. And it’s the same with the British ones. Off the top of my head – Fools & Horses, Minder, The Sweeney, Hancock’s Half Hour, Fawlty Towers, but then you think hold on, what about The Avengers, House Of Cards, Auf Wiedersehen Pet, Big Breadwinner Hog. Python. The Office... I loved the early Line Of Duty and early Peaky Blinders. From other countries Fauda, Braquo, Spiral, The Bridge, The Killing... I’ve not seen Reindeer Mafia yet.



Who were your best guests on Bushell On The Box?



We had so many. Barbara Windsor, Bob Monkhouse, Penn & Teller, Lily Savage, Joe Pasquale, Lenny McLean. Various Gladiators... Dale Winton sent himself up. We had the Drifters playing in my back garden. And the Blood!



Your all-time favourite album?



Kind Of Blue. Miles Davis.



What myths about yourself would you most like to dispel?



The myths fermented by the Daily Mail in their shock-horror coverage of me and the Oi bands. It was typical Mail – an element of truth, distilled with large measures of hysteria and wilful misinterpretation. I was a fervent Trotskyist at the time, I’d been writing about and actively supporting 2-Tone since the beginning, and was still writing about it in 1981, I urged readers to vote Labour in 1979 and in 1983... that’s all a matter of public record. So the idea that I was some kind of political schizophrenic – an international socialist who turned into a national one every other Friday was pure fantasy. With that second Oi album, the title and the cover were cock-ups rather than some nefarious conspiracy. The cover artwork was the fourth attempt at it, and the record company, Decca, decided to go with it. It was their money and their choice. But the content, the sleeve notes and even the dedications subverted the idea it was some far-right exercise. It just wasn’t true. The middle-class left usually take anything written by the Mail with a huge pinch of salt. But everyone wanted to see the worst of skinheads, and the irony was this deliberate misinterpretation, combined with class prejudice, actually attracted fascistic elements who made our lives hell. And by the way, who brought fascism into the rock music scene to begin with? Bowie and Malcolm McLaren. Bless them.



Will you ever get round to doing ‘an audience with’ with you and the Gonads?



Maybe. I’m tempted. The longer I delay it, the less likely it’s going to be. I have been thinking about doing more solo comedy gigs. When they work you feel ten foot tall, when they don’t you beat yourself up for months. I should have done more in the 90s, like the Gonads should have done more gigs in the 70s and 80s. But there’s no point obsessing about things you can’t change. No regrets.



What’s your advice for success?



Everyone’s definition of success is different. Make sure the goals you pursue are the goals you set yourself.



What is your greatest success?



My family.



Other than family.



Some of my books, some of my records, a few of my TV shows, my unbeaten 1990s Quasar score... I’m more serious about the things I do now than I was. It’s why they take longer.



I’m winding the blog down for a bit to concentrate on new books. You can keep up with any other business via my Twitter account.



May 28. Many thanks for the kind words about the Proper Comedians gigs this month. It means a lot to me. I had a real blast working with stand-up legends like Jimmy Jones (now 85), Jim Davidson, and dear old Duncan Norvelle. New turns like Gerry K (real name Gerry Kyei) and comedy impressionist Danny Posthill were terrific too. I also filmed a couple of Ustreme episodes of a show called Laughter Class that aims to find and train joke-telling comics. The standard was surprising high. I’ll let you know when they’re streaming.



May 27. Call me Mystic Gal. In January 2011, I wrote these words about Phillip Schofield: “This creep has been getting away with his nice guy act for years, but every now and then the mask slips and you spot the satanic intensity in his eyes. If his path to stardom hasn’t involved the selling of his soul... ” Schofield’s fall is a huge embarrassment for ITV. Can This Morning survive it? The Devon-raised star was one of the cornerstones of the ITV schedules. A natural broadcaster with a ready wit, Schofield was unflappable live – as he proved in the CBBC Broom Cupboard and BBC1’s Going Live as long ago as the 1980s. He graduated to well-paid ITV prime time presenter jobs, including Dancing On Ice and The Cube, but is best known for his weekday double act with Holly Willoughby. ITV’s “golden couple” hosted This Morning for more than two decades, garlanding a string of awards. What went wrong? I appeared on live TV twice with Schofield and always felt that his smile never quite reached his eyes. His pomposity and self-regard surfaced in his 2012 interview with David Cameron when, in a spectacularly ill-judged stunt, Pip confronted the then Prime Minister about a list of parliamentary paedophiles he’d found on that most reliable of sources, the internet.



