What’s the point of Father’s Day?Ray Connolly Things were different when my children were born fifty odd years ago. With our third child I took Plum, my wife, into the hospital one morning and going back in the afternoon I was told that she was in the delivery room.So soon? I thought. Then, going there,… Continue reading…
The Vinyl Countdown
Daily Express 20.8.2024 The trouble with technology is that our present so quickly swallows our past. I didn’t mind so much when digital photography made our family photograph albums look like medieval relics, because we could always copy our old pictures and leave them to our descendants. But albums? That’s different. That really is personal.… Continue reading…
‘Living The Beatles Legend’ by Kenneth Womack (Daily Mail, November 17 2023)
One lunchtime in 1961 a young telephone engineer called Mal Evans took a different route back to work after eating his sandwiches at Liverpool’s Pier Head. Choosing a short cut down a back alley he heard what sounded like Elvis Presley music coming from a fruit cellar. Paying a shilling, he went down some steps… Continue reading…
Will It Be 1966 All Over Again? (Mail On Sunday, August 20, 2022
Hurrah The Lionesses Ray Connolly Some moments you remember all your life. One of mine happened fifteen minutes after England won the World Cup in 1966. Like almost everybody else in the country, Plum, my wife of three months, and I had just watched the final on TV, and were driving in my little… Continue reading…
Manchester City 1, Inter Milan 0 May 13, 2023
Consider the newspaper photographs the day after. See the unrestrained euphoria of the fans who congregated together on Saturday night to celebrate the victory of Manchester City over Inter Milan in the European Champions League final. It was a raucous time in Manchester after the match. Inevitably, a few fans got over-excited. There are always… Continue reading…
The Making of That’ll Be the Day and Stardust – Daily Mail, 28.2.23
No-one sets out to write a film that half a century later is considered a cult movie. But I did, by accident, when, in 1972, I wrote a film called That’ll Be The Day. Then I watched it go from being a story about a sixth form boy, his first sex in a holiday camp,… Continue reading…
Sam and the Monkey Suit
(1) The Fancy Dress Party Sam had a problem. His friend Abbie was having a fancy dress birthday party on the last day of the school holidays and he couldn’t decide what he wanted to go as. ‘What about being a wizard with a cloak, a wand and a pointed hat?’ his mum suggested.… Continue reading…
Who Killed Elvis? (June 21, 2022)
Who killed Elvis Presley? In his new film ‘Elvis’, which goes on release this week, writer-director Baz Luhrmann makes a pretty convincing argument that the singer’s manager, the phony ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker, bears much of the responsibility for the star’s early death. Many fans will agree with that, believing that, during those last months of… Continue reading…
The Mole of Edge Hill, Liverpool – Williamson Tunnels (Daily Mail, November 1, 2021)
You can’t beat a bit of real mystery as the background for dramatic super-reality, can you? Well, that’s what the latest Doctor Who series tapped into when the Tardis touched down in Liverpool on Sunday evening. Not being a time traveller myself, I can’t say that I completely followed the plot. But the bit that… Continue reading…
The Everly Brothers Hits – Radio Times, December 1982
When the Everly Brothers had their first hits in the late 50s they were both barely more than boys, and the sound of those two late adolescents harmonising about sorrow, pain and the hurts of teenage love, was imprinted on the memories of a generation. So when I finally met them after a London concert I… Continue reading…
