Blogs

Richie Cottan's new thriller. The double spread advertisement in The Observer had Peter Mullan, who plays Richie Beckett, in a triangle with his two sons behind him, against a backdrop of a pier with Fear in red lights. It reads ‘the criminal mind is a fragile thing’. Well it is if you’ve got Alzheimer’s, or dementia or you’re just fragile with a criminal mind. Peter Mullan playing a gangster, whether on a horse or in the street, is none of...

5.30am get out of bed. 6.45 walk to town, catch train to Cannock at 7.15. Arrive at Cannock rail station 7.45, walk maybe three miles to Cannock office of employer, though I was told during my induction that I would be picked up from Walsall (had to get there early to find the damned place). 9.30 two minibuses leave for Dunstable. 11.50 arrive at the store in Dunstable where the stocktaking was being done. 1pm audit begins. 12.30 am (...

Looking forward to todays racing from Cheltenham. Love to see Hunts Ball win the Paddy Power Gold Cup today, but think Grand Crus might just be too good for the rest! Can't wait for the festival in March...

I’m getting in my heterosexual credentials right away. Stacey Dooley is super-hot. As for the girl that ‘reads’ BBC 3 new. She’s supernova. I know this is a sign that I’m secretly gay, because if you keep banging on about how hetero you are it’s a sign that you’re really homo. But according to gay conversion therapy there isn’t really such a thing as homosexuality. There is same sex preference, but gee whiz, that can be changed. It’s a...

Just testing.. Sorry

No idea how this works but thought I'd try it today. Someone I've known for many years passed away today. Terry Callier. I knew him only through his music, although I saw him a number of times at the jazz Cafe and he came over and spent some time with us, I didn't really "know" him. His music inspired me and his attitude to life was amazing. I am, as I'm writing this listening to a track from Timepeace and drinking Malt whisky. He was a true...

When I was little more than a larrikin in my granda’s eyes, we used to say things like white man speak with forked tongue. Geronimo speak with forked tongue. Adult speak with forked tongue. Until we got sick of it and shot up everybody that disagreed, including ourselves, but we refused to be dead. We were in such good health that putting us to bed was the equivalent of the massacre at wounded knee. What has this got to do with inventing the...

This isn’t any old apocalypse, the four horsemen racing across the sky; this is a Derren Brown, apocalypse. Notice the word ordering. Derren Brown comes before the apocalypse. Derren Brown is the apocalypse. We know he can do anything, but this is just one more little thing in his armoury. But the reality is rather disappointing and voyeuristic. I don’t like big brother type shows. I don’t like listening in on innocent folks going about their...

An alcoholic salesman for a father, whose family lived in poverty and they were saved from destitution by Roosevelt’s New Deal. Reagan goes onto become a life guard and saves 17 lives. He becomes a radio announcer, the lead actor in Hollywood B movies. He moves into politics and becomes the president of the screen actors’ guild. He doesn’t give names before the Senate investigation into un-American activities. In fact his refusal to give names...

BBC 2, director Sam Mendes, adapted from a novel by Richard Yates. I’ll come clean. I haven’t read the novel. Shame on me. I’m putting it in the first 100 must read novels and to the front of the queue of the 6 752 should read novels. The last time Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslett were together Celine Dion was standing backstage warbling her heart must go on and on and on and on. And it did. Racking up millions of sales and making Titanic...