More recently he tested public patience with the queue-jumping farce before the late Queen’s funeral. When Schofield came out as gay in 2020, viewers were overwhelmingly supportive, but many people in TV circles saw this as a smoke screen to distract attention from something bigger. His brother Tim was arrested and then jailed this month for paedophile offences. Schofield publicly disowned him, but no amount of clever PR could sweeten the shock for Phillip’s co-workers and bosses; especially as many of them knew that he’d had a secret relationship with a teenage runner on This Morning – which he finally admitted to yesterday. Questions remain about how old the boy was when they first met.



Insiders say Schofield won’t work for ITV again and is “extremely unlikely” to make a BBC come-back. In ITV circles, it is hoped that Holly and Alison Hammond will be This Morning’s next “dream team”, but Hammond’s stint with Dermot O’Leary last week underwhelmed viewers and critics alike. It could get worse though. Former colleague, GB News’s Eamonn Holmes said yesterday that ITV bosses “knew what sort of man” Phillip Schofield was “and never once took action”. They will deny it of course, but if that proves to be the case, it should mean top level resignations and could kill off This Morning for good.



April 8. 11.55pm. STOP PRESS. I’ve just come in from GB News, so rather than waste them, here are the jokes I wrote for the occasion:



On policing. Six police raided a pub in Grays for having the wrong kind of dolls behind the bar – gollies, a real and present threat to public safety, obviously. Six cops! You try getting a single one to turn up for a burglary. It won’t happen. In fact, if you are unlucky enough to get burgled it’s best to ring up the Old Bill claiming to be a concerned neighbour and report seeing a golly in the house. That or a log-burning stove. Or both. They’ll scramble an armed squad in seconds.



First they came for the gollies, then they came for Barbie and Sindy... mind how you go, Action Man.



Is it over for the SNP? No, but at least we now we know what SNP stands for: Search Nicola’s Purse.



The Scottish plod went full Mar-a-Lago on Sturgeon’s marital home, which shows how seriously they take Easter egg hunts up there. It should of course be over for the SNP, not for slippery finances but because of their appalling record in power. Sturgeon had one campaign plank – bash the English, whose tax-payers so generously subsidised her tinpot tyranny, and demand another referendum. This won’t kill the desire for phony independence. Besides the SNP aren’t the only game in town, there’s also Alex Salmond and his Alba Party, so called because he doesn’t know his arse from his... you know the rest.



Should Labour and the Tories form an electoral pact in Scotland? They’d be mad to do so, it would just remind people how close they are across the board these days. The SNP have never looked more vulnerable but what allure have the Tories and Labour got? You’ve got Rishi Rich’s mob waging a war on businesses and Keir Starmer who still doesn’t know what a woman is and doesn’t seem to stand for anything. If the bloke does any more flip-flops he’ll end up in the Cirque du Soleil.



Do you want to live forever? Yes, but only to see Charlton back in the Premiership. The trouble is if you could put your essence into an android body, like on Altered Carbon on Netflix, you know the super-rich would get beautiful healthy avatars while the poor would be lumbered with bodies like mine or Jo Brand’s. These days people worry about elderly drivers, but when this happens it’ll be a case of “Never mind the 85-year-olds, that bloke’s 303.”



Is Brexit putting off tourists from France and Germany? I don’t think so, there seem to be thousands of keen young chaps leaving northern France for southern England every week, some in so much of a rush that they clumsily lose their passports scrambling into the boats.



April 7. Just in passing, here’s my chat with Diane ‘Dee Dee’ Hinds about the musical soundtrack of my life. NOT my favourite songs, just the songs I associate with different periods. And I could only choose six. Had I had more, I would certainly have included Smokey Robinson, The Clash or The Jam, Springsteen, the Rejects and Miles Davies. Maybe even Hawkwind who were the first band I ever saw live. But as it is, the years covered are 1964, 1969, 1979, 1980, 1985, 1996 and 1998... from Millie Small to Oasis. Here it is.



April 2. I’m chatting to Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson about riots, religion, rock flute and reclaiming umlauts in today’s Sunday Express Review and talking telly with ooh Gary Davies.



The joys of Roy on Succession, grating expectations for BBC’s Dickens, bush-channelling on Celeb Hunted & more in today’s Bushell on the Box...



April 1. And it’s out, just four years late! When Britain Rocked packs my memories of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and the early 80s rock revival together in one handy collection. Just one warning note. The book was compiled for export and there is a fair bit of overlap with Sounds Of Glory vol one. Two new volumes of Sounds Of Glory are coming though – all-new punk, Ska & Oi, and all-new rock. Just don’t ask me when!



The News Huddlines is back for one night only to raise cash for the Roy Hudd statue appeal.



March 31. RIP Bernadette Hunt, aka Falcon from the Gladiators, has died aged just 59. I did panto with her in Southend in the 90s. Such a lovely woman.



