William Telford World Cup 2010

Brazil to win it

2010-06-10T09:32:00.001-07:00

It starts today, my bad feeling is getting worse. Still, here is how I expect the rest of the tournament to pan out.

In the quarter finals Brazil will beat Slovakia.

France will beat Ghana, because you just know they are going to make the last four after the Thierry Henry handball incident. Also, Africa really wants a semi-finalist, but, in line with the dismal nature of this tournament, I predict they will fail in horrendous circumstances. Another Henry hand of Gaul anyone?

Germany and Argentina have a great World Cup history. In 1958 West Germany beat Argentina 3-1 in a group game. They drew 0-0 in 1966. East Germany held Argentina to 1-1 in 1974. Then there were two finals: Argentina won 3-2 in 1986, four years later West Germany got revenge in that horrible end to a horrible tournament, 1-0. Germany, as they now are, knocked Argentina out in the quarter final four years ago, on penalties after a 1-1 draw. There was a big fight at the end. To conclude from this, Argentina have only one once against a German team. But, this being away from Europe, its got to be their time. Argentina into the last four.

Italy and Spain have also played each other in crucial finals games before. It began with Italy’s 1-0 win in a quarter final replay, after a 1-1, at home in 1934. Italy also won, by 2-1, in a bad tempered quarter final in 1994. They have met in the European Championships too. It was 0-0 in 1980, Italy won 1-0 eight years later, but Spain won on pens after a nil-all draw two years ago. I’m going for Italy to cause an upset here, because two of Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Italy or France has been in every final since the 1970s.

It leaves the semis like this:

Brazil v France

Argentina v Italy

That will result in Brazil beating France. France knocked out the Brazilians the last three times they have met - in 1986, in the 1998 final, and in 2006. Brazil will end that sequence.

Italy will beat Argentina because out of nine non-European World Cups seven have been between a South American team and a European one.

It means Brazil will play Italy in a non-European final just as they did in 1970 and 1994, and Brazil will complete a hat-trick, to remain the only team that wins the tournament wherever it’s played outside Europe.

But then again, don’t rule out a Argentina v France final, or even Spain v Brazil, or Brazil v Germany, or… you get the picture. That’s the great thing about football, sometimes, only sometimes mind, there is an upset. It could even be England.

Round of 16 predictions

2010-06-08T09:36:00.001-07:00

I’ve got a bad feeling about this. The World Cup, that is. I’m fearing a dismal tournament, worse than Italia 90 or Asia in 2002. I’m worried it will be cold, disorganised, poorly attended and with a low standard of football. All the Europeans are in poor form, apart from maybe Spain, the Africans, as usual, are disorganised, the rest useless, which leaves the South Americans, who will all play great football, particularly Argentina, but can’t defend, with the exception of Brazil. And I’ve got Serbia in the sweepstake.

Here are my predictions for the second round:

Easy one first. Germany will beat Slovenia.

Because Slovakia have never qualified before they have never met the Netherlands. But Czechoslovakia have, and won 3-0 in 1938. More recently the two have faced off in the European Championships. Czechoslovakia won 3-1 in the semi-final in 1976, and it was 1-1 in 1980. The Netherlands played Czech Republic in 2000 and 2000, winning the first 1-0 but losing the other 3-2. One team from central/eastern Europe always gets to the quarters. So it’s Slovakia in an upset.

The other all Euro tie is Italy v Denmark. They haven’t met in the WC but have in the European Championship. In 1988, Italy won 2-0, and in 2004 they drew 0-0, a moral victory for the Danes who conveniently drew with Sweden later on to knock Italy out. So Italy will get revenge this time.

The two all South American clashes are potential classics. In the 1962 semi final Brazil beat hosts Chile 4-2. Thirty eight years later Brazil won again, 4-1. In the qualifiers for this tournament Brazil won 3-0 and 4-2. Brazil will win again in the finals.

