Annie Nightingale was born OTD in 1940. My book #IntoTheGroove is partly dedicated to her work in broadcasting and when she died I put together a playlist of just some of the music I first heard on her request show. www.tunemymusic.com/share/N4UNN2...

I don’t know how Wayne Coyne manages to still look like Wayne Coyne after all these years when the bloke at work who used to look like Wayne Coyne now looks like Willie Rushton.

I am making a list of these kinds of pronouncements for the ‘nice biscuits’ Reform councillor in our area.

Pic appears to be of a man asking himself ‘Did I write this and also is this a real beard?’

Here's a local news write up about the WAC Campaign's submission to the Charter Review - twinned with the usual weak quote from the press office. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

'medicalisation of distress' - or 'just trying to understand themselves, the world around them and where they might belong in it'

Apparently there isn’t really going to be a big train tunnel linking New Jersey with Swansea Bay. (That’s the weakest one I’ve seen. At least either make it faintly credible or funny.)

OH MY GOD GUESS WHAT???!!

Annie Nightingale was born OTD in 1940. My book #IntoTheGroove is partly dedicated to her work in broadcasting and when she died I put together a playlist of just some of the music I first heard on her request show. www.tunemymusic.com/share/N4UNN2...

It's not Larkin's birthday today - what an April Fool it would be to claim it is!!! - but I may as well share this again in any case, I loved writing these

I think it says ‘Smashing Hawkins’

This is exceptional, but I also love that it only works because The Phoenix is (wisely) subscription led rather than newsstand. Form and function in perfectly daft harmony.

The Phoenix is great for a load of reasons but last year's (brick-themed) April Fool issue nailed AI far better than most of our prominent satirists. Excuse the state of my kid's copy.

LRT: really April Fools Day is best when it’s aimed at kids, I think.

Ok I have seen a GOOD APRIL FOOLS JOKE in the wild. My kids comic (Phoenix - home if @jamiesmart.bsky.social) comes in an envelope every week, we open it, had a fake cover for a soup review mag like we’d been sent the wrong thing. Genius!

This happens a lot to me, which makes me think that if you've already done the equivalent of a full day's work, or been exposed to a full day's trauma, in your dreams and wake up wrung out and knackered, you ought to be entitled to the day off.

Has the look of @whenisbirths.bsky.social Justin Lewis’ fine book!

Subconscious taking me on some queasy and even gory itineraries during dream hours. I can’t remember details just waking up and thinking, Whatever that was, please stop.

I’m the sort of person who falls for April Fool. ‘Oh, how interesting, an underwater restaurant in of all places Cardiff - oh’ (actual example)

The complete Britten On Film is available on Youtube here.

Another thing on FB: screenshots of music press reviews of the week’s singles and fans of particular bands who even 40+ years later just can’t resist nursing that wound. Let it go, lads.

I genuinely recommend this book. Like many of my favourite histories it's serious research cunningly disguised as frivolity.

A new episode of World of Telly is now available wherever you get your podcasts. This month we take a look at the 1970s crime drama Gangsters. A video version is also available (please like and subscribe to our YouTube channel if you can): youtu.be/Zloo0WZT8tk

Thank you again to everyone who’s bought a copy of #IntoTheGroove so far because it did well enough in the run up to Christmas to earn me a sliver of royalties. So sincere cheers for that. X

It’s a bit more serious than ‘a few errors and typos’, Matt, I’d suggest.

“I wanted to write a trade book outside the woke constraints of Big Publisher but also I definitely submitted my data analysis to peer review because that’s how trade books work, peasant”

That Dylan thing just makes me think of when they did the Laurel and Hardy cartoon. Except he’s still alive.

Thank you again to everyone who’s bought a copy of #IntoTheGroove so far because it did well enough in the run up to Christmas to earn me a sliver of royalties. So sincere cheers for that. X

FB literally unusable now. Because I’ve had the gall to visit Canterbury for nearly 48 hours (something I didn’t even announce on the platform), it now assumes I want all Kent’s local news. #algorithms

Only 99p on Kindle today: my eleventh novel, the imaginatively-named Number 11. (Which, in order to achieve better sales, I should really have called What a Carve Up 2: the Return of the Winshaws.) This is the one Ken Loach read and said he wouldn't film because 'I don't really do giant spiders'.

I have no photos from today as evidence of how lovely it all was so you'll have to take my word for it.

The third episode of the Six Things podcast is out, featuring London explorer and Londonist writer Matt Brown. Matt’s six excellent things: – tube station smells – parakeets – Wetherspoons carpets – wazzbaffles – Diamond Geezer – International Space Station pod.link/1873642106/e...

As for Michael Grade, hard to weigh up all the career pros and cons and believe it's all the same person.

Okay, just discovered that he left his wife for his daughter's friend and I've got a wavy line instead of a mouth.

'Ashford International EP' (Mute 1988)

All I'm saying is I should be able to make a car disappear just by thinking about it. Not much to ask.

I still think of Richard Keys as 'TV-am when Nick Owen was on holiday'.

Off to Canterbury and it is not an ecclesiastical matter either.

Back back back.

My notes are in this snazzy online programme: issuu.com/orchestraenl...

I have a couple of comps for this evening's OAE John Passion at the Southbank at 7pm, any takers? I can't make it unfortunately but it's sure to be brilliant. Drop me a DM if you'd like one or both tickets

Almost a relief when you miss your train and there is nothing you can do about it. Except get the next one.

Blog update: The Primitives scored their only NME Indie Number One in March 1987, signing to RCA not long afterwards. "Stop Killing Me" is pop music wrapped in a barbed wire ball of feedback and distortion, and still sounds great today. indienumber1s.blogspot.com/2026/03/94-p...

Forty years ago this weekend, (yes, forty not sixty - 29 Mar 1986), the first official Beatles releases in what was then the Soviet Union, specifically 'most' of A Hard Day's Night, but also a compilation called A Taste of Honey. Find out more in #IntoTheGroove. www.youtube.com/watch?v=NItA...

Back back back.

The Everly Brothers! Simon and Garfunkel! Cook and Moore! Reunions people asked for. But what if there were reunions people *didn't* ask for? Would there be civil unrest? Well, me and @whenisbirths.bsky.social have just signed our first book contract in almost 20 years so you'll soon find out.

'I saw it with my own eyes.' In the words of Homer Simpson, except he was talking to God at the time, 'You're everywhere, you're omnivorous.'

Forty years ago this weekend, (yes, forty not sixty - 29 Mar 1986), the first official Beatles releases in what was then the Soviet Union, specifically 'most' of A Hard Day's Night, but also a compilation called A Taste of Honey. Find out more in #IntoTheGroove. www.youtube.com/watch?v=NItA...

Literally the second thing I discovered about this oaf (the first being his mercifully brief Strictly involvement) was his close friendship with JD Vance

This is absolutely wild youtu.be/laOEyd4vYBY?...