Daily Mail, 22.4.15 Yoko Ono no doubt meant well when she said last weekend that Ringo Starr was the ‘most influential Beatle’, but, bless him, he wasn’t. Not in any way, shape or form. And he would readily admit that. Certainly he wasn’t the most influential musically, because his contribution could have been made by… Continue reading…
Daily Mail – April, 2015 There has never been a popular song quite like it. For over forty years its lyrics have been an enigma wrapped in an eight and a half minute long, rock and roll puzzle. Argued over by generations of geeky fans, deciphered and re-deciphered by code-breaking rock nerds and considered to… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, 20.4.15 When I was two years old my older sister and I were dressed in our best clothes and taken to a photographer’s studio to have our pictures taken. My father was on leave from the Royal Navy at the time and wanted a reminder of his children to carry with him when… Continue reading…
August 2014 Among the great and the good Richard Attenborough was one of the best. Most readers will know him affectionately as the chubby, ever-optimistic film producer/director who exploded into tears when his film Gandhi won eight Oscars in 1982, giving him a Spitting Image image he bore with resigned amusement. But beneath his public… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, August 15, 2014 Whatever happened to romance? You remember romance, don’t you? It was the time in your life when you fancied someone so hopelessly that the mundane became magical when shared with her or him; the day when going to the launderette in Liverpool with the special one could be as romantic… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, June 21 2014 Forty years ago it was not done to enquire about a woman’s sexuality, and especially not if that woman was a famous singer much loved by the great British public. Yet that was what Dusty Springfield mischievously goaded me into asking during an interview with her in 1970. As two lapsed… Continue reading…
Someone broke the growing tips off two of my 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 tall. By mid-July, had… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, May 2, 2014 Bob Hoskins never springs to mind as one of life’s philosophers. When movie casting directors went looking for an actor to play a deep thinker, it’s unlikely Bob sprang to mind. He didn’t have the looks or the accent for it. But what he did have was common sense, much… Continue reading…
Event, Mail On Sunday, 6.4.14 We see his face on T-shirts and towels, posters and postcards, and for decades it has advertised everything from cars, jeans, beer and Pepsi to a bank and a credit card. The surly, hurt expression suggests the epitome of cool, the perfect marketing image for the young. Yet the man… Continue reading…
Daily Mail 6.1.14 They looked like a couple of teenage Mississippi riverboat gamblers, thin as blades with their white shirts, black waistcoats and luxuriant hair. But when they picked up those black guitars, stood head to head close to the microphone and sang, a generation of budding schoolboy musicians pricked up its collective ears and… Continue reading…
