mattypenny

Audio that I have liked, or been moved to comment about, or both

2024

Six wives | 4. Anne of Cleves - History Extra podcast - Henry VIII’s disappointment with Anne of Cleves began when she failed to recognize him when he was in disguise, and they’d never met before.

George Orwell Part 1 – From Eton to Barcelona. Origin Story. Play. Origin Story Podcast. Back for season - a typically marvellous Origin Story episode, this one about one of the guy’s specialist subjects. I particularly liked it when he said something like thisbwhen explaing how Orwell’s views about various thinga had changed over time. “When people quote Orwell, I want to know which Orwell are they quoting. He’s like Taylor Swift, he has eras”

Paul McCartney: Inside the songs - All my loving - #TodayILearned that Elvis sent the Beatles a good luck telegtam before their first appearance on American TV.

Marcus Berkmann - Tina Turner gave me tinnitus - Word in your Ear includes the answer to the question ‘Who made their only ever advert in 1954, for Southern Made Doughnuts?"

Churchill part 1: Rebel Without A Cause - Origin Story | Podcast on Spotify - Good quote: “Churchill was a racist and an imperialist, and also the most important anti-fascist who ever lived”

Tara Hill and the Ark of the Covenant - The History Show - Podcast episode about a 19th Century outfit called the British Israelites who went digging on Tara Hill to find the Ark of the Covenant. More sensible than QAnon, but less sensible than Flat Earth imho

Did Elvis steal from Big Mama Thornton? - An Elvis story I hadn’t heard before: Songwriter Mike Stoller was in a mid-Atlantic ship collision in the 1950s. He abandoned ship into a ‘broken life boat’, and was eventually picked up by a cargo boat. Stoller’s writing partner, Jerry Lieber, met him when he landed back in the US, and said that they had a hit with Hound Dog. Stoller said ‘With Big Mama Thornton’? No, said Lieber, it’s some white kid. Stoller tells the story better than I do

Worst Decisions in Music History - I’m listening to Rolling Stone’s The 50 Worst Decisions in Music History. It’s good fun

From a goddess to a graduate - Interesting episode about Chanira Bajracharya, who went from being designated as a goddess until puberty to being a financial analyst

1949-01-30 - Episode 61 - Colonel Johnson Eats the Love Apple - TodayILearned that tomatoes were thought very poisonous in North America until a chap called Colonel Johnson publicly ate one in 1820

Your Place or Mine with Shaun Keaveny - Rob Delaney: Eastern Massachusetts, USA - BBC Sounds - Listening to Rob Delaney on Sean Keaveny and Izzi Lawrence’s Your Place or Mine.

Word In Your Attic Special 100th Edition: arise, Sir Midge Ure! (and God bless Viz) - Possibly the most British thing ever - Midge Ure doesn’t have his OBE to hand, but he does have a framed copy of a mickey-taking Viz page, entitled ‘Arise, Sir Midge’. Also, he has a (possibly fake) golden disc of Joe Dolce’s Shaddup Your Face - the song that kept Vienna off of number one

The Audio Long Read: The impossible job – inside the world of Premier League referees - This is well worth a listen if you’re at all interested in football. The main things I got were: refereeing is more art than science, often more subjective than objective, they need the VAR referees to be VAR specialists, the system by which they score referees is ‘interesting’, and I still don’t really know why referees do it

Life Without Plastic (It’s Not Fantastic) | Story of the Week - Podcast episode in which A.J. Jacobs tries, and largely fails,to live a day without plastic

Hugh Laurie - Full Disclosure with James O’Brien - This podcast episode includes my favourite tale of quintessential British upper middle classness. A young Hugh Laurie asks his father whether he can actually row before a boating expedition. It had not been mentioned before, nor was it mentioned at the time, that his father had won a gold medal in the coxless pair event at the 1948 Olympics

Is Karen Carpenter pop music’s saddest story? - Word In Your Ear | Acast - Drummers are like hockey goalies. No-one knows how to talk to them apart from other drummers

