Daily Mail, June 2018 Someone broke the growing tips off two of our hollyhocks last week. For some wanton reason he or she stopped on the West London pavement outside our front garden, leaned over the fence and removed the tops. At this stage in the summer, hollyhocks are only about four to five feet… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, 13.4.18 One morning in 1969 I was sitting at my desk at the London Evening Standard when we got a tip-off that John Lennon had been arrested on a drugs charge. My job at the time was, among much else, to cover everything Beatles. So, immediately, I telephoned their friendly Press officer, Derek… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, September 30, 2017 One day in the early-Seventies I had a huge stroke of beginners’ luck. Going over to a friend’s house to borrow a book, I was asked, over a cup of tea, if I would like to write a film. Just like that. Things like that weren’t unusual in those days.… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, September 7, 2017 Back in November 1965, writer Kenneth Tynan, then the literary manager of the National Theatre, was asked during a late-night BBC television discussion if he would allow sexual intercourse to take place on stage. It was a deliberately provocative question, and, slightly side-stepping it, Tynan gave the qualified answer of… Continue reading…
Daily Mail August 19, 2017 Elvis Presley died forty years ago this week, but as, over the decades, so many fans have continued to insist that he is still alive, it’s become a commonplace joke that he’s been spotted on a ranch in Arizona, or on the checkout at Lidl in Nottingham, or even, as… Continue reading…
Daily Mail 11.08.2017 If Elvis Presley had never existed, the film Love Me Tender would still have been made. But it wouldn’t have been called Love Me Tender, and wouldn’t have had that song in it – or, for that matter, any other songs. That being so, in all probability, neither you nor I would… Continue reading…
Daily Mail 10.8.17 Glen Campbell was a brave man. You have to be brave to set off on a vast nationwide tour of the US fully aware that you have Alzheimer’s Disease, that you may not always know where you are, who is on stage with you or the order of the famous songs that… Continue reading…
24.6.17 Never one for roughing it, not even Bob Dylan was going to get me under canvas, when, in August 1969, a couple of brothers called Foulk managed to tempt the great man to their Isle of Wight Festival of Music. Does Dylan have any idea where the Isle of Wight is, I remember thinking… Continue reading…
Leaning forward into his BBC microphone, headphones clamped to his ears, finger on the fader and a walking stick alongside, Brian Matthew at work looks more like a cricket commentator than the oldest disc jockey in the country – and, possibly, the world. He’s 83 and the congregation who turn to his Sounds of The… Continue reading…
Barry Norman was one of those people who always seemed wryly amused by life – so much so that on TV he came across as an agreeable friend who had just been to see some films he thought we might like to know about. Film criticism wasn’t a life and death matter, he seemed to… Continue reading…
