There’s a hell of a lot more to a heat wave than a perennial disco classic from 1977. OK, so it was very warm yesterday and I was out in the worst of it. Being of Northern
Continue reading →Spirit of ’76
Mission Satirical
Exactly twelve months ago, I was summoned to an office by a distinguished and venerable media magnate, a room of such vast expanse that the intimidating distance between the door I entered through and the monolithic mahogany
Continue reading →You’ve Got Male
To the Choose Life shopping-list that opens ‘Trainspotting’, one could add subsequent creature comforts – choose an iPad, choose an iPhone, choose an Apple Watch, choose Twitter, choose Facebook, choose every bloody online appliance and gadget to
Continue reading →Flagged as Inappropriate
When Oasis signed to Creation Records in 1993, Liam Gallagher was asked why the sleeve of the band’s demo tape had featured a striking image of the Union Jack looking as though it was being sucked down
Continue reading →Lenin and McCarthy
We all know some people who talk bollocks the moment their mouth opens; the likelihood is the speaker is probably the only person in the room unaware of this fact, which is why they keep talking bollocks.
Continue reading →Not in Front of the Children (4)/25 Hour News
We started with sex and – surprise, surprise – here we go again. Race and disability can take a back seat; when it comes to Percy Filth, we Brits excel like few others. Yet, this week’s word
Continue reading →Diction-Wary Corner
Surprise! Surprise! A new survey has revealed that hopeful candidates for the top jobs tend to be judged on their appearance, their speech and – most shocking of all – which school and university they attended;
Continue reading →Precedent Carta
‘The good name of human rights has sometimes become distorted and devalued,’ says David Cameron as he takes to the Runnymede podium, standing not only in the shadows of John the King and John the President,
Continue reading →Miner Versus Minor
Those of us who are old enough watched it on TV just hours after it happened; footage has been shown repeatedly in the years since. This footage constitutes what used to be known as evidence. It’s pretty
Continue reading →Not in Front of the Children (3)/25 Hour News
In the first two instalments of our look at the English language’s permanent residents of the naughty step, we examined two of the most unspeakable words linked to sex and race respectively. Now we turn our attention
Continue reading →Joe Public Enemy
Forty years ago this month, a country that had lived through two General Elections in the space of a year went to the polls yet again; in June 1975, however, voters were participating in Britain’s first
Continue reading →Too Fast to Live; Too Young to Vote
I think I can say pretty confidently that if William Hague had been a pupil at the high school I attended, his return from the Conservative Party Conference in which he’d given a star turn would have
Continue reading →Art Imitating Lies
Artistic licence is an often necessary aspect of turning life into art. Unless the subject under the biographer’s microscope has recorded every waking moment of their life, there are inevitable gaps the imagination needs to fill. Most
Continue reading →The Sunday Post: Realm of the Censors
Not a pleasant image, I grant you, but imagine if Margaret Thatcher and Kim Jong-un had once grabbed a quickie, one that resulted in a bouncing behemoth of a baby boy inheriting the worst traits of both
Continue reading →A Branson Pickle
As far as heads of multi-conglomerates go, I’ve always found Richard Branson less objectionable than most; perhaps it’s because he convincingly wore the laidback gait of the hippy entrepreneur to mask a hard-edged business nous and
Continue reading →Charles the Last
It’s a measure of how much affection Charles Kennedy was held in by his fellow parliamentarians that many of the tributes from his peers since his death was announced this morning have actually come across as genuine rather
Continue reading →Mommie Dearest
Parental neglect at its most extreme is rightly recognised as a hideous dereliction of duty, something that appears to go against the grain of what is supposed to be an instinctive gut reaction to care and nurture
Continue reading →The Late Post: Not in Front of the Children (Part 1)
When the BBC’s 1953 production of ‘Quatermass’ was scaring the hell out of the nascent television nation, it prompted the debut of the announcer’s warning to be issued for the benefit of unprepared viewers: ‘In our opinion,
Continue reading →Death and Taxes
The 1997 comeback of celebrated 80s Indie artisans Echo and the Bunnymen, one that benefitted from the brief vogue for sweeping majestic rock ala The Verve, more or less began and ended with an unintentionally prophetic hit called
Continue reading →The Less-Than Fantastic Four
Anyone whose nostalgia gene is tickled by the prospect of seeing a band of bedroom pin-ups in the flesh forty years after the torn pages of ‘Look-in’ disappeared from their once-prized position is afflicted with despair
Continue reading →A Licence to Kill for
Okay, I’m not going to talk about the EU or feminists or immigration or the NHS or Tony Blair or all the other subjects that get the Raccoon regulars hot under the collar – bar one. I’m
Continue reading →For Emperor, King, Queen and Country
BBC4’s new imported historical epic ‘1864’ reminds me a little of Tony Richardson’s criminally-underrated 1968 movie, ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’. Although in ‘1864’ the nation under the spotlight is Denmark, the parallels are potent. A country encouraged to believe its
Continue reading →Songs for Europe
Cliff Richard dressed as Austin Powers, a ‘legal’ Dana looking about twelve, Agnetha’s sequinned tea-cosy hat, Clodagh Rodgers’ hot-pants, the Bucks Fizz girls having their skirts ripped-off, Russian lipstick lesbians Tatu drowned in boos, Jemini’s nul points, transsexuals
Continue reading →The Party’s Over
If the contentious Joint Enterprise law applied to politics, the Liberal Democrats would be the luckless juvenile looking at a decade behind bars because he happened to be a member of a gang present when somebody
Continue reading →The Pen Vs The Sword
One of the first moves of a regime averse to criticism is to imprison or ‘liquidate’ its critics; traditionally, these tend to be political opponents, a tradition Mr Putin is proudly upholding in Russia at the moment.
Continue reading →The Sunday Post: In A Broken Dream
To the eyes of any visiting alien, the Heygate Estate in London’s Elephant and Castle could be mistaken for an ancient ruin on a par with Pompeii – a crumbling monument to a deceased civilisation. In
Continue reading →A Grateful Nation
It’s certainly easier to take criticism and absorb advice if it comes from someone who knows what they’re talking about, someone whose knowledge of the subject under discussion inspires respect for their opinion. On the odd unfortunate
Continue reading →And The Winner Is…
Back in the pre-deregulated broadcasting era, British TV was awash with home-grown beauty contests, not just the Miss United Kingdom finale, but the qualifying tournament as well, which was spread over all the old regional ITV companies.
Continue reading →Release the Hounds
Nelson may have said that England expects every man to do his duty, but whereas an act of self-sacrifice for the good of one’s country may be a noble gesture at a time of war, when it
Continue reading →Blags, Lags and Slags
Opinions on the man differ; opinions on the merits of his notoriety even more so; but the death of Ronnie Biggs in 2013 undoubtedly ended a chapter in British crime history. Whereas the consensus today is to
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