Uruguay and Argentina don’t like each other. The Uruguayans won the inaugural WC beating Argentina at home, in the final, 4-2, in 1930. Argentina got revenge in 1986 winning 1-0 on their way to their second tournament triumph. Argentina won both games in the qualifiers for this one, 2-1 and 1-0, and should be victorious again.

The three Europe v Africa ties are harder to predict. And one will see an African side getting through.

France have a patchy record against African teams in the finals. A 3-0 win against South Africa in 1998, when they were hosts, was followed by the famous 1-0 defeat to Senegal in 2002. They beat Togo 2-0 in 1996. It’s not great. Nigeria’s record against European teams is patchy. Wins against Bulgaria, Greece, and Spain, defeats against Italy, Denmark and Sweden, a draw with England. France will just shade it.

Cote d’Ivoire lost to Netherlands, and Argentina, last time, beating Serbia 3-2. Not brilliant. Spain beat Algeria 3-0 in 1986, lost to Nigeria in France, beat South Africa 3-2 in 2002, and Tunisia 3-1 four years ago. Again, not inspiring. But it’s Spain, and they should win.

Which means England are the team to blow it. Ghana beat Czech Republic 2-0 in Germany, and only lost to Brazil and eventual winners Italy in that WC. England drew 0-0 with Morocco in 1986, scraped past Cameroon 3-2 in 1990, beat a clueless Tunisian side in 1998, bored everyone with a 0-0 against Nigeria in 2002. It’s going to go wrong this time, probably on penalties.

Leaves the quarter finals looking like this:

Slovakia v Brazil

France v Ghana

Germany v Argentina

Italy v Spain

Group F, G and H predictions

2010-06-07T09:18:00.001-07:00

Italy’s World Cup record – hilarious, eh? Either brilliant (four WC triumphs) or disastrous (North Korea, South Korea, Republic of Ireland, various penalty shootout debacles). But the Azzurri will qualify from Group F.

The Italians’ first game is their hardest. They have played Paraguay before,, in a 1950 group game, winning 2-0. They will win again this time because Paraguay have yet to beat a major European team in the WC.

New Zealand’s only WC appearance was in 1982 when they lost all three games, and even managed to lose against perennial minnow fodder Scotland. Slovakia are in their first WC but will win this one.

Slovakia and Paraguay will draw.

Italy will massacre New Zealand, probably 1-0.

Paraguay will also beat New Zealand.

Which means Italy and Slovakia will draw.

Then the group looks like this:

1 Italy 7pts

2 Slovakia 5pts

3 Paraguay 4pts

5 New Zealand 0pts

Group G starts off with the easiest prediction of the World Cup. Brazil will beat the Democratic Republic of Korea. Right, that’s out the way, now things get trickier.

Cote d’Ivoire beat a moribund Serbia in the last World Cup. This time they meet Portugal. The Portuguese have not got a great WC record, despite reaching the semis twice. Both times were in Europe. Their only two other WC finals were in Mexico 1986 when they lost to Morocco, and Japan/S Korea where then managed to lose to the Koreans and the USA. So this will be a draw.

Brazil has never played Cote d’Ivoire before, but the Ivorians lost to Argentina four years ago and will lose this one too.

Portugal will beat DPR Korea, but probably not by the 5-3 score when they met in 1966.

Portugal also famously beat Brazil in 1966, by 3-1. This time Brazil will win the biggest grudge match of the first round.

Cote d’Ivoire will beat DPR Korea by a huge score to edge out the Portuguese.

Group ends like this:

1 Brazil 9pts

2 Cote d’Ivoire 4pts

3 Portugal 4pts

4 DPR Korea 0pts

Group H will see Honduras in their second WC. But Chile will be too skilful for them and win.

Spain beat Switzerland 2-1 in 1966 and 3-0 in 1994 and will make it a hat-trick this time.

Chile beat Switzerland 3-1 in 1962 when they were hosts. This one will be a draw.

Spain were uproariously held to a 1-1 draw by Honduras at home in 1982. No repeat this time, Spain will win.

Spain beat Chile 2-0 in 1950, but already through will allow the Chileans to claim a draw.

Switzerland will beat Honduras.

