Dark water

“Don’t do it!” we shouted, with our usual mirthful, carefree abandon. Bob looked up and around at us, a tiny smile appeared at the side of his mouth. I can’t remember exactly what he said as we passed him by, but it was something to the effect of: “I’m just having a rest.” The bridge […]

A life in magazines: TV Comic

TV Comic was the first proper weekly magazine I collected. I could barely contain my juvenile excitement between issues. It would pop through my letter box on a Thursday, even though, somewhat frustratingly, it had “Every Monday” printed under the banner – such were the trials of Scottish village life in the mid-1970s. TV Comic […]

The curse of rosé-tinted glasses

A friend once told me a story about an associate of his who asked him for a restaurant recommendation for a first date. Trying not to be too harsh, but still having to acknowledge that this associate was not perhaps the most sophisticated of individuals, the friend suggested a pleasant enough little pizza place in […]

Jeremys #2: Brett

Second in a series of short tributes to well-known people called Jeremy With the BBC’s Sherlock on our screens, it’s worth reminding ourselves just how great Jeremy Brett was, both in and out of the role. Brett was a truly fine actor and one of British television’s most recognisable faces, having put his sharp features […]

Plastic not-so-fantastic, then

Another childhood illusion shattered, another comfort zone wrecked. Belgian punk “sensation” Plastic Bertrand has admitted he wasn’t the singer of his one and only UK hit ‘Ça Plane Pour Moi’. Is there nothing left we can believe in? This is far more devastating than the Milli Vanilli ‘scandal’ of 20 years ago. Poor Plastic (real name Roger Jouret, […]

Waiter, there’s a woman in my soup

It’s hard to believe that the boom-time obsession with spas hasn’t gone away. Glossy mags, weekend supplements and the provincial press are still plugging these idiotic, aery-faery dens of self-gratification, a hangover from what already looks like the tackiest bygone era in history. We’re already well into the first year of a new decade, and a more […]

Oui, je bored… think I’ll just commune with the dead

Whenever my friend and I were bored during the long, winter nights of the early 1980s – when we were restless teenagers, fed up listening to Tears For Fears and there was only Bergerac on the telly – our thoughts inevitably turned to talking to dead people. Out would come the little table, the Scrabble […]

Tea-time tale

A few days back, a colleague and I were discussing the timing of some inconsequential matter, and I happened to estimate it occurred “around dinner time”. He smiled and said, “so that would be tea time for me”. It reminded me of a recent piece by an Irish journalist I’m fond of reading, who disparaged the type of people who have […]

Pipe down, it’s a no-shit Sherlock

Benedict Cumberbatch sounds gloriously anachronistic, a name to do a little more than conjure with. He should be a Dickensian cartoon character, if such a thing could possibly exist. Crazy name, crazy face, he must surely be a crazy guy. How perfectly cast he is, then, as Sherlock, the latest TV incarnation of Arthur Conan […]

The terrifying beauty of the Monopods

I was at primary school when I read John Christopher’s brilliant sci-fi novel The White Mountains and it terrified me. This was around the time I’d first heard Orson Welles’s The War Of The Worlds broadcast, and a good few years after I’d had my first nightmare about a Dalek invasion of my village, so […]