How's this for a mix? This week album reviews: Pink Floyd's 50th anniversary Dark Side boxset plus Depeche Mode, the Bar Stool Preachers & Evo's Lemmy-approved Warfare, in both the usual places.



March 30. Scrapping internal combustor engine cars by 2030, Shapps? Another reason why no conservative (or anyone else) should vote for Sunak’s spin-driven fake-Tory junta.



March 29. So sad to hear we’ve lost Paul O’Grady. He was one of the greats; warm, funny, and sharp as a tack with a heart as big as most politicians’ egos. Fired by Birkenhead humour, his creation Lily Savage was the finest comic creation of the 90s. Savage was his mum’s maiden name, the Lily came from Shanghai Lil. The obituaries probably won’t tell you that Paul was a full-on socialist, although not quite as red as his manager and boyfriend, the late Brendan Murphy who was in the IS in East London at the same time I was. I filmed with Paul as Lily a few times, once for Bushell On The Box, another time for Des O’Connor. And although I shared his affection for dogs – only John Wick loved his pooch more – I always thought it was a shame he’d retired Lily. Imagine that savage tongue taking down today’s political shower. RIP Paul. Heaven just got funnier.



March 26. Rulers v Grafters – art imitates life in Rise & Fall, the truth that BBC1’s The Gold obscured, an unhappy Mother's Day on Grace & much more, all in today’s Bushell On The Box.



So True... I’m chatting to Tony Hadley about his Spandau days & beyond in today’s Sunday Express Review, and talking telly with reggae star Zeeteah Massiah of Sexual Prime and Slide On The Rhythm fame.



March 24. Dance Craze, the 2-Tone documentary soundtrack, leads the charge in this week’s album reviews in the company of Luke Combs, Lana del Rey and Fall Out Boy.



March 23. On the 36th anniversary of the Zeebrugge ferry disaster, Ethan Aaron Banks looks back at Ferry Aid.



March 20. Fromage frais! Here’s my Sean Wilson cheese & Corrie chat online.



I’m on Keith Newman’s New Wave & Punk show on Radio Northumberland tonight from 7pm talking Angelic Upstarts, prison gigs, The Clash, the Gonads etc... the good old days. Very nearly the gob on the Tyne...



March 19. Business dreams tank like the Silicon Valley Bank on The Apprentice, cartoon crime on the Costa and Morse dashes off without a dot on his copybook as Endeavour ends. All that and more in Bushell On The Box in today’s Daily Star Sunday.



Martin Platt star Sean Wilson tells me about his journey from the Corrie cobbles to cookbooks and artisan cheese in today’s Sunday Express Review; plus I’m talking telly with waltz king Andre Rieu.



March 17. This week’s album reviews: an underwhelming U2, a maturing Miley Cyrus, mesmerising folk-singer Ruth Angell and rising jazz star Jo Harrop... in the usual places.



March 16. Hunt’s budget went down well with the FTSE 100 then. The London stock exchange just crashed like a self-driving Tesla. It hasn’t fallen this fast since Covid. It doesn’t take a genius to explain why. The chancellor may have been wreathed in smiles but his budget was a deeply flawed, economically illiterate onslaught – typical of Treasury advisors with no link to real-world businesses. Buoyed by this idiots’ agenda, governments have been over-taxing, over-spending, over-meddling and recklessly printing money for two decades. The result, inevitably, is the coming recession. History suggests we’ll be lucky to escape World War III. So well done Jezza. Jeremy Corbyn couldn’t have come up with a smarter plan to throttle entrepreneurs, stifle growth and blow away possible Brexit gains.



PS. Hunt also swerved the Tories’ immigration pledges. Nearly ten years ago Cameron said our immigration system was “completely out of control”. Now it’s a lot worse and the elite couldn’t give a monkey’s toss. Net migration to Britain will be 250,000 a year over the next few years. And that’s just the legal ones...



March 15. This is an interesting new book. Values, Voice & Virtue by Matthew Goodwin looks at the huge divergence between everyday voters and the metropolitan elite whose views dominate modern politics and fuel corporate virtue signalling. Millions are worried about our tanking economy, our leaky borders, the war on motorists, the housing market, rotten schooling, and the elite’s obsession with diversity, gender and cultural self-loathing. The gulf between Us and Them, already wider than Gary Lineker’s ego, will fuel the rise of parties more in touch with public opinion. Our major parties are in terminal decline. But is there time to clean up the mess?



March 13. My chat with Hampshire’s own country music twins Ward Thomas is now online. Yeehaw! Apologies for the “rams to riches”.

March 12. Quo’s Francis Rossi is our cover star in today’s Sunday Express Review, and I’m talking telly with ever-popular Proms conductor John Wilson.



