Marr, Morrissey and the notion that comebacks don’t work

Last week, as I write, this blog and its beloved went to see Johnny Marr play at that lugubrious Dublin venue, The Academy. For anyone in their 40s who had seen The Smiths in their heyday (i.e. any point in their brief career), it was an extraordinary experience. Johnny Marr has finally settled back into […]

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. […]

Time to call in pest control

I’m sure Irish News Of The World readers are a discerning bunch but surely even the most apathetic of them have their limits. The new ad for the paper is little short of astonishing, even in a country which has experienced its fair share of shocks lately. ‘Typical’ rheumy-eyed NOTW readers open their fridge and […]

Judging the book by its cover

My eldest is making her way through her first Secret Seven book. So far, very little has happened; three chapters in and they still haven’t come across the “spooky old house in the snow” the jacket blurb promised. We get the impression she’s not enjoying it much but upwards and onwards. She might be a […]

Caught by the fizz

I’ve noticed that Sodastream is making a rather loud comeback. DIY fizzy drinks were all the rage in the 1970s/’80s, and I honestly thought we’d seen the last of them. But no, they’re getting busy with the fizzy all over again. It brings back memories, a sugary flood of them, in fact. I can taste […]

Heart failure and time warp

Good riddance to Ashfordly – where it’s been the 1960s for 18 years The end of an error is upon us. One of Britain’s cosiest Sunday night habits has, as they say, been “axed”. This coming Sunday sees the beginning of the final series of Heartbeat, a programme described variously as a ‘1960s rural police […]

Things can only get bitter…

The Tories are only back in power a wet minute and look who’s crawled back from the lair of the woodworm. Only Phil Collins. Back, back, back, he is. Considering Britain’s now going back to Victorian values, back to basics, back to colonial, feudalistic, tally-ho, smash-the-oiks Conservatism, why not go the whole hog and bring back old Phil too? I’m […]

The Sound of Paint Drying

The other morning, after a night of torrential rain, my first, irritated waking thought was, “Well, if it’s going to piss down, and I have to go out in that, I just hope there are hundreds of fat, boring businessmen meeting on golf courses today.” I’ve never been glad to see the back of summer but […]

It’s not rocket science

Bless, bless, bless the 12-year-old work experience kid who was asked to find a photo of “the man who presents The Krypton Factor” for today’s Irish Times’ TV page; didn’t said 12-year-old then duly come up trumps with the smiling fizog of its original presenter, the mild-mannered-as-an-art-form, Gordon Burns. Personally, I prefer not to see this as an error, but […]