Daily Telegraph, July 4, 2012 Though it really shouldn’t, to learn that the Queen is a Cole Porter fan came as a surprise yesterday. But to discover that one of her favourite Porter songs is Miss Otis Regrets, with its blackly comic lyric about a woman who murders her lover because he cheats on her,… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, June 9, 2012 History can be studied in many ways. While last weekend’s Diamond Jubilee flotilla was a traditional Royal spectacle, another quite different way of looking at the recent past could be seen at Monday night’s Buckingham Palace concert. Then music drew hundreds of thousands of people on to the streets of… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, May 22, 2012 He was the gaunt Bee Gee, the one with the tombstone teeth and extraordinary voice – a high, plaintive tenor which, when he was a boy, his parents would fondly describe as sounding like that of “a quavering Arab”. But Robin Gibb’s voice and song writing abilities, when allied with… Continue reading…
Daily Telegraph, 27 April 2012 You don’t realise that you’re knocking on a bit until some delectable young woman on the Tube stands up and offers you her place, “What, me?” your smile tries to joke, as you pull yourself immediately more athletically upright. “No thank you. How strange that you should think I might be… Continue reading…
Daily Telegraph, April 13, 2012 You only had to see the audience, predominantly female, swaying and singing together in their massed legions at Adele’s televised Royal Albert Hall concert last week, to know where the big money is in young British pop music these days. It’s in the bank accounts of the top half dozen… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, March 23, 2012 There’s something eerie about sitting perfectly alone in a large cinema. It’s as though something terrible has happened somewhere else and you are the only one who doesn’t know. That’s how it felt this week, anyway, as I bought my ticket and sat down to watch the new Disney epic… Continue reading…
Daily Mail 28.2.12 Show me the person who has no regrets and I’ll show you either a devil or a saint. But most probably I’ll show you someone with absolutely no imagination. Because having regrets, that ability to look back at our lives and reflect on choices made, actions taken and things said or unsaid,… Continue reading…
Daily Mail February 1, 2012 We’ve been watching quite a lot of frantic sex in our house over the past few weeks. It happens every year at this time, when BAFTA, the film and TV society for professionals, begin counting the votes for their annual awards ceremony in February, and DVDs of the latest movies… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, 21.12.11 There’s nothing phoney or saccharine about the song, and nothing fake or glitzy about those who sing it. Wherever You Are, as sung by the choir of Military Wives, is reality put to music – the reality of waiting and praying, by those who wait and worry. They aren’t a glamorous choir.… Continue reading…
Joe Frazier may have been able to give and take all manner of beatings in the boxing ring, but out of it he was easily wounded by unkind words. I discovered this when, shortly after he’d beaten Muhammad Ali to become undisputed world heavyweight champion, he made the mistake of believing himself to be a… Continue reading…
