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Celebrity Mastermind
Specialist subject: Laura Ingalls Wilder
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- Theatre in the operating theatre: At St George’s Hsp, Tooting for tonight’s world premiere of Golden Hearts. http://t.co/2U1qi4yX3X 9 hours ago
- Still think the Girl Guides should have gone with my more concise (&superhero tinged) suggestion: “To do the right thing.” 22 hours ago
- An entire R4 Thought For The Day comparing superheroes & villains, their powers&motivations. Sweet. 23 hours ago
- Well thanks all. My column about my life in municipal pools (including the one with Paul Weller in it) is for next week’s @BigIssue 2 days ago
- So is the Streatham common concrete paddling pool at the bottom the bigger one? 2 days ago
Category Archives: Music
Loving the Alien: Bowie and the ‘Burbs
How did I come to make a documentary for Radio 4 called I Dressed Ziggy Stardust? It was pitched and commissioned about 6 months ago, long before anyone thought Bowie might be releasing new … Continue reading
What happened, pop pickers? Teenagers & radio
The decline of the teenage radio listener is not unique to Radio 1. I wrote this piece about the demographic challenge for The Guardian this week. One of my key sources in researching the piece was Will Page, chief economist … Continue reading
Posted in Business/Economics, Children, Culture, Media, Music, Radio
Tagged culture, media, music
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Half Blood Blues: Jazz, race and Nazis.
When I worked in Berlin in 1998 the trendy record store in the city’s gay-friendly Schoneberg district had a category called “schwarz”(black) music. It took up a lot of the shop and seemed a bizarrely useless generalisation, given the huge … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Film, Germany, Music, Uncategorized, War
Tagged 40s, Berlin, books, Esi Edugyan, Germany, jazz, Louis Armstrong, Nazis, Paris
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‘S Marvellous: Brian Wilson at the Royal Festival Hall September 18th 2011
What happens when the ultimate West Coast musician takes on the ultimate East Coast sound? You get a lot more xylophones in Gershwin. (God Only Knows performed at the Royal Festival Hall in 2002) Brian Wilson says he did an … Continue reading
My secret life in the Albert Hall: Backstage at the Proms
The first rule of presenting the Proms is.. No one wears red at the Proms. The second rule of Prom club is.. No one wears open toed shoes on the stage of the Royal Albert Hall. (This is apparently a … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Film, Music, TV, Uncategorized
Tagged 80s, Albert Hall, Brideshead Revisited, culture, Donald Runnicles, music, Ravel, Star Trek, tv, `Proms
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America’s sweetheart and the star malfunction: Doris Day and Jennifer Aniston
In Jeanine Basinger’s book on the old Hollywood studios’ star-making system, The Star Machine there is a great little section on how Doris Day became a huge name, while the similarly talented and wholesome Rosemary Clooney did not. Basinger put … Continue reading
Posted in Comedy, Film, Music, TV, Uncategorized
Tagged cinema, doris day, friends, Hollywood, jennifer aniston, music, rock hudson, westerns
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The Swingeing (cuts) 80s: Lessons from The Ghost Town Generation
They were playing the jaunty TV theme tune to “Jeeves and Wooster” on Monday night when guests walked into the Financial Times summer party at Lancaster House near Green Park in London. It reminded me of how much I enjoyed … Continue reading
Posted in Business/Economics, Culture, Education, Film, Music, Politics, Uncategorized
Tagged 60s, 80s, culture, media, music, politics, universities
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From Roots to Amina: A history of the well-meant liberal hoax
The liberal hoax for a “good cause” has a long tradition. Most bizarre in Tom MacMaster’s defence of his long and increasingly reported fake identity as Amina Arraf, an imprisoned lesbian Syrian blogger, was his claim that he was challenging … Continue reading
Posted in Books, journalism, Music, Politics, TV, Uncategorized
Tagged books, Holocaust, journalism, literature, media, politics, publishing, Syria, tv, war
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