The group will end:

1 Spain 7pts

2 Chile 5 pts

3 Switzerland 4pts

4 Honduras 0pts.

The second round then looks like this:

France v Nigeria

England v Ghana

Germany v Slovenia

Argentina v Uruguay

Netherlands v Slovakia

Brazil v Chile

Italy v Denmark

Spain v Cote d’Ivoire

Group E predictions

2010-05-25T09:48:00.001-07:00

Group E is another interesting one with Netherlands, Denmark and Cameroon all having a realistic chance of making the knock-out, and Japan having a realistic chance of getting no points.

Netherlands and Denmark have never played each other in the World Cup before. But they have met twice in the European Championships. In 1992, Denmark won on penalties, after a 2-2 draw, in the semi-final and went on to win a tournament Netherlands were probably the best team in. In 2000 Netherlands hammered Denmark 3-0, but they were the host nation. I’m predicting another opening match draw.

Japan have played in the last three WCs with a mind-boggling lack of success for a country that actually likes football. In 1998 and 2006 they played a total of six games losing five and drawing one. Even when they were hosts in 2002 they got knocked out in the second round and only beat Tunisia and scraped past Russia. Cameroon will slaughter them.

Japan won’t have any more luck against Netherlands, who will also destroy them.

Denmark have only qualified for the WC three times before, but each time they have made it through the group. Their record is P13, W7, D2, L4. They beat Nigeria in the second round, 4-1, in 1998, and drew 1-1 group games with South Africa in 1998, and Senegal in 2002. Despite five qualifications, Cameroon have only gone past the group stage once, that memorable run to the quarters in 1990. They have only won four of 17 WC games and just one of the last nine, spread across three WCs. Only one of those wins was against a European team, Romania in 1990. This one will be a draw.

Denmark will beat Japan.

That leaves Netherlands to play Cameroon. Of Cameroon’s six WC defeats they have lost to USSR, England, Russia, Italy, and Germany. It doesn’t look good for them. Post WWII Netherlands have only lost two group matches out of 18 and have never gone out at this stage. In 1990 they drew 1-1 with Egypt, in 2004 beat Morocco, and last time beat Cote d’Ivoire. So Netherlands will win this one.

That leaves the group like this:

1 Netherlands 7pts

2 Denmark 5pts

3 Cameroon 4pts

4 Japan 0pts

Group D predictions

2010-05-24T10:19:00.001-07:00

Now, that’s what I call a World Cup group. Group D has four teams in it, any of which could make it to the second round – and a potential date with England.

Germany kick off against Australia. They played each other in 1974 – twice. Actually, Australia played both West and East Germany. Lost both, 3-0 and 2-0. Australia have improved of late, but are a horrible bunch of cloggers. They’ll give someone a hard time. But it won’t be Germany, who will win.

Serbia has never been in the WC before, but was a major part of Yugoslavia and competed last time with Montenegro stapled to it. They narrowly lost in 2006 to Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), despite being one of the worst teams in the tournament. Ghana, who they play this time, beat the Czechs four years ago. I’m going for a draw.

Germany has never played Serbia before, but met Yugoslavia six times in the WC and once in the European Championships. (West) Germany won five of those, losing one (1962) and drawing one (1998). Germany should win again, but watch out for the Serbs who are skilful. Germany to edge it.

Australia have only won one WC finals game out of seven. That was against Japan and they were losing until a late rally. In 2006 Ghana beat USA and the Czechs and only lost to Italy and Brazil. Being an African team, Ghana will win.

Serbia will be too skilful for Australia and will win that one.

Ghana will shock the Germans by taking a point off them.