The Rise Of QAnon : Fresh Air : NPR - I listened to this yesterday. It’s fascinating, ridiculous and disturbing, often at the same time

The Secret History of Wonder Woman - I enjoyed The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore, although I maybe don’t have a full appreciation of the place of Wonder Woman in American culture.The inventor of Wonder Woman also invented lie detectors, he was a feminist, after a fashion, and he kept his home life shrouded in secrecy

Mehdi Hasan | Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking - Episode - Free Library - #TodayILearned the phrase ‘gish gallop’. It’s means to create a deluge of rubbish in argument, to overwhelm your opponent

Dick Whittington - #TodayILearned that Richard Whittington really was apprenticed to someone called Sir Ivo FitzWaryn and married his daughter Alice (For the benefit of people who aren’t the UK and/or aren’t pantomime nerds, Dick Whittington is one of the three or four main pantomime stories. It’s based on a 14th Century Mayor of London, but I didn’t realize the FitzWarrens also really existed)

Will Strictly decide the General Election? - The Rest Is Entertainment | Podcast on Spotify - #TodayILearned that the TV audience that is most disproportionately Labour voting is Taskmaster, followed by Rupaul’s Drag Race, and Big Brother. Somewhat frustratingly, Mr Osman doesn’t exactly tell us which shows are the most disproportionately Conservative, Liberal, Green or SNP, but the show which is directly in proportion to national voting intention is Question Time

Underground, overground … Mike Batt: “fun is often uncool” - Wombles chap, andpop genius talkd to Mark and Dave

When the Queen ‘jumped out of a helicopter’ This is lovely. Frank Cottrell-Boyce talking about how the Queen jumped out of a helicopter for the 2012 Opening Ceremony

EP74: The Kosovo Serbs - The Hated and the Dead - It’s clearly not the main point of my friend Tom’s podcast, but #TodayILearned that ‘Kosovo’ is derived from ‘Kosovo Polje’ which means ‘the field of blackbirds’, which I quite like

‘Neil Kinnock FULL DISCLOSURE WITH JAMES O’BRIEN’ tells of a minutes secretary, ‘the lowest form of life’, taking minutes at a constituency Labour Party meeting. They get to Any Other Business….and the sitting MP says he’s quitting. The minutes secretary, a young Neil Kinnock, breaks his pencil lead in surprise, but goes on to become the MP, and much later, the Leader of the Labour Party

I told the world Pope Benedict XVI was resigning - Giovanna Chirri is covering a Vatican committee meeting of some kind, in Latin. They get to the end of the meeting, and Pope Benedict has some AOB…

Robot Horses and Banning Wikipedia - The Rest Is Entertainment | Podcast on Spotify - #TodayILearned that the first known use of the word ‘celebrity’ was by Geoffrey Chaucer, translating someone I didn’t catch the name of

George Harrison and the T-Bone steak, rock fantasy football teams & spot the AI lyrics! - #TodayILearned that the first Beatle’s concert in the United States was at Boneyard Bocce Ball Club in Benton, Illinois.The first Beatles concert in the US was somewhere else

The Houdini Myth - Harry Houdini got into some difficulty trying to escape from a barrel of Tetley’s beer

Mitch Benn is the 37th beatle (FULL AUDIO , Radio 4) - As we know there were at least 37 Beatles

Peter Ames Carlin on how Warner Bros became “the first hip record label” - “A year ago the Beatles were known only to patrons of Liverpool pubs. Today there isn’t a Britisher who doesn’t know their names, and their fame has spread quickly around the world.” I’d like to start a revival of the word ‘Britisher’ via Word In Your Attic 89 - Peter Ames Carlin

BBC Radio 5 Live - Midnight Meets With Colin Murray, Sara Pascoe - As an ex-resident, I love this, from Sara Pascoe: “I live in Lewisham, which is brilliant. If you haven’t been there just go south-east from here [Hammersmith] until you start getting scared”. Tbf, some of the intervening places have probably come up in the world since I lived there