March 11. RIP the great Tom Petrie, my former news editor at the Sun decades ago and at the People in the early Noughties. Newcastle-born Tom was one of the giants of Fleet Street with his office megaphone and eccentric behaviour – when I edited Bizarre with Rick Sky, he once sauntered up and sacked all of the “Rickettes” (including a teenage Jane Goldman, now a Hollywood screenwriter) on a whim. I’m pretty sure the memorable front-page headline “Up Yours Delors” was one of his too.



A great evening watching Thomas Rhett and Jordan Davies at the O2 Arena last night. Country music is booming here, with 1.4billion streams in the UK alone last year, yet bizarrely it’s still viewed by some as a fad. The huge C2C crowds suggest otherwise. Give me a nudge when Luke Combs comes back over.



March 10th. Albums from The Sleaford Mods, Ward Thomas, Gorillaz & London rockers King Cujo are all reviewed in today’s Daily Express & Daily Mirror.



Alastair Campbell is fronting the robust defence of Gary Lineker. That’s the same Alastair Campbell whose boss, Anthony Blair, once agreed to the lift the arms embargo on Gaddafi in return to the Colonel stopping the flow of migrants from Libya to the EU. One rule for you, eh Alastair?



The real argument here is about borders. Many of those who oppose Suella’s plans believe in no borders whatsoever – a policy that would win precisely zero seats at an election but curries favour with the Twatterati and students. But you can’t have no-borders and an NHS, or any kind of welfare state. It is claimed that our approach to illegal migrants is cruel. Isn’t it far worse to turn a blind eye to a dangerous criminal racket that results in substantial numbers of deaths? Tory government go through the motions of opposing illegal immigration while secretly approving of it. That’s why 60,000 are expected to arrive this year, many of them not “refugees” from warzones, but off-the-book toilers happy to undercut union rates...



I once met an Albanian people-smuggler in a Shoreditch pub who described in detail how, to evade capture by Interpol on the Med, he and his mates would cynically sling one of their unfortunate passengers into the drink. The cops would always stop to rescue the poor bod who’d gone overboard while the bastards made good their escape. It was a hugely revealing conversation until the bloke asked what I did and my idiot mate replied “Reporter”. This prompted an explosion of colourful death threats rarely heard this side of a Tarantino film. As part of his rich contribution to London’s cultural life, the Albanian also supplied over-priced drugs to Shoreditch trendies. Not to be sniffed at.



March 9. I’m a Lineker admirer to a degree. He’s a great broadcaster with a questionable taste in crisps who scored more than 300 times in his professional career and, if rumours are to be believed, even more at LWT when they were filming Blind Date in the next studio to Question Of Sport. The fault here is surely with the BBC. Lineker is a freelance who is also one of the faces of the Corporation, for whom political impartiality is the cornerstone of their continued existence. So given Gary’s tendency to gob off, why on earth didn’t they include a clear commitment to respect that hallowed neutrality in his contract?



March 8. Gary Lineker can tweet whatever the hell he likes, but it’d help his case if he wasn’t being so crass and lazy about it. Wheeling out the “Germany in the 30s” slur is ridiculous. It’s unlikely that Hitler would have spent millions putting up illegal migrants in hotels, with the SS on hand to tuck them in and change their sheets. Mismatch of the day, mate. Branding those you disagree with “far-Right” is a gutless ruse to silence debate. The irony is, Germany’s Nazis had more in common with the intolerant far-Left than the conservatives who both extremes despise. And the “red-fascists” are far more of a threat to our freedoms now. Reality check: Britain has accommodated hundreds of thousands from Hong Kong, Afghanistan and Ukraine this century. I’m not sure that France qualifies as quite such a hell-hole. Paris, maybe.



March 5th. I’m chatting to eighties legend and pop philosopher Morten Harket of A-ha in today’s Sunday Express Review, and talking telly with barrister turned author Helen Fields.



Matt Hancock wanted to “scare the pants off the public”, reveals the Sunday Telegraph. Presumably scaring the pants off the fragrant Gina Coladangelo was his practice run...



I’m hosting two live comedy shows for Ustreme on the coast in May in a bid to resurrect the spirit of gag-telling comedians. Or at least celebrate the old-school giants who are still alive. Get in touch for details.