That means the group ends up looking like this:

1 Germany 7pts

2 Ghana 5pts

3 Serbia 4pts

4 Australia 0pts

Group C prediction

2010-05-21T09:41:00.001-07:00

England have never had a groups as easy as the one they have landed in South Africa. So Group C should be a doddle, eh? All they’ve got to do is turn up and they’re through? Well, think about this:

England have played USA once. They lost. The 1950 one-niller was probably the greatest upset in the history of the WC, Italy’s various disasters excepted. But lightning doesn’t strike twice. Or does it? England were probably further up the world pecking order 60 years ago and USA were certainly lower. England have only once won all their group games: 1982. Even then they struggled to beat Kuwait. The USA’s super fit college boys can’t really play football, but they are super fit college boys and will be hard to beat. This is the one they would most like to be hard to beat in. And they got to the final, albeit luckily, of last year’s Confederations Cup warm up. So I’m predicting England and USA to draw.

Algeria v Slovenia is anyone’s guess. They have never played each other in the finals, and Slovenia have never won a match in the finals of a tournament. They drew two out of three at Euro 2000 and lost all three at WC 2002. They will win one eventually, but I don’t think it will be this one, so I’m going to opt for another draw.

USA v Slovenia. Lets look at the USA’s WC record. They somehow beat Belgium and Paraguay in the frankly unrepresentative 1930 tournament before being murdered by Argentina 6-1.They didn’t turn up again for 20 years, and when they did got walloped by Spain and Chile (5-2) but managed to - surprise, surprise – beat England. No one heard of them again for another 40 years when they qualified for Italia 90 and suffered their obligatory hammering, 5-1 to Czechoslovakia, and lost their other two games. They were also fairly rubbish as host nation in 1994, scraping through their group with a win against Colombia, but losing to Romania and Brazil. In France, four years later, they lost all three again and hilariously were beaten by Iran. The completely haywire 2002 WC did include USA beating Portugal and qualifying for the knockouts, although losing to pathetic Poland, where they beat Mexico in a grudge match and then lost to Germany in the quarters. Four years ago they were back to their usual appalling form, finishing bottom of the group, but getting a draw with Italy (who else). So, overall, it’s a story of rubbish punctuated with the odd good result against a decent side, Slovenia aren’t that decent and will win this one on skill.

On paper Algeria are no match for England. This game isn’t being played on paper. The two haven’t played in the WC before but England have had narrow squeaks against North African teams before: Morocco (0-0, Ray Wilkins sent off), Egypt (1-0, relying on a goal from Mark Wright), Tunisia (actually, a more comfortable 2-0). They also scraped past Kuwait 1-0 in 1982. I expect another close win for England.

Algeria will bounce back to beat the USA, however. Algeria beat West Germany and Chile in 1982, drew with Northern Ireland and lost just 1-0 to Brazil in 1986. They got to the semi-final of this year’s African Cup of Nations.

Which leaves England v Slovenia, a country of 1.5million people, whose team wears green and has produced a skilful, long-haired global superstar (Zlatko Zahovic). Hang on, that’s like Northern Ireland, and we all know what happened the last time England played them. The teams will draw and both go through.

That leaves the group like this:

1 England 5pts

2 Slovenia 5pts

3 Algeria 4pts

4 USA 1pt

I’m putting England on top on goals scored.

Group B predictions

2010-05-20T09:34:00.001-07:00

World Cup Group B features three teams who were in the same pool in 1994: Argentina, Greece and Nigeria. It was the World Cup where Diego Maradona got chucked out for drugs. He’s back this summer. Can’t wait. Anyhow, here are my predictions.

Korea Republic (South Korea) kick off against Greece. They have never played each other before in the finals and both are rubbish. If you don’t count Euro 2004, which Greece won in a huge upset, the Greeks have played in the finals of three other tournaments (Euro 1980 and 2004, and WC 1994), with the barnstorming record of played nine, won none, drawn one, lost eight. South Korea, if you don’t count their highly dubious march to the WC semis in 2002, when they were host nation, have played in six WCs and never got past the first round. Their wonderful record is: played 17, won one (yes, one. Against African powerhouse Togo), drawn five, lost 11. I’m predicting a draw.

Argentina beat Nigeria 2-1 in 1994 and 1-0 in 2002. As teams rarely win all their group games, I’m going for a draw in this one.

Nigeria beat Greece 2-0 in 1994. I’m going for another Nigeria win this time.

