Brotherly love

I'm incredibly impressed that, not only are Electric Soft Parade still going (they're back! back! back! after a six-year hiatus), but that their new single, Brother, You Must Walk Your Path Alone is as impressive as anything they've ever done. This is essentially the best song Belle & Sebastian never wrote and I love it to bits. The new album, Idiots!, follows on June 17th. Can't wait.

Buy Brother, You Must Walk Your Path Alone as a digital download here

Gideon Coe 6 Music interview with Alex and Thomas White of ESP (interview starts 2 hours & 8 minutes in)

I dun arf like... Toast!

Here's another 1978 Top of the Pops performance that'll probably never see the light of day on BBC Four thanks to the edition it featured on being presented by DLT. Shame! I love the fact that the singer narrator* went on to become one of the biggest pop stars in the world for a while five years later, and also that it eulogises an often overlooked culinary delight. I mean, when did you last see one of those poncey cooks on the millions of TV food porn programmes preparing a toast-based dish?!

*Paul Young. But you knew that already, right?

A touch of class

Have you seen Glenda Jackson's parliamentary "tribute" to Thatcher yet? Magnificent.

My generation

Been watching an absolutely brilliant 1983 BBC documentary about Musical Youth, Musical Roots, in which the five Birmingham schoolboys - briefly an internationally famous band - are given eight days off school at the end of January to go on a short tour of Jamaica, where their families had hailed from. What follows is an absolute joy to watch, as five mildly bewildered lads from the UK experience the culture shock of seeing a world far removed from anything they've known before: the poverty-stricken living in shacks and not being able to afford footwear, for example. Oh, and the sun. The blazing sun! And the fact that you can actually stand about in the street and chat without the police moving you on.

Also, there's a hilarious encounter on a bus with someone called Winston Jarrett, who really is quite the character. At least I think he is; I could barely understand a thing he was saying - or, more accurately, raving on about. (I suspect he'd had too many blue Smarties.)

Anyway, please do watch; it's guaranteed to brighten up your day. (God knows we need a bit of cheering up at the moment.) My absolute favourite part would have to be the bit where they visit a school on the island and self-consciously stand up in class when prompted by a teacher and introduce themselves one by one, before miming along to Never Gonna Give You Up during an impromptu show for the schoolkids in the playground.

But the whole thing is just a great snapshot in time and a reminder of just how natural and unobtrusive television documentaries were back then (no narration; no manipulative incidental music; no contrived story arc or spurious emotional "journey"; no teasers; no repetition; no bullshit, in a nutshell. Just an old-fashioned travologue, following people as they explore a new place).

Meanwhile, in 2013, there's a documentary on Channel 4 tonight about... dogging. Grim. No, you can keep the present. I'm having too much fun in 1983.

Mop of the Pops

You'll probably never see this on TV again as it's from the 23rd March 1978 edition of Top of the Pops presented by Dave "Persona non grata" Lee Travis, so I'm putting it up here as it deserves to be seen by as many people as possible (about three, in the case of this blog). It's Legs & Co. frumping up brilliantly to the strains of Donna Summer's Rumour Has It.

March playlist

About time an' all. I was intending to put together one playlist per month of songs that have been catching my ear, but this is the first one I've managed since December. The trouble is, it's taken this long to find 32 songs that I like enough to warrant inclusion. Now I know what you're thinking: Why does it have to be 32 songs? Why not 24, 15 or 12? But I'm very meticulous about this sort of thing. And really, if I let a playlist of anything less than 32 songs slip through the net, heaven only knows what sort of chaos might ensue with the universe. No, it's definitely best to err on the side of caution in these matters I find.

Anyway, here are the 32 songs for March! Give 'em a go & I promise you'll find something you'll like.

Simmering

Apropos of nothing, here's a list of some of the cookery shows currently to be found cluttering up the TV schedules in the UK:

Great British Menu
Food and Drink
Great British Food Revival
Come Dine with Me
What's Cooking?
Masterchef
Country Show Cook Off
Food Glorious Food
Indian Food Made Easy
Saturday Kitchen Live
Nigel Slater's Simple Cooking
My Tasty Travels with Lynda Bellingham
Ant & Dec's Saturday Takeaway*
Baking Mad with Eric Lanlard
Saturday Kitchen Best Bites
The Little Paris Kitchen: Cooking with Rachel Khoo
Sunday Brunch

That's just a selection of programmes that have been shown on the four main terrestrial channels this week alone - I've not included Channel 5 as, well, they don't really *do* cookery; not unless you include Steven Seagal's turn as a chef in Under Siege - and it's worth bearing in mind that many of the titles listed above go out pretty much every day of the week. Also, some of them go on for hours & hours. Fancy three hours of Come Dine With Me on a Saturday afternoon? You're in luck, sir/madam, as that's just what Channel Four serve up (har har).

BBCs One and Two are particularly culpable when it comes to this constant diet of cookery shows; if it wasn't for all the antiques programmes and repeats of Homes Under The Hammer and Shop A Scrounger** padding out much of the rest of their schedules, you could easily be forgiven for thinking you were tuned into one of the specialist cooking channels (they have those as well!) much of the time.

But just what is it that makes the TV schedulers so keen on forcing all these culinary-based formats down our gullets day-in day-out? I mean, lots of people like caravanning. And knitting. Where are all the programmes about caravanning and knitting? And chess? Where's the chess love? Is British terrestrial television being secretly controlled by a sinister cabal of Jamie Oliver, Nigella and that comedy Italian bloke who won the celebrity jungle thing that time? I think we should be told.

Anyway, balls to all that. The only chef we really need to be seeing on TV never actually gets a look in now that it's not 1978 any more. Where's the justice in that? I ask you. Anyway, here he is. Talks more sense than all of the current rabble masquerading as celebrity cooks combined, too.

