I've long been of the suspicion that, on a purely aesthetic level of appreciation, few people on the planet have less of an interest in music than Simon Cowell.

A couple of overnight uploads means we've been able to extend this to eleven regions.

Most Tory-coded trait? Probably my addiction to Fifteen-To-One.

Pop fact: The writer-producer of Bric-a-Brac, Nick Wilson, later produced The Hit Man and Her.

23 September 1939: The death of Sigmund Freud. The birth of Henry Blofeld.

Theory: much of this is explained by journalism being quite a young business (crap money at lower levels, lot of bottlenecks, people age out). A lot of political journalists barely remember Westminster before things went nuts c2014. Not enough of the lobby grew up in peacetime.

"Retrospect's CD Issue offers winning advocacy. John Andrews is a past master at extracting the best from underpriced scores and he and the Orchestra of Scottish Opera excel themselves in a properly reflective reading...allowing his players to relish Bantock's instrumental colourings along the way."

I think a lot about a question Chris Morris (as the interviewer Peter Hammill) asked Martyn Lewis on Radio 1 in 1994: ‘How does news help us?’

The more I think about it, the more obvious it gets that a lot of news media really wishes it was doing entertainment or sports news and so it uses the same kind of breathless rhetoric.

A locksmith told me a few years back that burglars were only really bothering if they could nick some decent jewellery, ideally gold. The effort to reward ratio for a lot of stuff they used to target just wasn't there any more.

Useful reminder from Peter Kellner on the problems we refuse to acknowledge are getting better, and the politics of hopelessness that this breeds open.substack.com/pub/kellnerp...

I've just spent an hour trying to work out the motivation for the autism conspiracies, and of course it's this.

I’d rather be autistic than a Republican. Every fucking time.

Irony is that these men think they’re the ‘normal ones’.

Best theme tune you can’t seem to get anywhere.

I guarantee that everyone knows someone who is neurodivergent. You just might not know it yet. With some people, long gone, you will never know for sure. The point is: now we have language and understanding of it. Well, as long as you’re prepared to listen and learn rather than mock and judge.

Thread. 🧵 When I interviewed Toni Basil back in 2021 we were both kind of amazed that there still hadn’t been a full-length bells-and-whistles documentary made about her incredible life. These people won’t be with us forever, you know.

ITV is 70. #WhenWasThings

ITV, comemmorated and celebrated in the best way. This is *superb*. I love that tube of Gibbs SR...

Noisebox tonight... 8pm- Ready Player One: Can you still remember the Konami code? Can you defeat the legendary Cow Level? Then join Tracey Binnie on a quest for the eclectic treasures of video game music. www.noiseboxradio.com www.mixcloud.com/Noi...

ITV is 70. #WhenWasThings

Autism isn’t caused by medicine. Claims that paracetamol in pregnancy causes autism are false. We do not need to prevent or cure autism. Autistic people are valuable. Great guidance here from @contactfamilies.bsky.social for anyone who is worried or concerned with the news today.

Well this, in the new @lrb.co.uk, is wonderful.

I highly recommend you order one of these from Justin. The one he did for my husband's birthday is fantastic.

Even if vaccines *did* cause autism, it's a ridiculously easy choice to make. Do you want your kid to die in agony of an easily-preventable illness, or do you want them to, for example, have 259 different versions of "California Girls" on their hard drive?

I say this carefully, but Ed Davey is currently one of the few people in politics who seems prepared to call out news media’s increasingly narrow and dangerous idea of priority.

I do things like this as art card commissions, by the way. Perfect for birthdays, anniversaries etc. DM or email in bio! Christmas is coming... #WhenWasThings #WhenIsBirths

It’s happening finally. 35 years after its original creation for the US & Japanese markets, Lush’s ‘Gala’ has been remastered & repackaged. There is the LP with its original sequence on vinyl & CD but also a deluxe boxset available exclusively from the @4ad.com webstore. Preorder: lush.ffm.to/gala

Particularly interesting perspective from Michaela here. Because here's something that perhaps shouldn't have been made like that then.

Hello Londoners. there are signed copies of The Glorious Dead (new novel, out last week, darker than the others) at @gaystheword.bsky.social and @waterstones.bsky.social Tottenham Ct Rd if you fancy one. (One in Foyles too and another in Waterstones Lewisham.)

Sadly the Golden Shot isn't a Monkhouse episode, but the 3-2-1 episode (29 July 1978) is the first one ever broadcast and literally features Janice Long and her then-husband.

I wish Bluesky critics would acknowledge this simple, somewhat horrifying fact

After an unaccountably poor sleeve for the re-activated Opportunities, so begins a run of about 30 years of faultless sleeve art.

My Salzburg Festival programmes have arrived in the post. I can't really exaggerate how honoured I felt to write about Beethoven's 'Eroica' for Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra; here are the last couple of pages.

Awaiting the #Rapture.

'Only 65 couples are left'

I really do go the extra mile with ALT text, incidentally. Including all the upside down stuff here.

Lovely design Justin. Couldn't really be anything else today.

have they accidentally wiped all of father ted or something

I do things like this as art card commissions, by the way. Perfect for birthdays, anniversaries etc. DM or email in bio! Christmas is coming... #WhenWasThings #WhenIsBirths

#WhenWasThings from the archives: Number 51: September 1955: Suddenly - a choice of viewing, if you lived in London. Plus! Eamonn Andrews and Arthur Miller, JB Priestley and Jacquetta Hawkes, Catherine Storr and Elvis Presley, Juan Antonio Bardem and Frank Sinatra, Bertolt Brecht and Spotty Dog.

Betamax Bygraves

Aztec Cameraphone

The more, the merrier. We have to say this more often. Because if not, we're appeasing some terrible people.

At long last, I may have my 300-track 1980s marathon playlist finalised. It is 21 and a half hours long. #IntoTheGroove

As for that git's funeral in America, stop it. Him still being dead isn't news.

News organisations may be interested to know that what is changing about the public seems to be: they're no longer watching the news. Not simply because they can't face it - it's more that they no longer trust what's being served up.

the UK bookshop.org site has a competition where if you buy from them between today and the 24th, any book sitewide, you can win a £250 gift card to spend on books. i like this because even if you don't win you still have a book uk.bookshop.org/lists/win-a-...

WORK QUESTION, to which I’m sure I should already know the answer but self-evidently don’t: who’s the best historian of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop? I need to ask someone thoroughly knowledgeable for some skinny...

What's effectively happening here (in the British media at large, too) is the construction of "anti-racism" as somehow a "political alternative" to racism, rather than as a minimal civilisational standard, which in turn (further) vindicates racism as *also* an acceptable political position.