Argentina easily beat South Korea 3-1 on their way to glory in 1986. Maradona’s boys will win again.

Nigeria and South Korea have never met in the WC before. But Nigeria have played in three WCs and got to the second round twice, only missing out in 2002 when they were in a group of death with England, Sweden and Argentina. They’ve played 11, won four, drawn one and lost six. Also, they came third in this year’s African Cup of Nations and should beat the Koreans.

Argentina walloped Greece 4-0 in 1994 and will beat them again this summer.

That leaves the group like this:

1 Argentina 7pts

2 Nigeria 7pts

3 Greece 1pt

4 South Korea 1pt

I’m putting Argentina on top on goal difference, as with all their attacking options they could get a bucketful against the hopeless Greeks and Koreans.

HE NEVER DID (1): Headband wearing, bearded Brighton and Hove Albion centre-half Steve Foster actually played for England in the WC. I know people who believe in ghosts, elves, the Loch Ness monster, and the tooth fairy who won’t swallow that one. But it’s true. For some reason, he was selected against Kuwait in 1982, replacing Terry Butcher, who must have been injured otherwise there is no sensible explanation. Still it was only Kuwait (England won 1-0).

World Cup predictions Group A

2010-05-19T02:37:00.001-07:00

All right World Cup fans, here are my predictions. Today, Group A.

South Africa and Mexico have never played each other in the WC before. As SA are hosts, but rubbish, I’m going for a draw.

Uruguay beat France 2-1 in 1966 and the pair drew 0-0 in 2002 in a non-Euro WC. I’m going for France to win this one.

France beat Mexico 4-1 in 1930 and 3-2 in 1954, with them drawing 1-1 in 1966. I’m going for another France win.

SA have never played Uruguay. I’m going for a Uruguay win as SA are useless.

France beat SA 3-0 in 1998. France to win again.

Uruguay and Mexico drew 0-0 in 1966. When they met in the Copa America 2004 it was 2-2. I’m going for another draw.

That leaves the group like this:

1 France 9pts

2 Uruguay 4pts

3 Mexico 2pts

4 SA 1pt

Host nations rarely go out in the group stage. Host nations rarely get as hard a group as SA have landed this time. Host nations are rarely as pathetic as SA. Another African nation will represent the continent on the march to the semis.

Hayseed Dixie

2009-08-03T01:32:00.001-07:00

LET’S get this straight - hillbilly heroes Hayseed Dixie are fantastic live but don’t expect to see them fronting any anti-binge drinking campaign.

We’re talking about a band that took the stage at Plymouth’s Hippo accompanied by a crate of beer and a set of bluegrass songs which included Corn Liquor, Moonshiner’s Daughter, and one about all the plonk on their rider.

We’re also talking about a band that reckons Hank Williams’ Lost Highway and ACDCs’ Highway to Hell are headed to the same place, which turns out to be eternal damnation, not Newquay.

We’re even talking about a band that believes all great songs are about one of four things: drinking, cheating, killing and hell, and kicks off with a blinding version of Judas Priest’s Breaking the Law, a song unlikely to be used as the theme music to Crimestoppers.

And we’re also talking about a band that covers rock’s greatest hell

raisers: Angus Young, Motorhead, Aerosmith and, of course, the Scissor Sisters.

Yes, the fleet-fingered foursome performed a demonic version of I Don’t Feel Like Dancing, which, although brilliant, is unlikely to land them a spot fronting any gay pride event.

That’s because we’re also talking about a band that don’t mind poking fun at folks’ between-the-sheets orientation.

But despite being the most agrestic, booze-swilling, flat-bed-truck-driving bunch of inebriates you’re going to encounter this side of the Tamar, Hayseed Dixie turn out to be… liberals.

Yep, you heard right. Not only did they condemn George W Bush and Bible-bashers, but they had a pop at hypocritical rock acts too.

Still, they’re unlikely to end up on Germaine Greer’s Desert Island Discs list, not by performing a song called She Was Skinny When I Met Her and a version of Queen’s Fat Bottomed Girls.