BBC News - Political Thinking with Nick Robinson, Series 1, The Tony Danker One - One of the odd things about being a year behind in my podcasts is listening to people and knowing what happened in their lives over the next 12 months. This one is a case in point - Nick Robinson talks to the director general of the Confederation of British Industry, Tony Danker

Killing Joke in Trafalgar Square - YouTube - I found this recording of a thing I was at just 43 years ago - Killing Joke playing in Trafalgar Square. Very atmospheric . The band were very off-message

From the archive - The selling of the Krays: how two mediocre criminals created their own legend - podcast | News | The Guardian - #TodayILearned that Charlie, Ronnie and Reggie Kray got £255,000 from the 1990 film that starred the Kemp brothers

BBC World Service - Witness History, Miracle on the Hudson - #TodayILearned that the passengers in the ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ got $5,000 compensation for lost luggage, a refund for the price of their ticket, and a letter of apology

Danny Baker: tracing the Beatles through their Christmas records - Word In Your Attic - #TodayILearned that the 1967 Beatles Christmas record was produced by Kenny Everett

BBC World Service - The Forum, Why do we have a seven-day week? - #TodayILearned that in 1929, the USSR replaced the 7 day week with a 5 day week, with a fifth of the workforce resting on any given day. This was a good episode to listen to in Leap Week :)

BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs, Garry Kasparov - People who followed me on Twitter may remember this quote, which I tweeted both before and after people in my home town were poisoned “When people ask me how to understand the Putin regime, I tell them to read Mario Puzo’s ‘The Godfather’”

EP67: Juan Peron-The Hated and the Dead - Listened to this discussion of Juan Peron. Interesting stuff

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Irish Rebellion of 1798 - Listened to this. Made me realise how little I know about Irish history, although, to be fair, I dont know much about England in the eighteenth century either

BBC Radio 4 - Great Lives, Noddy Holder on Chuck Berry - I love this. Noddy Holder reckons he had more number one singles than the rest of the chaps in Slade, because he was singing along at the side of the Coventry Locarno stage when Chuck Berry recorded My Ding a Ling

[Sleeve design legend Kosh: the man who made the Abbey Road sky bluer

• Word In Your Attic](https://youtu.be/_RJFYi2ZUGc?si=-klKNybpbCCiKq5X) - I look at it and think what an awful job I did retouching the horizon. It looks like I did it with a toothbrush - LP sleeve designer Kosh on the cover of Who’s Next

Conspiracy: did aliens build the pyramids? - History Extra podcast - The short answer is no, they didnt, but i did learn that they were built by people doing something like National Service rather than by people who were enslaved

Joe Wisbey and his 400 Beatles books. But which are the winners? - #TodayILearned that here are whole books about the Beatles in Bath, the Paul is Dead nonsense, and how John Lennon sold his soul. I might describe this as geek-y but I’m watching a video of a podcast on books about the Beatles so who am I to judge?

EP66: Nikita Khrushchev - The Hated and the Dead - M’young friend Tom refers to Putin’s eventual successor as “he or she”. The idea that it might actually be a ‘she’ made took me back a bit, if I’m honest. Well worth listening to, in any case

Billy Bragg: it’s the lamp from the Spy Vs Spy sleeve! - Word In Your Attic - #TodayILearned that the first two lines of Billy Bragg’s A New England are taken from Simon and Garfunkel’s Leaves that are Green “I was twenty-one years when I wrote this song. I’m twenty-two now but I won’t be for long”

The dangers of 2024 and how to manage them - with Britain’s oldest foreign secretary - The News Agents | Podcast on Spotify - In which David Owen refers to the Department of Health and Social Security as ‘the Department of Stealth and Total Obscurity’ :) I’m easily pleased

BBC Radio 4 - Gossip and Goddesses with Granny Kumar - Available now - #TodayILearned that the ‘Naga’ in Naga Munchetty means ‘snake’ - she says her mum dreamt of snake when she was pregnant. It was in one of these

2023

EP63: George Orwell - The Hated and the Dead | Podcast on Spotify - #TodayILearned that Aldous Huxley was one of George Orwell’s teachers at Eton

Documentary On One - The Nightsingers of Brighton - An annual-ish tweet / toot about this marvellous documentary about a folk-ie Christmas custom of Newfoundland. Best listened to in bed, in the dark. ‘For generations villagers have walked from house to house, entered darkened kitchens after midnight, and have sung the carol as occupants listened in the darkness.’

