End of year accounts. Unsung Unsaid total sales tally. 2024 - 698 2025 - 119 Total - 817 Thank you to everyone who made this possible. I hope Drum does half as well.

Happy 90th birthday to the very wonderful John Gorman. Thank you very much. Thank you very very very much. I met him once. Genuine oddball.

Went into V Exchange y/day in Manchester and it was sad. It's over. It was 30 yrs ago Rob get over it, but it has all gone now, every last shred of when these places were conversational salons with curators you trusted. Everything a generic £30+ now. The price of everything. The value of nothing>

On page 461 of PAOC I mention that Can't Live With You, Can't Live Without You by The Mindbenders sounded best on a 5 kw pirate radio station with medium wave interference. I have just heard it exactly like that on a 2nd gen offshore recording on an internet station and don't talk to me about Proust

Watched that Chevy Chase last night. An unsurprisingly unengaging doc about an unengaging man. Starred in some of the unfunniest films of all time, seems to have been a coke driven arsehole for much of it and coldly unrepentant about any of his dubious behaviour. Great in Community though.

You used to employ Neville Cardus, John Arlott, James Cameron, and Jeremy Seabrook. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

#thoughtfortheday Newspapers never used to beg me for money.

Wondered why I was still seeing all these posts for that awful programme you're all obsessed with, then realised I'd forgotten to add the definite article to my muted words.

Overheard in Waterstones Manchester. "You're dog shaming" Pause then steely and insistent. "Sorry but that's dog shaming".

Just heard a cover version of Bowie's Lazarus by a lauded difficult music maker on a station that plays difficult music. Several things occurred as this turgid thing lumbered towards Bethlehem to be born. Why being uppermost.

Watching Local Hero. Again. Perfect post Xmas film. The parallels with Walkabout are striking. The alien terrain but gradually going native. (the discarded child's toy/the watch left in the water) And the endings are almost identical. Back in the familiar urban but something has changed.

One thing I've loved about reading the D Bailey and the E Prevost over the past few weeks is their utter disdain for the formula and organising principles of jazz. I remember Keith Rowe expressing the same to me when I interviewed him for AVIH. *sits back and waits for people to misinterpret this.

Watched that Katherine Ryan First Born Daughter show last night. Did worry that all her glammy tv stuff would have diminished her comedy chops. If anything it's sharpened her interaction with the audience. Also the extended riff on 'high profile sex pest' without naming him was utterly sublime.

Do you remember when you'd still carry on writing the wrong year when you signed a cheque well into January? Do you remember cheque books?

Just one festival story in case any of this sounds like sour grapes. Was invited to a local fest. Gave their bookshop 3 free copies of UU. Later they rescinded and cited budget/funding cuts. When the bill was announced 2 high profile 'usual suspects' were on there. Presumably neither works for free>

My quartet of self-published books. That's four in six years, two memoirs two novels. And I have two more (possibly three) planned. I'm 71. As you can see I'm not about to go gently.... Available for podcasts and festival marquee yacking.

Some v disingenuous stuff floating around about podcasts in my feed this morning. Exactly the same dodgy reasoning and justification often surfaces for why literature festivals up and down the land all feature the same guest speakers from a very narrow pool of 'usual suspects'.

One of the most fabulous pop records of all time. That production! That piano! THAT voice. She was 17. www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_U7...

(mock sarcastic voiceover) Oh no! Jasper isn't on his specially prepared bed blanket. Where could he possibly be? Wait a minute.....A HA!

Drum is now available as a paperback. Here's the link. Being an independent author means you have to shoulder that boulder up the hill yourself every time. I have no publicity machine. I value every reader because I know that hype hasn't brought them here. Dive in. www.amazon.co.uk/Drum-Rob-Cha...

It was 25 yrs ago last night when I uttered my first words of the new millennium. They were 'will you marry me?' OK it took another 7 yrs before we tied the knot and there was a little in sickness and in health interlude along the way but here we are and there you are too. Happy New Year everyone. x

So farewell then 2025. That's enough Blueskying till next year. See you on the other side. Hit it Jerney. www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0vT...

Prokofiev, who spent years avoiding the midnight knock and upsetting Stalin died on the same day as Stalin.

"Do you measure old men for trusses?" "We do". "Well wash your hands and give me a quarter of cough candies". The immortal Ken Dodd on that Ch5 lost tapes thing last night.

It's amazing how good R2 can sound when they let a proper DJ have a go isn't it? You could almost think it was a music station.

So it's goodbye to all the music video channels then. I do not mourn. They had long outlived their usefulness. Many were backmasked and censor bleeped to death. Too many made great pop stars who can't act look berkish and they let their literalism usurp what could have been a great art form.