March 4th. I wasn’t expecting to be asked about politics on GB News last night so all my scathing outpourings about the Conservatives and Labour were entirely off the cuff. Watching it back, I should have been more forceful in defence of Isabel Oakeshott. Leaking Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp chat shone more light than the Aurora Borealis on Project Fear. Thanks to Isabel, we can see clearly that government ministers’ pandemic strategy was to terrify us into compliance – even though they knew full well that the virus only posed a lethal risk to the old and the very ill. It’s a truism that life can only be understood backwards and must be lived forwards. But this isn’t hindsight. As early as March 2020, Chris Whitty informed the government that the vast majority of those infected would recover, even those in their 80s and beyond. Yet still they ploughed ahead with their ruinous strategy of lockdown and ineffective masks, running up war-time levels of national debt, without any attempt at costing, let alone any thought of the long-term social consequences – mental illness, suicides, kids robbed of education and social skills etc. After abandoning carefully formulated plans on how to respond to a pandemic, they closed schools, sent out drones and helicopters to find heretics, fined joggers for drinking coffee in parks... for no reason other than blind panic.



Hancock branded Lord Sumption “hard-Right” (he isn’t) for standing up for the civil liberties our fake-Tory government were denying. “Far-right” has become code for “someone who disagrees with me”. Sadiq Khan was at it, claiming anyone who opposes his ULEZ madness is aligned with the “far-Right and Covid deniers”. It’s like calling anyone who goes on strike in league with the “far-Left and terrorist sympathisers”. But isn’t irrational name-calling likely to be self-defeating? All old Genghis will do is make the public think that “far-right” means having a degree of common sense.



March 3. Stop Press. I’m on the Mark Dolan Show on GB News after 8pm tonight talking about Ken Bruce and Glastonbury.



Today’s album reviews: Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach (RIP), Philip Selway, Andy Fairweather Low and Madness’s classic, The Liberty of Norton Folgate. All in the Mirror and the Express.



RIP jazz sax genius Wayne Shorter, a multiple-Grammy winner renowned for his staggering work with the likes of Miles Davis and Art Blakey. Shorter was one of the great improvisers. He could take you to more worlds than the Marvel multiverse.



Hatchet-faced civil servant Sue Gray has taken a job with Keir Starmer. Is anyone surprised? The impartiality of the modern civil service is a myth on a par with lizard-men aliens and Nessie. These senior bureaucrats, who effectively rule the country, largely share a desire to harness enterprise, increase the power of the state and kiss the EU’s arse. They’re in charge and we can’t get shot of them.



March 1. Isabelle Oakeshott has leaked thousands of Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages to the Telegraph. Hancock, who gave her access when she wrote his book, is outraged. But isn’t he a naive for not getting her to sign an NDA?



Rishi is trying to pull the wool over our eyes over North Ireland. But while he spins like crazy, EU officials are telling the real story. Put simply, Sunak’s proposed deal allows a foreign country to interfere in the UK and leaves a foreign court, the ECJ, as the highest arbiter of disputes. It’s not victory. Just defeatism cloaked in King-size wrapping paper.



Feb 26. In today’s Sunday Express Review, cracking actress Tracy-Ann Oberman fills me in on her journey from Dirty Den to Cable Street, and I’m talking telly with comedian Cally Beaton.



Feb 24. The Labour Party are on course to clobber the untrustworthy Tories at the next election, which is why it’s a shame Starmer is such a tedious drip. Sir Keir’s “five mission” speech today was so stuffed with management-jargon it would have made a whiteboard weep. Frankly it was childish – lightweight banal drivel littered with gibberish, loaded with platitudes and devoid of any hint of costings. At one point, Starmer called on Rishi Rich to be more “catalytic”. Well he certainly needs to be converted, although it’s unlikely Sunak will turn into a Tory before the next election. Rishi’s own five missions appear to be: kill off businesses, sell-out Brexit, turn a blind eye to illegal immigration, pursue insane energy policies and surrender to the middle class woke minority whenever possible. In other words, to give the finger to anyone likely to vote Conservative.



Starmer also backtracked on previous pledges, like scrapping tuition fees and nationalising the energy giants. He’s another one who will say one thing to get elected and then do something entirely different. For real reform, look elsewhere. We also need to challenge the modern belief that it is politicians’ inalienable right to pick our pockets and piddle our cash up the wall. It isn’t. They should be made to justify every penny they spend, every job paid for by the public purse, every junket they enjoy and every quid given away in aid to countries doing better than we are. British people, including ex-military, are sleeping on the streets while we’re wasting millions putting Albanian chancers – not “refugees” – up in hotels. Why?



This week's album reviews – Ocean Colour Scene, Danny Goffey, Rick Wakeman & a-ha, in all the usual places.



Feb 23. John Motson was loved by football fans for his mix of enthusiasm and professionalism. He was passion and preparation poured into a sheepskin coat. RIP Motty.