Persecution of Irish Speakers | The History Show - RTE Radio 1 - #TodayILearned that Irish shopkeepers were prosecuted under the Trades Description Act for having Irish-language signage, on the grounds that it wasn’t legible

Give The Beatles Back to the Irish - Episode 1: Here, Eire and Everywhere - BBC Sounds - #TodayILearned that Dave Allen (the comic, not the GTD bloke) tried to book the Beatles to play in Drogheda

Wickedest Sound - 99% Invisible - About 1950s and 60s Jamaican dance parties. This is great. I wish it was a series

Hit Parade: Give Up the Funk - Slate Culture - Apple Podcasts - #TodayILearned that Maurice White had no ‘water signs’ in his horoscope.The signs were all earth, wind or fire….hence the name of his band

Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon (Special Edition) | Audiobook on Spotify - #TodayILearned that ‘The Boxer’ was, like Homeward Bound, written in England because it mentions ‘railway station’ rather than ‘railroad station’. It’s always seemed a very American song to me (The audiobook is free with Spotify Premium, if you’ve got it)

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Hancock’s Half Hour, Series 4, The 13th of the Series - I enjoyed this one, in which ‘the Lad gets triskaidekaphobic’ and goes to Stonehenge

The Jam on the Embankment - Found this video featuring The Jam playing at the start of a CND rally on the Embankment. 42 years and one week ago. We’d seen the gear on the truck with ‘The Jam’ written on it, but they were such a big band at the time we thought they must have lent it to someone else. Imho, Paul Weller splitting up the Jam was a historical mistake in the same league as Napoleon marching on Moscow, or Liz Truss being Prime Minister, or Tottenham Hotspur

Word In Your Attic 62 (audio version) - Jo Kendall: ‘Go hard or go home!' - Particularly enjoyed this one. Jo mentions A Million Rubber Bands - one of the two clubs we went to near us (the other was Club Montepulciano, which was slightly different) - and ‘getting Pulp for £125’. That was the fee for Pulp to play at the club, I think. You could probably pay £125 for one ticket to see Pulp today

EP54: Hassan al-Turabi - The Hated and the Dead - Another episode of m’young friend Tom’s podcast. As usual, it’s nice to learn a bit….but also to realise how deeply ignorant I am about large parts of the world

Why Bond and the Beatles ruled - History Extra podcast - Probably old news to you good people, but #TodayILearned that the first James Bond film and the first Beatles single came out on the same day

Slate’s Hit Parade: At Last, My Legacy Has Come Along Edition - playlist by slate magazine | Spotify - Links to the Molanphy’s show and the Spotify playlist

Bruce Lindsay: a pre-vinyl special! Jazz, swing, comedy - and the Beatles - at 78rpm Word In Your Attic - #TodayILearned that the first recording of a human voice was by Edouard-Lon Scott de Martinville. His phonautograph scratched blacking off paper, wood, or glass. He hoped people would learn to ‘read’ the engraving…but it was never played until some scientists at Berkeley created some software to do so

BBC Two - Laura Kuenssberg: State of Chaos - Watching Laura Kuenssberg’s excellent doc on politics since 2016, State of Chaos. It feels like everyone went a bit mad

BBC Radio 4 - Great Lives, Bonnie Greer on the Women of the Morant Bay Rebellion - #TodayILearned about the the women of the Morant Bay Rebellion

What’s Funny About … - Series 2 - 4. Pamela Stephenson and John Lloyd on Not The Nine O’Clock News - BBC Sounds - Douglas Adams: Not the Nine o’Clock News is to Monty Python as the Monkees were to the Beatles. Tbh, I’d have probably said the Goodies rather than Not the Nine O’Clock News

