Daily Mail, January 2, 2016 In myth it has become a fabled age – a time of pretty girls in mini-skirts driving zippy little mini-cars, of the young Michael Caine being happily promiscuous as Alfie at the cinema, of Ready, Steady, Go starting the weekend on television, and of British bands dominating the world of… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, December 21.12.15 His leaving of the field he loved was not as dignified as Jimmy Hill might have wished. Shrouded in the fog of Alzheimer’s Disease, he was fortunate, perhaps, to have lain unaware as some of his five children from two earlier marriages squabbled publicly with his third wife, Bryony Hill, following… Continue reading…
Daily Mail 7.11.15 We take our childhood with us when we grow up. It’s impossible to leave it behind. And then, for better or worse, we carry it with us for the rest of our lives, a constant reminder of who and what made us the person we became. For Colin Welland, the actor and… Continue reading…
Daily Mail 6.11.15 The body of Elvis Presley was lying on view in an open coffin at his home Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, in August 1977, when a man in his late fifties stepped forward. With long wavy hair and a beard, and looking not unlike a general from the American Civil War, he bent… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, August 7, 2015 You would never have called it glamorous. Based in a couple of stifling, barrel arched cellars beneath a fruit and vegetable warehouse, eighteen steps down from a cobbled alleyway just four blocks from the River Mersey, it didn’t have a single pretence to sophistication. But to a teenage Cilla Black, by… Continue reading…
Daily Mail (13.6.15) Bob Dylan was getting angry. The trailer he’d been given as a changing room didn’t have a loo. His pregnant wife, Sara, had mentioned it first, and now, as he waited a two full hours while a problem with the sound on stage was fixed, pre-show nerves were making him uncomfortable. He… Continue reading…
The worst thing about getting older, isn’t the getting older part. It’s the watching everybody else getting younger. The London Underground is unforgiving for that. When I take a look down the carriage, I see that, not only am I alone in having white hair, I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who can whistle… Continue reading…
What is the point of Elvis Presley? I don’t mean, why is Elvis famous? Even if you don’t care for his style of music you must admit that getting on for four decades after his death, he remains the most recognised performer in the world, with fans still numbered in millions. What I’m wondering is… Continue reading…
You will go a long way before you meet anyone who knew her who won’t have a kind word to say about Cynthia Lennon, the first wife of John Lennon, who died, aged 75, in Majorca yesterday. Because she was just a very, very nice person who, as a teenager, fell in love with a… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, 11.5.15 Some boys collect train numbers, others have stamp albums. But for Keith Sivyer, as with many boys of his generation – including, I confess, this one – the great hobby was records. As a schoolboy I couldn’t afford to buy many, but those that I did get became treasured objects, their sleeves… Continue reading…