Feb 21. Odd isn’t it that the ‘Labour’ Mayor Genghis Khan thinks it’s right to target working class people in London, especially in the outer boroughs where there are no tube stations. How can builders in Orpington afford to pay £12.50 a day to drive to work. Only the rich and the comfortably off will be able to drive anywhere. One rule for them, eh Saqiq... No wonder thousands are emigrating to Australia. This country is run by jumped-up Bonapartists.



The Dahl censorship is the tip of the iceberg. First they came for the Oompa Loompas. Next? Big Ears? “Fat owl of the Remove” Billy Bunter, The Fat Controller... watch yourself Hop-along Cassidy.



RIP Dickie Davies, the affable face of ITV’s World Of Sport. With his easy smile and raffish ’tache, Dickie was the perfect host for Saturday afternoon’s mix of “proper sport”, log-rolling and wrestling, with a side order of rallycross. Bliss.



Feb 19. I’m chatting to prog rock legend and all-round gent Rick Wakeman in today’s Sunday Express Review, and talking telly with real-life Del-boy turned author Ali Blood... Rick’s online here.



Feb 18. Unionists in Northern Ireland rightly suspect Rishi Rich hasn’t got their best interests at heart. The big clue is that it looks likely Sunak’s deal with the EU will keep a role for the European Court of Justice in the long-suffering province. Why should an often-malignant foreign court be allowed to exercise jurisdiction over any part of the UK? Edward Carson sussed out the Tories as long ago as 1921, saying “What a fool I was! I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster... in the political game that was to get the Conservative Party into power.” Change the ‘get’ to ‘keep’, and ‘into power’ to ‘in power’ and that quote is as relevant now as it was then.



But why should the clapped-out Tories stay in power? Successive Conservative governments have left us with a dwindling military, an NHS on the sick bed, and cops who don’t bother to investigate burglaries but will descend on mass if you tweet a thought-crime or fire up a log-burning stove. Tax is soaring to eye-watering levels, motorists are endlessly persecuted, small businesses are fighting to survive, and free markets are crowded out by monopolies and oligopolies. Our waters are so contaminated that a present-day Lady of the Lake would emerge fully clad in a biohazard suit, and ridiculous levels of wokery are given free rein across our national institutions. There’s nothing Conservative about any of that. Sunak’s shower don’t deserve to be re-elected. The trouble is neither do Starmer’s mob. We’re floating to hell on a punctured dinghy. Don’t blame Brexit. Blame politicians.



Feb 17. I’m weighing up new albums from Pink, Madeline Edwards and Grade 2 in today’s Express & Daily Mirror along with Eddie Piller’s new Mod compilation.



Feb 16. Nicola Sturgeon has tossed her caber. You’d need a heart of stone not to laugh. Judge Sturgeon by her record in government rather than her rhetoric and she’s done to Scotland what Tosh McKinlay would probably have done to Nessie, given half a chance.



Feb 12. The search is over... sixties pop icons The Searchers tell me why their next tour is their last in today’s Sunday Express Review, and I’m talking telly with Duncan Norvelle.



Feb 10. GRRR! Today’s mixed bag of album reviews include the Rolling Stones’ GRRR! Live (it’s grrreat!), plus Raye, Paramore and Sunny War – all in the usual places.



The Yanks have shot down that Chinese spy balloon. What took them so long? Nothing exciting has fluttered over London since Pink Floyd’s giant pig broke free from its moorings back in 1976.



Feb 9. RIP Burt Bacharach. Everything about the Oscar-winning composer said class. Burt and lyricist Hal David wrote enduring classics, including Aretha’s I Say A Little Prayer, Dione Warwick’s Walk On By, Make It Easy On Yourself by the Walker Brothers, Dusty’s I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself and The Carpenters’ Close To You. Bacharach was smooth, sophisticated and a master songwriter, up there with Cole Porter and Irving Berlin.



Give Ukraine all of our planes says Boris Churchill. What, all three of ’em? Seriously, our F-16s are no use to Ukraine, it takes too long to train the pilots. American A-10s would do nicely. And if the twerps want Britain to be taken seriously as a military power, they need to spend billions on defence. Axing HS2 would free up a few bob.



Feb 8. I can’t abide the current Tory tossers, but I like the cut of Lee Anderson’s jib. The new Deputy Chairman told the Spectator: “Nobody ever committed a crime after being executed.” Which is indisputable. Opponents of the death penalty cite historic cases of innocent people being hanged. Three points: 1) many more innocent people died because of murderers re-offending. 2) Advances in forensic technology make the old errors increasingly unlikely. And 3) as Anderson, a former Labour councillor said, “You can prove it if they have video like Lee Rigby’s killers... they should have gone, the same week. I don't want to pay for these people.” Well said. Nor do I.