Press Interview (Elvis Sails) - Brooklyn, New York, 22 January 1958 - Rarest Interviews - song by Elvis Presley | Spotify - ‘Interviewer: What’s your idea of your ideal girl? Elvis: Uhhh….female, sir’. Listening to some of his interviews it strikes me that given his sense of humour Elvis would have fitted in quite well in the Beatles, at least in press conferences

Escape from Colditz - History Extra podcast - #TodayILearned that, after Douglas Bader lost one of his prosthetic legs bailing out of his spitfire, the RAF parachuted replacements into Colditz. The exercise was named ‘Operation Leg’

Indianola, Mississippi 1986 boycott: What happened when Black residents boycotted white-owned businesses. - I found this story of people in Mississippi fighting for their civil rights a bit shocking for a couple of reasons- it’s so recent….1986. I’d never heard of it before.

EP49: Jacinda Ardern - The Hated and the Dead | Podcast on Spotify - Particularly interesting episode of the Hated and the Dead, on Jacinda Ardern, and why she lost popularity in NZ, if not outside it

BBC Radio 4 - Mark Steel’s in Town, Series 9, Hastings - I was pleased to discover that there’s a builder in Hastings trading under the name of ‘William the Concreter’

Ian Rankin’s tour rider? One uncooked haggis - Word In Your Attic - I think I’ve heard this before but I like it Ian Rankin says ‘I was in the second-best punk band in Fife’. As any aging punk-rock-nerd will tell you, the first best in Fife was the much more successful Skids

Archive on 4 - The Holy Blood - BBC Sounds - #TodayILearned that one of the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail had previously co-authored Doctor Who

James Hyman: MTV promotional bog roll, anyone? Word In Your Attic - #TodayILearned that sometime in the 1970s ‘a toy whistle packaged in boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal emitted a tone at precisely 2600 hertz - the same frequency that AT&T long lines used to indicate that a trunk line was available for routing a new call’….allowing people to make free phone calls

Measurement: an unexpected history - History Extra podcast - #TodayILearned that Anders Celsius nominated the boiling point of water as zero degrees and the freezing point as 100. It was reversed later on

151. Question Time: Feargal Sharkey on water pollution, drug legalisation, and fishing - The Rest Is Politics | Podcast on Spotify - It’s great to hear Feargal Sharkey popping up all over the media….but if I’m honest I’d rather have an Undertones reunion than poo-free rivers

Show 281 - Lindsay Hoyle LIVE - The Political Party | Acast - #TodayILearned or possibly had forgotten and re-learned that speaker Lindsey Hoyle is Doug Hoyle’s sonDoug Hoyle was an MP and is now in the House of Lords as Baron Hoyle, of WarringtonI hadn’t thought of Hoyle as a nepo baby!

Seven Days That Rocked The World : BBC Radio 2 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive - Very much enjoy these BBC radio docs

Suzi Ruffell At Bletchley Park Meet Me At The Museum podcast - #TodayILearned that at it’s peak there were 9,000 people working at Bletchley ParkSuzi Ruffell At Bletchley Park Meet Me At The Museum podcast

Island Records founder Chris Blackwell looks back on his life in music : NPR - #TodayILearned that Chris Blackwell’s mum was the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s Pussy Galore

Natalie Haynes on the fantastic and fearsome women of greek myth - CBC Radio - #TodayILearned that ‘calling a spade a spade’ is a mistranslation of something like ‘calling a canoe a canoe’. And, in Aesop, it isn’t Pandora that opens the jar/box, it’s Epimetheus

Turning Point - Wasps in a Jam Jar - BBC Sounds - This is very good - it’s a radio play about the relationship between Maggie Thatcher, Geoffrey Howe and Howe’s wife, Elspeth. Highly recommended if you like House of Cards, Yes Minister etc