But the audience wasn’t here for politics. They wanted rock, and they wanted it played on a banjo and a fiddle.

Which is what they got from John ‘Barley Scotch’ Wheeler, Jake ‘Bakesnake’ Byers, and brothers Reverend Don Wayne Reno and Deacon Dale Reno.

Now, I don’t think these last two are real clergy. Maybe it’s the constant boozing, maybe it’s the eyeliner, maybe it’s the tolerance of homosexuality, but they ain’t like no ministers I ever done met.

Still, they play like they’re in a duel with the Devil. In this case, the brilliant Dueling Banjos, written by their dad.

And when the group do their party-piece of playing the chords on each other’s instruments while strumming their own it makes your jaw drop.

We’re talking about guys with digits so dexterous they could pluck the strawberries out of a tub of Ben and Jerry’s Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream while leaving the cheesecake intact.

And, boy, do they rock? There were fire and brimstone versions of Ace of Spades, a song unlikely to be adopted by Gamblers’ Anonymous, and Whole Lotta Rosie, which probably won’t be used to promote Weightwatchers.

Then there was Walk This Way, Black Dog, War Pigs, You Shook Me All Night Long. No, you really did, Hayseed Dixie. Some people were even head-banging. To a fiddle. I don’t know about Highway to Hell, this was heavenly.

In Jon's Light

2009-07-20T05:48:00.001-07:00

CONGRATULATIONS Plymouth on another awesome display of apathy. There were just 36 people in The Hippo when troubadour and Radio 2 favourite Jon Allen strode on stage - and that included his mum and dad and five characters who had something to do with The Herald.

And to think, Jon is from Totnes, which pretty much makes him one of our own. So with ex-Retreat front man Richard James more than ably supporting, this was something of a showcase for Plymouth’s top talent.

Shame Plymouth wasn’t there to see it.

Still, in the words of the great Jim Bowen, this is what you could have won, if you’d bothered to turn up.

For starters, you’d have got one of the country’s best emerging singer-songwriters, a left-handed gun with a warm self-depreciating sense of humour and Ryan Adams‘ wardrobe.

Then you’d have been dazzled by the sight of the Hippo transformed into some sort of Beatnik hangout, with people clustered around tiny tables, lit by the dancing flames of teeny candles.

These were the only things dancing, because with Jon Allen on stage you’ve just got to stop and listen. Plus, it’s impossible to bop when your breath has been taken away.

We’re talking about the voice here. Jon sings with so much soul Stevie Wonder must be living in his larynx.

When this guy opens his mouth even a heart of granite - yes, I’m talking about you Robert Mugabe, and you Gordon Ramsey - would turn to pure treacle.

Then there are the songs. I don’t know what you were up to on Friday evening, but did it send a shiver down your spine like the brilliantly unsettling Happy Now could? Did it leave you lost and yearning as the Dylanesque New Years Eve has the power to do? Were you, as if you’d heard Lay Your Burden Down, moved close to tears?

OK, you might have been if you’d spent the night traipsing around Derry’s Cross, but not in the same way, obviously.

That’s because outside Jon’s lovely and lovelorn tunes there is no other human activity that can shift you so suddenly form the euphoric to the tear-stained and back again, save for childbirth and tagging along on a hen night.

And we haven’t even got to the best ones yet. Honestly, if you can drink in the wonderful Faces feel of new single Down By The River without cracking a full beam smile you must have rigor mortis of the jaw.

And if the much-trumpeted forthcoming Millbay Boulevard is half as beautiful as Jon’s breakthrough hit In Your Light then the city will truly be the Barcelona of Britain. Or even the Shangri la.

As he tenderly sang about how love can banish shadows and darkness it became plain that those candles were superfluous. Jon, you have the power to light up the night for all of us. Even those who weren’t there.

Pretty Vacant

2009-06-25T03:52:00.000-07:00

MAYBE it was the fear of swine flu which kept people from turning up to watch this tribute to Johnny, Sid and company, but whatever, it was their loss because the Sex Pistols Experience are terrific.

