It’s not FDR that we’re dealing with, sadly.
I have only just twigged that all of Yes Minister is on the BBC iPlayer
This will make my lunchtimes more chucklesome
Jim Hacker is the only Prime Minister to have studied at the college I went to
One of the things I like about by-elections is discovering new places names. ‘Gorton’, ‘Denton’, and on the telly this morning, ‘Longsight’. All very good.
Shame my side lost though
I heard a good new-to-me made-up word this morning (although aren’t all words are made-up?)
fauxstalgia - nostalgia for something you never experienced in the first place
My Crucial Track for 23 February 2026 - “Red Right Hand (2011 Remaster)” by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
What’s a song that grew on you over time?
“Red Right Hand (2011 Remaster)” by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
This gives me the chance to share my Nick Cave joke.
“Take a little walk to the edge of town
Go across the tracks
Where the viaduct looms,
Like a bird of doom
As it shifts and cracks
Where secrets lie in the border fires,⨠in the humming wires
Hey man, you know⨠you’re never coming back
Past this square, past the bridge,⨠past the mills, past the stacks
On a gathering storm comes⨠a tall handsome man”
Nick Cave. Good at songs, rubbish at giving directions.
“Red Right Hand (2011 Remaster)” by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds on Apple Music
This is from Crucial Tracks. My profile is here.
My Crucial Track for 22 February 2026 - “If It Wasn’t for the Nights” by ABBA
What’s your favorite deep cut from an album?
“If It Wasn’t for the Nights” by ABBA
A jaunty tune with a bleak-as-a-northern-winter lyric
Childish from the Daily Star….but I can’t help smiling
Particularly at the description “wingnut manbaby”
My Crucial Track for 21 February 2026 - “Zobi la mouche” by Les NĂŠgresses Vertes
What song makes you feel like you’re in a different country?
“Zobi la mouche” by Les NĂŠgresses Vertes
I went to see this band at what used to be called the Town and Country Club, in Kentish Town
Both the band and the audience made me feel like I was in Paris, or somewhere further South.
They played this song twice. As far as I can make out it’s about a fly called Zobi …but don’t let that put you off.
“Zobi la mouche” by Les NĂŠgresses Vertes on Apple Music
This is from Crucial Tracks. My profile is here.
I always assumed ‘Wayland’, which is a Linux-y thing I probably don’t entirely understand, was named after Wayland’s Smithy, but according to HowToGeek it’s named after a place near Boston
I’m a bit disappointed tbh
Pic from Msemmett - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link
I’ve moved away from database-y stuff over the last couple of years, but I’ve been fiddling about with a point-in-time restore this morning, and I’ve been reminded how good dbatools is.
It seems to have grown a viking helmet since I last used it :)
dbatools | SQL Server automation with PowerShell
I’ve moved away from database-y stuff over the last couple of years, but I’ve been fiddling about with a point-in-time restore this morning, and I’ve been reminded how good dbatools is.
It seems to have grown a viking helmet since I last used it :)
dbatools | SQL Server automation with PowerShell
My Crucial Track for 17 February 2026 - “The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right” by Lisa O’Neill
How do you discover new music, and what’s the latest gem you’ve found?
“The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right” by Lisa O’Neill
It’s a mixture of collaborations, compilations, algorithms, books and websites, and podcasts, and the occasional Shazam.
This song is a case in point. I’m not sure how I originally heard of Lisa O’Neill, but I played her LP, then lost touch a bit, and then saw her sing with the Pogues. Then I read that an old punk-rock school chum had picked this as his favourite record of last year (here…and I listened more carefully to this particular song.
imho, it’s a masterpiece
“The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right” by Lisa O’Neill on Apple Music
This is from Crucial Tracks. My profile is here.