Ramones, ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ - Rolling Stone Australia - #TodayILearned that Joey Ramone sings Blitzkrieg Bop ‘in a faux British accent’. I can’t hear it, tbh

Looking after 20,000 records in a cowshed with Danny Kelly - Word In Your Attic - Just heard Danny Kelly refer to Jamaican music as a ‘phosphorescent volcano of creativity’. Slightly understating the case, I feel

BBC Radio 5 Live - Midnight Meets With Colin Murray, Gloria Gaynor - In this podcast episode Gloria Gaynor describes her first school performance, in which she was initially crippled by stage fright and nerves.She says that ‘at first I was afraid, I was petrified’

BBC World Service - Witness History, Banksy’s first street art mural - I’m disappointed to learn that Banksy doesn’t have a west country accent

Benjamin Franklin with Ken Burns - Dan Snow’s History Hit | Acast - A podcast episode that’s all about the Benjamin. Ken Burns says the two most important sentences in the English Language are “I love you”, and “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”

Sir Alex Ferguson: Made in Govan - Seriously… - Very interesting interview of Alex Ferguson about his early days. I think he says that he always asked young players what their fathers and grandfathers did for a living, because he preferred them to be working class. So….Alex Ferguson would have picked me before either Gian Luca Vialli, or, arguably Frank Lampard. It’s a great comfort

Hit Parade: Killing Me Softly Edition - Chris Molanphy - #TodayILearned that Killing Me Softly was about Don McLean, the American Pie chap

Fintan O’Toole | We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland’ on YouTube - Listened to this as a podcast…interesting stuffAnd ‘We don’t know ourselves’ is a genius title

BBC Radio 4 - Ed Reardon’s Week - I had to do the making-a-complaint thing this week, and, although it kind of worked, I felt the ghost of Ed Reardon hovering at my elbow and I’m not sure it was worth it

EP24: Jacob Zuma - The Hated and the Dead | Podcast on Spotify - #TodayILearned that the first negotiations between the ANC and the apartheid Nationalist government took place at Mells Park House, near Frome in Somerset

The secret lab hidden inside a famous monument - BBC Future - #TodayILearned that London’s Monument, as well as being a commemoration of the Great Fire (with some anti-Catholic crap added on later) was also a giant telescope, partly intended to prove the Earth goes around the Sun

James O’Brien Admits His Shame Over Sexism In Interview With Caroline Criado-Perez - LBC - I listened to this yesterday - it only scratches the surface of Caroline Criado-Perez’s book…..but if you’re a data person it’s worth a listen. I found the biographical bits at the start interesting, but the stuff about the book is later on

Boris Johnson Swears He’s Telling the Truth - The News Agents | Podcast on Spotify - Tbh, I thought a daily news podcast was a daft idea, and I thought Maitlis and Sopel were daft to leave the Beeb to do it….but I now barely miss an episode

[The Political Party Podcast Series - Neil Kinnock ](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/show-266-neil-kinnock-live/id595312938?i=1000553551151"" target=) - “It’s interesting that you say that it’s racist and class-bound because the term ‘Welsh windbag’ wasn’t invented by the Times, or the Sun….it was invented by the Socialist Workers Party’

John Simpson - Full Disclosure with James O’Brien - #TodayILearned that John Simpson is Chelsea

Barbara Charone, ‘70s-music-writer-turned-pop-PR. Motto: “you’ve got to be tenacious!” - Dave Hepworth and Mark Ellen interviewing Barbara Charone, very cool (Bobby Gillespie suggested she write her book….which is definitely rather cool) music critic, PR person, and board member at Chelsea

Fascism in Britain - History Extra podcast | Podcast on Spotify - #TodayILearned that the British Union of Fascists' black shirts were based on fencing tunics. Seems slightly ridiculous.

EP20: Sheikh Hasina - The Hated and the Dead | Podcast on Spotify - #TodayILearned a little bit about the politics of Bangladesh

You Are There - 83 episodes of the Old Time Radio show : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive - I’m enjoying listening to occasional episodes of ‘You Are There’, a radio show from the 1940s, which takes ‘an entire network newsroom on a figurative time warp each week reporting the great events of the past.’

