Jeremys #4: Healy

Fourth in a “series” of short tributes to well-known people called Jeremy There was a short period of time when Jeremy Healy was a hero of mine. Back in 1982, before I really knew what clothes were for, I was smitten by a pair of musical designer tramps called Haysi Fantayzee, featuring Jeremy ‘Jeremiah’ Healy […]

Baby it’s cold outside – so here’s freezerRoom

In the final month of 2011, I was finally properly acquainted with the music of Cork collective freezerRoom, a band I’d heard plenty about but somehow managed to avoid. With a name like that, I’d expected them to be purveyors of stark, chilly electro or experimental neo-Krautrock. But no, they’re anything but; their sound is […]

Pointing the way to a Happy New Year

Dearie me, it’s 2012. The world is in the grip of death, famine, financial collapse, and, despite the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, there are still a significant number of lunatics running the global asylum. The New Year arrives with violent storms battering the coasts of Britain and Ireland. Even David Bowie is about to turn 65. […]

Mastermind – more exciting than you think

Good to read the great John Humphrys happily acknowledging just how sexy his presentation style is on BBC’s Mastermind. In an interview for The Guardian about celebrity breakfasts, Humphrys says he has two breakfasts per day. His first (“a large bowl of fruit, muesli and yoghurt, and a banana”) before Radio 4’s Today programme and then […]

Did I tell you you’re Wonderful?

Adam Ant is my pop hero. I think it’s fair to say he’s gone through something of a rough patch in the past few years and my heart goes out to him and his family. All the same, he is still, at the age of 56, the most original, colourful and damned entertaining pop star […]

Jeremys #3: Hardy

Third in a series of short tributes to well-known people called Jeremy I’m always astonished when people tell me they’ve never heard of Jeremy Hardy. It’s hard to imagine life without his input. I first came across this charming and astonishingly funny man during my lengthy stint as a regular Guardian reader in the 1990s. Aside from […]

These are Grave times…

It is that time of year. The air has turned chill and crisp, the leaves brown, orange and scarlet. The time of overcoats, scarves, gloves and mystery, when I feel the overwhelming impulse to listen to the very bleakest Scott Walker and read ghost stories. It’s also the time when I feel like spend chilly afternoons wandering around cemeteries. […]

In search of patience

Patience. It’s a beautiful word. To me, it represents more of an aspiration than something that comes naturally. But I’m learning. When I was 15, a school friend flicked through my drawing pad, admiring my freehand, felt-pen copies of album cover (chiefly The Smiths) artwork and told me that I “must have the patience of a saint” to copy […]

Why is a taxi driver’s time more precious than anyone else’s?

First, a disclaimer: I know that not all Dublin taxi drivers have over-bitten, vinegar-soaked fingernails, nor do they all wear chafing hessian underpants – in other words, they’re not universally irritable, intolerant, impatient, racist, shoulder-chipped prole chauffeurs. I also understand that, as self-employed people, time generally equals money in their line of business. And I […]

Roger? I still would…

Sir Roger Moore turned 83 today. They say you shouldn’t meet your heroes but I always hold out a little hope I’ll meet him one day. He was my first pin-up hero, the first ‘person I wanted to be’. I’m not sure who bought me the giant Roger Moore poster on my wall when I […]