Category Archives: Uncategorized
The Prisoner: An Anglo Saxon poetic meditation
Was meditating on the enduring power of The Prisoner TV series for Matthew Sweet who wrote a rather excellent piece about its 50th anniversary. If you’ve read it you know I came up with a thesis that it has more … Continue reading
Filth, fury and the funny way Britain feels about Joe Orton
You never forget your first time. I was 19 years old. I descended into a dark, cramped basement where student actors brought to life a weird, twisted sexual triangle. Going to student drama productions in odd spaces around the University … Continue reading
Oh Boy! Why certain Radio 1 DJs are missing believed wiped
If you sat down to watch a night of lost pop music TV shows from the 1950s, 60s and 70s, what would you expect to find? Fun, nostalgia, eye popping colour and experimentation, some great music. What I didn’t expect … Continue reading
The making of The Stars of Sergeant Pepper
What are Mae West and Diana Dors doing on the cover of Sergeant Pepper’ Lonely Hearts Club band? If you feel you’ve heard too much already about the 50th anniversary of the record, then fear not. Producer Luke Doran (who … Continue reading
How to win the coming culture war in 2017
A version of this article first appeared in The Big Issue magazine in January 2017. Journalism worth paying for. Available weekly from street vendors or subscriptions here. History rarely falls into neat numerical decades. I would assert the 1980s (yuppies, … Continue reading
Ladybird books: Constructing the future past of modern Britain
I used to visit a beloved university English professor and his wife. He had won the Military Cross for hand to hand combat in the liberation of the Netherlands in 1945 but never talked about the terrible things he’d seen. … Continue reading
We’ll get the President we deserve: Suzan Lori Parks on Hillary Clinton & America’s woman problem
“You’ve consumed too much of the Kool-Aid that the man has been serving you.” Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Susan Lori Parks came into the Front Row studio last week to talk about When Father Came Home From The Wars opening at … Continue reading
Why Nerve is the selfie generation’s Desperately Seeking Susan
Discussing Nerve and immersive gaming in film with Naomi Alderman on BBC Front Row on Radio 4 on August 11th and iplayer after. The Green Dress. I knew I’d seen it somewhere before in New York the moment it appeared … Continue reading
When Cathy met Ken: Revisiting Cathy Come Home in Brexit Britain
The other night I watched Ken Loach meet Cathy – or rather the young actress Elle Payne, playing Cathy in a Cardboard Citizens’ staging of his 1966 landmark TV play Cathy Come Home. The production featured many actors with experience of homelessness. … Continue reading
The economics of burkas, bikinis & The Nice Guys
According to a recent BBC World Service programme about Malawi, the nation’s population hit 17.6 million this year and is expected to double by 2040, which the country’s finance minister described as “scary”. “A ticking timebomb of poverty and … Continue reading