EP19: (The Rather Less Horrible Arnold Schwarzenegger - The Hated and the Dead - My young chum Tom has an excellent political / historical podcast about contraversial political leaders. Despite, he says, never having seen him act, in this one he discusses Arnie

Chapter 163 : Michael Crick - Iain Dale’s Book Club - Interesting interview with Michael Crick about his book on Nigel Farage. Interesting point that some politicians are good at speeches but useless at talking one to one with ordinary people (Hesletine, Johnson), but Farage is good at both. And also good on telly, and at producing clips for social media. And at radio phone-ins. It’s a shame he has such daft ideas

BBC Radio 4 - Mark Steel’s in Town, Series 4, Whitehaven - #TodayILearned that people in Whitehaven call people in Workington ‘jam eaters’….and people in Workington call people in Whitehaven ‘jam eaters’.

EP18: Saunders Lewis - The Hated and the Dead | Podcast on Spotify - Interesting discussion about Saunders Lewis, who founded Plaid Cymru.He was, unlike today’s Plaid, more right than left-leaning

Sturgeon resigns - The News Agents | Podcast on Spotify - I’m quite surprised to hear Diane Abbott say that Jeremy Corbyn is, at heart, a Brexitter. I wouldn’t be very much surprised to learn that he was….but I’m surprised she said so

Feargal Sharkey Full Disclosure With James O’Brien podcast - #TodayILearned that some of the Undertones wore black armbands on Top of the Pops for the hunger strikers.

Bob Stanley, a Jet Harris hand-print and the curious tale of Mr Pilditch - #TodayILearned that ‘Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night’, the article by Nik Cohn on which Saturday Night Fever was based, is mainly made up…. but largely inspired by ‘mods on the Goldhawk Road’ rather than discos in New York

Brexit home truths at Davos - The News Agents | Podcast on Spotify - In which William Hague says being a party leader is like running a business and having a shareholders' meeting every day… in which half of them want to get rid of you, and if you sack any of the directors they don’t leave the building for another five years, if then

How the Beatles were in tune with 60s Britain - History Extra podcast | Podcast on Spotify - There is a nice moment in this very interesting podcast episode. Dominic Sandbrook explains what happened when Paul McCartney went to the fateful fete where the Quarrymen were playing…and the interviewer, whose name I didn’t catch, says that her dad was one of the Quarrymen

BBC Sounds - Clubland by Peter Brown - Available Episodes - #TodayILearned that Marti Caine beat both Lenny Henry and Victoria Wood to win New Faces in 1970-something

1: Michael Heseltine: From Thatcher to Sunak - Leading | Podcast on Spotify - #TodayILearned that MPs who have served in the Armed Forces can be referred to as ‘the Honourable and Gallant Member’.The practice has declined ver the years. When it was widespread it only applied to commissioned officers.

BBC Radio 4 - Political Thinking with Nick Robinson, The Wes Streeting One - I knew that Wes Streeting’s grandad had gone to prison for robbing a bank, but #TodayILearned that his granny shared a prison cell with Christine Keeler, of the Profumo Affair

The Big Man Can’t Shoot - Revisionist History - Malcolm Gladwell would have enjoyed London Lions Vs Halpoel Tel Aviv last night - one of their players was granny-throwing their free throws as per this podcast below. I’ve tried to convince Kid Two he should do the same…..but funnily enough he’s not taking any notice

Prince Harry: Royality Check - Newscast | Podcast on Spotify - Listening to Peter Mandelson on Newscast. He calls Rishi Sunak ‘the tail-end Charlie of current British politics’.I think that’s a cricketing metaphor….but, in any case, it’s a cracking line

Craig Brown - our greatest living satirist – has a theory about Keith Richards - #TodayILearned that Lieutenant Pigeon, who had a hit with ‘Mouldy Old Dough’ were so-called because the name is an anagram of ‘Genuine Potential’

The Nights on Broadway Edition - Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia | Podcast on Spotify - Really enjoyed this podcast episode about the Bee Gees. After the initial 50’s rock and rollers, and Motown my pop Holy Trinity would be The Beatles, Abba, and the beegees. I think.

