As seen in yer actual Sunday Times and everything, PantoSplaining is a visual potter through pop culture past. We love this stuff and we hope you come to do too.

NEW! #FirstLastAnything ep 35: phenomenal artist Michael Gillette joins me on the music textcast to talk about key purchases, plus: getting his big break with Saint Etienne, housesharing with Aphex Twin, and the lure of The Beatles. And much more. firstlastanything.co.uk/2025/12/07/f...

This short film about Yello's "Oh Yeah" is a delight: two old Swiss friends with no agenda except to immerse themselves in weirdness and have a gas.

Yep, we all remember Mr Humphries in Are You Being Served? and his cheeky catchphrase: "Arbeit macht freeee!"

Yoor Party! Oor Party! A'body's Party!

One of the most beautiful bits of english eccentricity and glorious design is coming back to Sotheby’s and should be bought by a musuem (or me) for THE NATION. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

Toby Young, self-appointed king of free speech, is speaking in Hungary tomorrow about UK “censorship”. He’ll be addressing a group funded by Viktor Orbán’s autocratic regime, which has seized control of the country’s media, judiciary, and routinely harasses its critics

NEW! #FirstLastAnything Episode 34: As a big fan of the album Pearlies by Emma Anderson (@emmaandersonmusic.bsky.social), I was delighted that Emma joined me on my music textcast to discuss it, her career in Lush and Sing-Sing, and some favourite recordings. firstlastanything.co.uk/2025/11/23/f...

"You cannot hope to bribe or twist - Thank God! - the Reform activist. But, seeing what the man will do Unbribed, there's no occasion to."

hahahahaha I knew it. "I feel very confident that he can do a very good job. I think he's gonna surprise some conservative people, actually. And some very liberal people he won't surprise because they already like him."

Reskeet with a time you looked cool.

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, 1957 DEAN: Damn fine work on generative grammar, Chomsky. You've put Bloomfield to bed, that's for sure. CHOMSKY: Thank you, sir. I was thinking I might proclaim myself an unimpeachable expert on every other goddamn thing while I'm at it. DEAN: Be my guest.

Paging @whenisbirths.bsky.social

An absolute disgrace that @ox.ac.uk hosted this celebration of murdering a journalist.

Francis Heaney’s Holy Tango of Literature. He answers the (understudied) question of what would happen if poets and playwrights wrote works whose titles were anagrams of their names. You can read the whole thing free here on his website here: www.francisheaney.com/holy-tango-o...

Someone made a website that serves up a constant stream of AI slop but only if you get on all fours and oink like a pig (no seriously) sloptrough.co

NEW! #FirstLastAnything ep 33: Stand-up and novelist Mark Watson (@watsoncomedian.bsky.social) joins me this week to talk about how music helped to inspire his crafts of writing and performing. Plus his first, last and wildcard purchases! Join us! firstlastanything.co.uk/2025/11/16/f...

This is how to do news titles.

New one tomorrow, but ICYMI! Please share far, wide and high. Cheers.

The reaction to the Panorama edit has been nothing short of hysterical. Yes the BBC has some impartiality problems. But its biggest isn't the one you think. New piece from me. open.substack.com/pub/goodalla...

the right winger who was appointed to lead the BBC in the hope of appeasing right wingers has been driven out by right wingers for not appeasing right wingers enough and the BBC has the chance to do the funniest thing ever

This morning, Sunday, Radio 4's religiously inclined cousin to the Today programme casually revealed the 1970s post boy charged with handling the rats in formaldehyde that the Boomtown Rats wanted to distribute across the US as a publicity stunt is now Pope Leo XIV. I'm sure I didn't dream this.

While ostensibly about one academic’s experiences with the NYT, the central point about the sheer, relentless march of, “critics say”, false-balance journalism should be read and understood by anyone involved in or just interested in the news.

Two bassist-vocalists in a row. #totp

WAC wrong-headedness (that's the BBC Written Archives Centre) I've brought together the key links for the campaign against the changes which now make independent and exploratory research at WAC impossible - and why this matters. www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk/wac-wrong-he...

We’ve made this investigation free to read because so many people in Sheffield are affected by this story. Our journalists have been knocking on doors for weeks and we’ve had to employ lawyers because of the legal threats made against us. We can only do this kind of journalism with your support.

Was on a freelance shift at FHM magazine on the morning of 9/11, following it all on the PB board. When I gasped and said "Another plane has hit the second tower", their online editor yelled "Fuck off - that's just Popbitch bollocks".

ive been saying this for years but the last thing i need is to hear more points of fucking view. points of view is how we got into this fucking mess. we need like a 99% reduction in points of fucking view. oh you've got an opinion about stuff do you? stick it up your ass dingus

ALL RIGHT

#FirstLastAnything, my music-based textcast is back next Sunday to hopefully cheer up the dark mornings and offer an alternative to 'current affairs'. Meantime, why not scroll down and sample the archive of 31 conversations I've had with some very special guests here: firstlastanything.co.uk/about/

Below Average White Band #totp

Simon May but Brian Cant. #totp

Leafing through this weekend's South Wales Evening Post, and there's a most unfortunate clock-up in Mal Pope's column.

Lent my copy of Enya's Watermark to my dad because he liked to listen to it in the car, and never got it back. To be fair, he was more concerned about his Rover 800 getting nicked and burnt out. #totp

Cue some frantic backpedalling #totp

I requested this at a Dutch-themed gala night on a Holland-America cruise ship. The DJ didn't have it. #totp

The first record I owned, here. #totp

Celebrating the 44th anniversary of the greatest advert ever broadcast #girlsboysmusicnoise

Did my annual 'sending shit through the post' duty today. I also heard that a friend had died of cancer. So I commend you to take all the tests for this horrible disease, even if you're a bit embarrassed. Me, not so much.

Folks will be quick to ridicule people who do this, but it can’t be separated from the media hype and ai boosters telling us the tech is a magic answer wizard that knows all and sees all.

Hell's bells, I'd almost turn for Nettles in a brown leather jacket.

I'm old enough to remember when the Express parted company with Robert Kilroy-Silk over something far, far lower down the bigotry scale than this. And it was considered a right-wing paper then.

Broke: Abolish DEI Bespoke: Abolish Opus Dei

* Other synth manufacturers are available #totp

Why didn't they do Bergerac? #totp

So, who remembers the Rhondda Rhant Rhap from 1991? Made using a leaked hot-mic of Neil Kinnock and James Naughtie, banned in the High Court by the BBC, a "sure-fire Christmas number one", never troubled the charts. And not available anywhere online...

Oh Christ. In a university not short of self-publicising prats, this one managed to stand out in my generation. I remember he got annoyed when one student newspaper revealed his real name was something like Derek.

🚨Christian children were told they'd "be Muslim by year 6"!🚨 😱Sounds outrageous? You know the drill… If it sounds outrageous and designed to trigger you into being angry with “other” people, then you need to do some 🪏 1/25 🧵

Ford Madox Ford and TV-am's Mike Morris are actually the same person