Honestly, though, enough of the cookery programmes already. I suppose you could argue that eating is something that everybody must do so it's only right that there should be lots of shows covering the preparation and consumption of food. But I'm not having this. If they were to really make TV based on what people do every day there'd be some pretty unpalatable stuff on our screens all the time. (Oh, actually, there is! Forget that bit!)

On a serious point, I can't imagine how this constant stream of fetishised images of food on our screens is helping ease the nation's obesity crisis one bit. No, it's high time the powers-that-be at the BBC, ITV & Channel 4 went on a cookery show crash diet and trimmed some of the flab from the schedules. What do we want? Caravanning and chess! When do we want it? Umm, straight after the Come Dine with Me omnibus and just before Masterchef: The Professionals. Sorted.

The Chefs - Food mp3

*Probably best to check the veracity of this one before publishing
**And this

Up yours, Lance Armstrong!

Hey, you! Cop a load of this magnificent eulogy to the bicycle from Sue Denim - not her real name; it's a sue denim pseudonym! - from her equally ace debut long-player Sue Denim and the unicorn. Then, if you like what you hear (which I can pretty much guarantee you will), click on the link underneath to buy the thing for just seven of your earth pounds. Alles klaar? Wunderbar!

There are at least two other tracks - Brewster McCloud and Pick Me Up - which are every bit as great as Bicycle, by the way. But the whole thing's like a breath of fresh air, and will make you feel at least 50% better about life in general. Buy buy!

Sue Denim and the unicorn (Bandcamp)

Christmas playlist

I first posted today's playlist a year ago but it's just as irrelevant today. Sadly Spotify still haven't got with the programme* and included What Are We Gonna Get For 'Er Indoors? by Dennis Waterman and George Cole in their database, so I'm afraid you'll just have to make do with these 36 inferior festive hits in lieu of that.

*Minder

Alan Partridge in a pear tree

I've posted the following song on here before - probably more than once - but I do enjoy wheeling it out at this time of year as, by rights, it should be played everywhere at Christmas instead of, well, barely anywhere outside the music blogosphere. It's one-off Geordie supergroup The Joseph & Mary Chain with their fun-packed, sublime version of, well, this!

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Behind the Fairytale

I really enjoyed this radio documentary about the making of Fairytale of New York yesterday lunchtime (the documentary was yesterday lunchtime, rather than the actual song, which was made yonks ago. Just for clarity's sake). If I was being really picky I'd say that Dermot O'Leary was a poor choice of presenter for a programme going out on, and made for, 6 Music; and that producer Steve Lillywhite comes across as slightly bumptious at times in his soundbites. But maybe that was just the editing or something. He was married to Kirsty Maccoll, after all, so can't have been all bad.

Minor quibbles aside, Behind the Fairytale was, much like the song it paid tribute to, quite marvellous, and you should definitely listen to it now, or preferably sooner, if you've not done so already.

Mildly Interesting Pop Fact: As befitting such a classic song, Fairytale has been covered dozens of times, by artists as diverse as KT Tunstall, Katzenjammer, The Wurzels, and, unforgivably, Ronan bastard Keating - a man with so little soul or empathy for the lyrics that he took out all the nasty wasty lyrics that might offend the army of easily-pleased simpletons who comprise his fanbase. Happy Christmas your arse, Ro-nan.

December playlist

Here it is at long last - the playlist that literally no one has been waiting for. It's good though, honest!

Wilde night out

Chances are you'll have seen this already but if not, have a butcher's at a drunken Kim Wilde, accompanied by brother Ricky, on the train home from the Magic FM Christmas party serenading their fellow passengers with spirited versions of Kids In America and Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree.

Apart from the woman filming this on her phone, pretty much every other passenger seems to be doing that thing people do on trains in the UK nowadays i.e. existing in their own little private universe and ignoring any commotion going on around them. Despite the fact that this particular commotion is being caused by a pissed-up, internationally famous 1980s pop star caterwauling two of her biggest hits at them from literally inches away. I mean, look at those blokes standing by the doors. I hope I never catch fire when any of them are in the vicinity. They'd probably not even bother weeing on me. Arseholes. God I hate people. Not Kim Wilde though. Or you. Watch this - it's quite possibly the best thing I've ever seen.

When Clare Grogan Met John Gordon Sinclair

I smiled all the way through this Artworks Scotland programme last night, in which the two Gregory's Girl leads return to the school where the seminal 1980s coming-of-age comedy was filmed, Abronhill High in Cumbernauld (a school which, shamefully, is now earmarked for closure), to reminisce about their thirty-year careers in showbiz.

Both turned 50 this year and both are now published authors - Clare writing fiction for young girls in Tallulah & The Teenstars and John Gordon/Gordon John having recently had his debut crime thriller, Seventy Times Seven, published to rave reviews. No, I never saw that one coming either. Fair play though!

Anyway, if, like me, you're nuts about everything Gregory's Girl-related, you can watch the whole thing here (UK readers only again, alas):

Artworks Scotland: When Clare Grogan Met John Gordon Sinclair

Short story

Highbrow text conversation between me and Spike this morning:

Spike: "How often do you see genuine midgets? I've seen two today already. TWO!!"

Me: "Oh yes you have! (Must be panto season)"

Spike: "Maybe that's it - exotic panto actors from out of the area. What's our panto this year?"

Me (Googling it): "...Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs!"

Spike: "That explains everything!"

Suburban Kids With Biblical Names - Little Boys in the Ghetto mp3

Good grief!

The following sketch, from last night's episode of Limmy's Show, had me howling with laughter. If I explain it in any way here I'll spoil it, so just click, baby, click!

LIMMY SKETCH

(with apologies to anyone outside the UK, for whom the link won't be accessible)