Natural Histories - Chameleon - BBC Sounds - #TodayILearned that in the past people believed that chameleons live on fresh air. Shakespeare has Hamlet say “of the chameleon’s dish: I eat the air”

2022

Best of Today - Bjorn Ulvaeus Guest Edits Today - BBC Sounds - Bjorn from ABBA seems like a good egg

BBC World Service - Witness History, Pong and the birth of computer games - #TodayILearned that Pong was first installed in a bar called Andy Capp’s. I don’t think it had anything to do with this cartoon character though

Episode 119: The Pogues - Every Album Ever w/ Mike Mansour & Alex Volz | Podcast on Spotify - The Pogues are probably my favourite ever band, and I’ve been listening to this podcast episode where two guys who don’t much like them listen to all the records. Anyway, they describe the more folkie stuff as ‘hobbit-assed music’…and I’m definitely going to use that phrase as often as possible

132. A Christmas Carol - The Rest Is History | Podcast on Spotify - Another podcast episode about A Christmas Carol…..it’s very good on possible locations. I still can’t see the parallels with the Bible story though…not in any significant way

A John Waters Christmas / Susannah McCorkle : Fresh Air : NPR - This was fun - John Waters talking about some of the marvellous music on his Christmas CD (Fat Daddy, Little Cindy, Akim, the Chipmunks and a galaxy of other stars)

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, A Christmas Carol - This is well worth a listen for fellow Dickens nerds. I don’t really agree with their emphasis on a specifically Christian basis to the story. Whatever CD’s private beliefs, I feel the nods to the Christian origin of the festival are the barest minimum that he could have made at the time. Not exactly the lippiest of lip service, but not central to the most inclusive of tales. But I barely scraped English Lit O-Level, so…

Chestnut Roasters, Part 2 - Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia | Podcast on Spotify - #TodayILearned that both Careless Whisper and Wake Me Up Before You Go Go get more annual radio play in the US than Last Christmas

Hit Parade - Chestnut Roasters Edition - I enjoyed the warning on the Chestnut Roasters Edition of Hit Parade. ‘This podcast contains seasonal Wham content. Whamageddon players discretion is advised’

Pat Nevin has musical memories “even better than scoring a diving header against Arsenal” - Enjoyed this - Pat Nevin talking to Mark Ellen and David Hepworth from The Word and Old Grey Whistle Test etc. Pat’s got a copy of the NME interview he did back in the ’80s. For me seeing a Chelsea player in the NME was a little bit like seeing Bowie on Top of the Pops was for many others

BBC World Service - Witness History, Plane spotters - I like this story. I can see both points of view, in that I get the attraction of spotting trains and birds and aeroplanes, and I also get why other people would see such a thing as ridiculous and implausible

Mel Brooks looks back without regret in book ‘All About Me!’ : NPR - Nice anecdotage from Mel Brooks. He’s at the White House receiving a medal. He’d previously rejected it under George W because of Iraq. Brooks: “Hey, can I have two. I turned it down before”. Obama: “Sorry, just one per customer”

Hit Parade takes on 80s pop acts Cyndi Lauper, The Bangles, and Aimee Mann. - #TodayILearned that the Bangles Eternal Flame was inspired by the flame burning at Elvis' grave at Graceland

Show 254 - Anthony Scaramucci - The Political Party - Listening to Matt Forde talking to Anthony Scaramucci…and Scaramucci says his family was both blue collar and middle class. I don’t think that would be possible in the UK

2007

How to win a duel | The National Archives - listened to an interesting National Archives podcast on duelling

In Conversation with The Rt Hon Sir John Major KG CH - London School of Economics and Political Science - listened to a podcast of “In Conversation with The Rt Hon Sir John Major”. Interesting