In other news, anyone else notice how little TV coverage the jailing of ex-Labour MP Jared O’Mara has generated. If a Tory had copped a four-stretch for fiddling his expenses by £52,000 to snort Charlie it would’ve been all over the Six O’Clock News.



Feb 7. Why are council taxpayers being forced to bail out incompetent (and over-paid) councils? Taxpayers in Slough and Thurrock will see rates rise by ten per cent. In Croydon they’ll get hammered by a 15% increase because Croydon Council has run up debts of £1.6billion. Thurrock has managed a mere £450mill. Normally council tax rises are subject to referendums, but our government has given special dispensations to avoid them. The political class seem to think our pockets are theirs to pick whenever they feel like it.



The real irritation is at the next election all that will happen is we’ll get to swap one high-tax party for another. Truss is getting bucketloads but she is right when she says the only way forward is for the government to pursue pro-growth policies. Growth is the answer. The rest is hogwash.



Three things I’m sick of: the unthinking bloodlust of our non-combatant political class, the relentless rise of woke-capitalism and jumped-up civil servants who think it’s their job to remove elected politicians whose views they don’t like.



Feb 5. Here’s one for Strictly lovers, Giovanni Pernice is today’s Sunday Express Review cover star, and I’m talking telly with author Kate Mosse ahead of her one-woman UK tour.



Rishi Rish is said to be “considering” pulling out of the ECHR over the illegal immigrant crisis. I think there was more chance of Boris pulling out of a girlfriend in his wilder days. Tories talk tough on illegal immigration and do the square root of sod-all. It’s kidology, a total bluff. Sunak hasn’t got the guts.



Feb 3. Giddy up! Shania Twain leads this week’s album’s charge, followed by Hamish Hawk, Sam Brown and the mighty Girlschool. All in today’s Daily Express and Daily Mirror.



The Welsh rugby union has banned a male voice choir from singing Delilah at their matches. Why (why, why), the nation asks? The virtue-signaling bores say the song is “problematic and unsettling to some supporters because of its subject matter”. And the killjoy head of Powys Old Bill agrees. The much-loved song – a hit for Tom Jones in 1968, and popular ever since – “trivializes domestic violence”, we’re told. But hold on. By that logic you would also ban every Agatha Christie murder mystery, all murder-based comic farces, cinematic masterpiece The Producers, Fargo, and a huge swathe of opera. Carmen, for example, sees a jealous geezer stab his lover to death; and let’s not get started on Blackbeard’s Castle by Bartok. Other great songs now at risk must surely include Jimi Hendrix’s Hey Joe, Rose Tattoo’s Magnum Maid, and Bob Marley’s I Shot The Sherriff. Not to mention, Tom’s other evergreen smash The Green Green Grass Of Home – about a bloke, presumably a killer, on death row. Ignore the WRU, Wales, love Sir Tom and sing it loud.



Fun fact: I once ‘sang’ on the worst ever version of Delilah. Recorded in a drunken evening by me, Max Splodge and Decca Wade, in a session that somehow involved the granddaughter of Lionel Stander, the man who played Max in Hart To Hart, it was released circa 1982 by Razor Records (possibly for a bet) despite being utterly unlistenable. In fact if any one rendition of the song was going to incite violence it is this. That violence being aimed entirely at me and Mr Splodge. Please notify the Powys peelers because I would very much welcome a complete global ban on this plastered abomination.



I should also own up now about my own song, Hey You by the Gonads. Contrary to the claim in the lyrics, I do not have “my CS” canister in my pocket or “my shooter” by the door. Because, like my Harry Tyler books, it is a work of fiction. Research suggests that Mick Jagger never rode a tank and held a general’s rank “when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank” either.



Jan 29. ’Allo ’Allo! veteran Sue Hodge gets on her soapbox about the state of TV comedy in today’s Sunday Express Review, and I’m talking telly with 80s singing sensation Sam Brown, daughter of Joe.



Jan 27. He is the pop equivalent of Marmite – and he looked bloody ridiculous in that dress (presumably modelled on a bog roll doily) on Jimmy Fallon’s show this week – but is Sam Smith's new album hot or rot? Find out in today’s Express and Daily Mirror. Also reviewed are: the terrific Elvis Presley boxset, Elvis On Tour, from 1972, Bob Dylan's latest official bootleg Fragments (only Al Capone was bootlegged more) & Steve Vai’s Vai/Gash album. Insert your own “Vi’s gash” gags here.