But what about his favourite goal? âMaybe the one against Tottenham,â he says of the curling equaliser in the dying minutes of the Battle of the Bridge in 2016. That goal didnât just secure a 2-2 draw, it effectively ended Spursâ title hopes and handed the trophy to Claudio Ranieriâ
One of my favourites, too đ
Eden Hazard: âIâm more of a taxi driver than a football player now, but itâs OK
â˝ #ChelseaFC #cfc
About an hour ago I was listening to a podcast in which Brad Friedel said that goalkeepers don’t often get sent off,and I nodded along, at least in my head…and then I’ve just seen the Villa keeper see red #AstNew â˝
A bit about my old school and William Golding.
Golding was a bit before my time, but we ‘did’ Lord of the Flies with a teacher called Mr Gammon, who we all called ‘Piggy’
This is fun…I know some of the songs, and some of the books, but apart from the Jefferson Airplane and the Joy Division, I wouldn’t of linked any of them
From BrontĂŤ to Ballard, Orwell to Okri: the best songs inspired by literature â ranked!
Thoughts on 'Saipan'. The TLDR is football nerds should go and see it
-
I enjoyed it very much. It’s well worth seeking out.
-
the period detail is great
-
the archive footage is fun
-
I should say that, as a football nerd of a certain age, and because I’ve got Irish connections, then I’m very much in the target audience
-
the very brief clip of Keane’s tackle on Haaland’s dad is shocking
-
it does seem a bit unfair on McCarthy, in that he probably didn’t select Saipan as a location, and it also probably wasn’t his fault that they didn’t have any footballs
-
also…given they did get to the round of 16 without their best player, McCarthy can’t have been a bad manager.
-
I would’ve thought they should have brought the film out just before the World Cup
-
a bloke in the Guardian says that there wasn’t really any element of “you’re not even Irish” (although I do remember it being reported at the time), and the journalist didn’t say the article would be held back until after the tournament
-
Steve Coogan spoke to McCarthy about playing him BBC
-
the thing that must haunt Roy Keane is that Ireland got knocked out on penalties in the last 16. Had he been there they might have got through to the quarters, and just possibly he could’ve gone on to lift the trophy. If Greece and Denmark could both win the Euros, it’s not impossible
-
on the other hand, maybe they were a better squad without him
-
if you’ve got this far but don’t really know what I’m rabbiting on about there is a Wikipedia page about the Saipan incident
My Crucial Track for 10 February 2026 - “Woman In Love” by Barbra Streisand
What’s a guilty pleasure song?
“Woman In Love” by Barbra Streisand
This might fit the idea of a Guilty Pleasure in that it probably wouldn’t have been positively featured in the NME at the time it came out….and it’s also from an LP called Guilty
“Woman In Love” by Barbra Streisand on Apple Music
This is from Crucial Tracks. My profile is here.
The weather is still rubbish here in the Shire.
But it feels like it’s rubbish Spring weather, rather than rubbish Winter weather, so that’s good.
Podcast episodes I liked in January - Elvis and Cameron Crowe, Paul McCartney, Venice, the Golden Fleece, Carolina Maria de Jesus, Bruce Springsteen, Robert Harris, Nayib Bukele, Pinkerton's, Jimmy Wales. the Bloomsbury Group, Shakespeare and East 17
These are the podcast episodes that I particularly enjoyed in January.
Episodes I’ve enjoyed previously are on the podcast pages for 2025, for 2024, 2023, and for 2022
January
Revisionist History - Blue Seattle with Cameron Crowe | Development Hell - Leon Russell: “why do you keep making these shitty movies?”. Elvis Presley: “last thing I rememberâŚ.I was driving a truck”. Great podcast in which Cameron Crowe talks about and plays the demoâs from his unmade Elvis film
McCartney: A Life in Lyrics - Give Ireland Back to the Irish - Give Ireland back to the Irish was number one in Ireland and Spain. It was written after McCartney had hear John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s The Luck of the Irish. imho, the Oko/Lennon song is better
Short History of…..Venice - Venice was never conquered by so-called “barbarians”, so the Venetians “viewed themselves very much as a kind of a Rome unfallen”
The Rest is Entertainment - David Walliams, Podcasts on Netflix & National Treasures - “I must say to all those armchair media analysts who always thought they understood talent pay and that the BBC had spent years overpaying Gary Lineker. I wonder, do they think he’s getting paid less by Netflix than he was paid in a year by the BBC? the answer might shock you…… if you’re an idiot”
Little Atoms 969 - Natalie Haynes' No Friend To This House - the Golden Fleece was really a Golden Sheepskin. Bad news for the Golden Ram.
