On Sunday, at 2.26 in the afternoon, a man claiming to be the transport correspondent of the Daily Telegraph rang me up asking me why I had described Michael McIntyre as ‘spoon-feeding his audience warm diarrhoea’. I hung up, assuming it was some weird prank call, like the people who ring me at 3am asking…
I Know It’s Over is The Queen Is Dead’s first pause for breath. As usual, Morrissey’s mordant wit is mistaken, historically, for unmitigated misery. “Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head.” What an opening line! Remember all those classic blues and folk songs that billow forth from the point of view of…
This is the story of a spontaneous comment that got out of hand, and grew, momentarily confusing an accommodating Japanese performance art group, and, ultimately, inconveniencing a corporate arts sponsor. But it’s also a story about how we value creativity. Is Art about books sold, tickets bought, and units shifted, pleasing the largest possible number…
Stumbled upon unwares upstairs in an Oxford pub, in the Winter of 1986, Razorcuts were the coolest looking band I’d seen to date. Magnificently stylish beatniks, but clad in threads you could snag from charity shops, beamed in from bohemia. For the next three years it seemed impossible to avoid them. And the sound was…