Jan 26. Even Sir Rod Stewart has had enough of this clapped-out government. But you’re wrong to think Labour are any better, Roderick. Look at Citizen Khan’s war on the London motorist. Khan’s extended ultra-low emission zone means self-employed plumbers and builders will now have to pay £12.50 a day just to work in the capital. Are they supposed to lug tools and supplies around by bike, Mr Mayor, or on a packed tube, on the days they’re running? We see red-faced Labour MPs shouting down women colleagues for daring to have a different point of view, their craven cowardice in the face of deranged fringe activists, their Tory-like commitment to idiotic state spending, the same insane net zero commitment, the chaos caused to traffic flow and local businesses by Labour councils’ LTN schemes, their disdain for the English flag etc, etc. The old Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber joke has never seemed truer. Rod is right, the Tories have let us down enough, but Starmer is not the answer. We need a new party to sweep the lot of them into the dustbin of history. Time for reform.



Jeremy Kyle’s “exclusive” Talk TV interview with Ghislaine Maxwell was 2022 footage filmed by a freelance reporter last year. Nothing to do with Kyle. More fake news.



Jan 25. The Tories are at war over tax. But why is Hunt planning to hit business investment? Growth is the only way out of the colossal debt ten years of “conservative” governments have lumbered us with. Sunak’s job is to do everything in his power to resurrect our economy. So why does his government want to make things worse by clobbering businesses with an eye-watering 25% corporation tax? How will that encourage foreign investors? All it will do is shrink the economy more. It’s the worst idea the fake-Tories have had since HS2.



Jan 23. Rishi Rich has “full confidence” in Zahawi. This bloke is more out of touch than Edward Scissorhands. Sunak should have shown some gumption and made his dodgy chairman quit instead of trying to sweep the tax scandal under the carpet by calling on an ethics inquiry. On the plus side, it’s good to see at least one senior Conservative believes in paying less tax.



Could Rishi go to the country with a slogan of: Vote Conservative to preserve our proud tradition of Corruption, Unctuous incompetence, Nifty back-handers, Tax-dodging and Snobbery? At least we’d think they were honest...



Jan 22. Tina Weymouth & Chris Frantz (of Talking Heads & Tom Tom Club) are the Sunday Express Review cover stars today – read all about it here. And I’m talking TV with Sean ‘Martin Platt’ Wilson.



Great to see my old mate Garry Johnson, the wide boy punk poet, at our Southend gig last night. Gal hasn’t been well for years but for a while he was back to his old fast-talking self. Huge thanks to Carlo Corallini and his missus for the Sextons.



Jan 21. Nadhim Zahawi says his tax problems are the result of “careless error”. Wasn’t that the same excuse the Hatton Garden mob used? “What these, guv? Diamonds? In our sacks? Just a careless error, pal. They must’ve fallen in what with us being so cackhanded... ” It was Dennis Skinner who said “half the Tories opposite are crooks”. When the speaker called for a retraction, Skinner replied, “Okay, half the Tories opposite aren’t crooks”.



Jan 20. Today’s album reviews: the great Paul Carrack, The Maytals, the Angelic Upstarts & The Rolling Stones in Mono... in the usual places.



Jan 15. I’m chatting to likeable comedian Lucy Porter ahead of her UK tour, and talking TV with Dancing On Ice contender Darren Harriott in today’s Sunday Express Review.



Jan 13. Today’s album reviews: Margo Price, Gaz Coombes, Liela Moss and Belle & Sebastian – in the Daily Express & Daily Mirror as usual.



Jan 12. So sad to hear that Jeff Beck has died. He was one of the finest and most influential rock guitarists of the 1960s (also the inspiration for Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel). South London born Jeff got his break with Screaming Lord Sutch but broke big in the Yardbirds when he replaced Eric Clapton and branched out beyond pure blues guitar). I was 13 when he had his biggest solo hit, Hi Ho Silver Lining. All together: “You’re everywhere and nowhere baby... ”



Jan 11. From Manchester to Mrs Maisel... the rise & rise of Bury-born former model turned US West Coast comedian Christine Peake, online here.

Jan 8. Simple Minds stars Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill tell me all about their punk past in today’s Sunday Express; I’m also reviewing the week’s TV and talking telly with Julian Lloyd Webber... all in the Sunday Express Review. The Simple Minds interview is on-line here.



Jan 6. This week’s album reviews – a stonking return from Iggy Pop, Ringo live, Gabrielle Aplin and the Beach Boys’ latest retro-boxset, all in today’s Express and Mirror.



Rishi Rich wants everyone to stay on at school until they’re 18 and study maths. Is this a good idea? The better people are with figures, the more we’ll see the gaping holes in his economic plans... PS. Keeping kids at school longer won’t make a pinch of difference if teachers and their teaching methods are dodgy.



Jan 1st 2023. Happy New Year! I’m chatting to folk star Suzanne Vega in today’s Sunday Express Review, and talking telly with David Barry better known as Frankie Abbott from Please Sir!




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