Witness History - Diary of life in a favela - Carolina Maria de Jesus wrote a best selling diary of her life in a favela in Sao Paulo, called ‘Beyond all pity’ in the UK. Her neighbours were angry about what she said about them, and threw stones at the family when they moved out. She was originally from Sacramento, Minas Gerais
Word in your ear - How Springsteen went âsix deepâ, fictional rock hacks and whoâs more conservative than Liam Gallagher - “you can’t have a snappy conversation with Bruce Springsteen, because, Lord, he was born a rambling man”
The Penguin Podcast: episode 6 â books to screen with Robert Harris - Harris says that having a film made of one of his books is a bit like becoming a grandparent - you get a lot of credit with none of the responsibility
The Hated and the Dead - Nayib Bukele in El Salvador - H.L. Mencken’s said that “The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe”. Ricardo Avelar explains how this idea is being pushed to extremes in El Salvador
Little Atoms 904 - Jon Savage’s The Secret Public - David Bowie was seen as a one-hit wonder until he hit with Starman, which came out a few months after he declared he was gay. Until then being gay would have been seen as death to a career in pop.
The Rest Is Politics: Leading: 169. Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia vs. Musk, AI, and the Battle for Truth - Jimmy says he tests LLM’s by asking about his wife, who has some profile on the internet, but not an exhaustive one. The LLM typically comes up with things that are very plausible but not true. Possibly the least plausible bit of information has been that she is married to Peter Mandelson
Short History of the Pinkerton Detective Agency - Alan Pinkerton was incolved with Chartism in the UK, then in the Underground Railroad in the US before working to suppress trade unions in later life
You’re dead to me - The Bloomsbury Group - according to Dorothy Parker, the Bloomsbury Group “lived in squares, painted in circles, and loved in triangles”
Betwixt the sheets - Real Wives of Dictators | Nadya Alliluyeva, Stalin’s Wife - i didn’t know that Nadya’s suicide followed a public row with her husband, during which she threw something at him
Short history of….the partition of India
Evil Genius with Russell Kane -Serge Gainsbourg - the fictitious Melody Nelson came from Sunderland. Gainsbourg liked the sound of the word ‘Sunderland’
Origin Story: Socialism: The Finale â Whatâs Left? - “George Orwell was the patron saint of socialists who find other socialists annoying”
The Louis Theroux Podcast: S6 EP8: Jimmy Carr discusses the secret to his comedy, being a late bloomer, and controversial stand-up gigs - Jimmy Carr justifies playing in the Riyadh comedy festival because he likes Saudi Arabia’s ‘direction of travel’
Short History of….. Shakespeare - Shakespeare’s father was a ‘family friend ' of Robert Catesby, the leader of the Gunpowder Plot
Talk â90s to me: Stay Another Day â The story of East 17’s accidental Christmas classic with Tony Mortimer - Tony Mortimer says that at least some of the lines in the song are about the death of his brother
Americana Music Live with Drew Holcomb and Malcolm Gladwell | Revisionist History - “people in Memphis have a hatred of Nashville baked into their childhoods”
McCartney: A Life in Lyrics - Band on the Run -McCartney on the first WINGS tour “we only had 11 songs…so we had to repeat some of them”
We saw the Henry Girls at Salisbury Rugby Club tonight. Wonderful music. They are on in Hammersmith tonight - wish I could go to that too
Leon Russell: why do you keep making these shitty movies
Elvis Presley: last thing I remember….I was driving a truck
Great podcast in which Cameron Crowe talks about and plays the demo’s from his unmade Elvis film
Revisionist History - Blue Seattle with Cameron Crowe | Development Hell
The podcast has inspired Retirement Project #8 - re-watch all of Elvis' films