I reckon it's warming up for snow. Do you remember when your Mum used to say that? She was right though, your Mum. It does and it is.

Watching that Monkhouse thing, that little gleam he did after a joke, I've just realised who it reminds me of. Lenny Bruce on the Steve Allen show after he does the Liz Taylor getting Barmitzvad line and cheekily looks off camera because he'd promised them he wouldn't do it.

"What you have to understand about Drum is that if you praised him too much he’d lash out. He couldn’t abide compliments. If you trace it all back I suspect it had something to do with being an orphan". "I suspect it had something to do with taking too much speed." Out tomorrow.

Tried watching a Jack Dee special on Sky Comedy bcos I have a distant memory of him being funny about 30 yrs ago. Lasted 10 minutes. Christ it was bad.

Breaking news and huge if true. Contrary to all previous statements the greatest ever year in pop is in fact 1964. I will be taking no further questions at this point in time.

55 yrs ago this week these went out. 4 of my favourite shows from my archive. Alan Freeman playing the best of the stuff that didn't make the charts in 1970. There are some absolute belters. Plus the handovers with Terry Wogan are exquisite. Go on treat yourself. archive.org/details/fluf...

2025 also saw the printed press edge ever closer to its clickbaity demise. One of the great achievements of the industrial age (like the railways) has been decimated beyond recognition and all bcos some pony tailed twat wandered into an office in the 90s and said 'hey why not put all this on line?'

Fervent hope for 2026, death to AI stealing literary works via a thousand high profile lawsuits. By all means use it to find a cure for cancer but hands off our creative endeavours you silicone valley parasites.

Watched that Dave Allen thing last night, I love DA. The Irish Lenny Bruce and all that. But there was loads of material that wouldn't pass muster now, crude caricatures of illiterates, racial stereotypes of Chinese, etc. It's interesting who we selectively demonise and who we don't isn't it?>

Since we’re talking about old works of art. It’s not quite copy editing, but the sandwich continuity in When Harry Met Sally is a frightening thing to behold.

Lost art of copy editing award - clear winner - goes to Little Brown for that bit in R Hitchcock's 1967 where he talks about the clocks not going back that year and the sunsets being better and Autumn Almanac having added resonance. The suspension of the clocks going back actually began in 1968.

Eurocamp holiday photo of the year. August 2nd. Châtelaillon-Plage (where I subsequently discover that Derek Bailey lived at one point.)

FB memory of the yr, posted by his daughter. Keith Marsden aka 'Mate' as in 'shall we pop into Mates and find out the Test Match score?' when we were kids. Here much older obv. He was a lovely man and I want you to admire his immaculately tidy work area. Needless to say he knew where everything was.

via GMail overnite. Dear Rob I’ve read all your books. I read irregular head 3 times. But I just finished psychedelia and other colors. And it was truly joyful. I wish it were longer. The kindness and generosity of strangers, eh?

Good morning from the already wide awake club. Our bin men came at 6.30 am. How's your day going?

For the evening crowd, bcos there wasn't a morning crowd. Where were you all? Ratners? Courts of Norwich? (Sale now on.) Anyway, not long to wait now. It's out on Thursday.

Now playing. That Fingers Inc. double. One of the great dance albums. Perfect dead of the year music to make the night come alive. "Never no more lonely".

I'm glad a few more people have turned up on here late afternoon doors. (Yes there is!) Earlier on I was beginning to think that everyone had gone out to see some fireworks last night and I was the only one in bed with my eyes bandaged.

I did get a few unfollows y/day which is fair enough. I did invite. However it does make me wonder where the Righteous and the brittle lLeft will go to talk exclusively to itself if/when this place disappears.

Jesse's Jack Your Body Musical Diet. Today I will mostly be listening to these, because sometimes you have to go back to the source, back to where it all began.

The Scribblies continued. Internet radio stations of the year. Radio Basson (if it's got a bassoon on it or has been arranged for bassoon they'll play it.) NTS Radio Memory Lane (a different legacy line and a very necessary antidote to the narrowcasting vacuity of heritage theme park oldies radio.)

D – Join us for the next half hour for a refreshing antidote to comedic conventions WC – Comedy designed to get you thinking about laughing D – But not actually laughing WC – Comedy that one day will be taught in one of our more fashionable Polytechnics Drum & Wallace Castle in the Wreath Lectures

Incidentally did anyone else watch this? Did you spot the couple of obvious edits and dialogue erasers. Both concerning derogatory references to gypsies I'm guessing.

I have a joke about a ball of wool. Well it's more of a yarn actually. #hereallholidayseason