The brave 50 or so who did troop to Goodies enjoyed an evening of high-calibre punk rock mayhem delivered with panache by a band that would be fantastic even if they were pretending to be the Brotherhood of Man.

But they’re not. They’re pretending to be the Pistols, one of the greatest bands ever to walk the earth and certainly the greatest ever to sing about a girl from Birmingham called Pauline.

And to think, this gig was going ahead almost on the very spot where the real Pistols played in 1977. Yes, almost the very spot, give or take a couple of hundred yards and a £200million shopping arcade.

And inside the sweltering human cattle-truck that passed for the bit in front of the stage it was like going back in time 32 years. You could almost smell the Denim aftershave as you pogoed to brilliant opener Pretty Vacant, which was a fair summation of the turn-out at that point.

The Pistols Experience, for those of you too busy messing around with surgical face masks to enjoy yourselves, are exactly like the real Pistols, only exactly like them.

For a start they have a guy playing Johnny Rotten who is within a razor blade’s width of being the real thing. He’s got the voice, mannerisms, body posture and tartan bondage strides off to a tee.

And when he rips the proverbial out of the aging new wavers down the front it’s just like being insulted by the real McCoy. What an honour.

“Good to see Jimmy Saville’s turned up,” he jibed at one snow-capped geriatric punk to a heart-warming applause.

Then there’s Sid Vicious. This bloke’s honed Sid’s charming, perpetually amazed, head shaking routine to perfection, although, and this is a minor criticism, he does actually seem able to play the bass and looks like he’s not held together by safety pins and phlegm.

Naturally, these fellas are the stars, but don’t underestimate the fake Steve Jones and Paul Cook. That lad can’t half play guitar, and the drummer drives the whole thing like he’s helming a super tanker during a tsunami.

And the music. Wow. I know it’s hard to go wrong when your material includes the best song ever written, Holidays in the Sun, the country’s other national anthem, God Save the Queen, and that old family favourite Bodies, but the Experience delivers them with brio and brilliance, and even find time for My Way and Public Image.

And it hit the spot with the fans, an eclectic mix of aforesaid pensionable punks and youngsters who couldn’t stop filming everything on mobile phones, even in the lavs. What would Sid have made of that, eh? Kids today.

The Experience are at Plympton’s Volksfest on May 22, and only if you’ve contracted the influenza C virus, possess a note from your doctor and your mum, and are confined to an iron lung should you be excused for missing them.

Fingers nail it

2009-04-03T05:59:00.001-07:00

RECESSION? What recession? There were few signs of the economic downturn affecting the throng of punk rock fans who assailed The Hippo to throw themselves around to the fulminating sounds of Belfast’s greatest export after George Best - Stiff Little Fingers.

Not that the mass turnout could be said to be in any way representative of the general population. In fact, you won’t have seen so many middle-aged men in one place since the last time AC Milan took to the field.

But then, to fully appreciate the brilliance of SLF and support band, the terminally unfashionable yet perpetually exhilarating Chelsea, you had to be around in 1979, the year they both released debut albums.

It was a time characterised by a Labour government floundering with an economic crisis, while people were getting killed in Northern Ireland and Iran was giving everyone the heebie-jeebies. Plus ca change.

So no wonder Chelsea turned out to be still relevant, with their anthem Right To Work bolstered by blistering deliveries of Evacuate and Urban Kids.

The band boasted three first album veterans - drummer Chris Bashford, ace guitarist James Stevenson and vocalist Gene October, ably abetted by sometime-Buzzcock Tony Barber.

Mr October seemed, a little like his leather strides, a tad worse for wear, his bulging-eyed delivery possibly the result of a over-tightening in the trouser button department.

No matter, Mr Stevenson’s exceptional playing, particularly on frenetic opener Your Toy and neigh-on classic All the Downs, resulted in a high-octane set.

And then, before you could say ‘Hanx’, SLF were tearing into Roots, Radicals and Rockers, main man Jake Burns, older, wiser, let’s face it, heavier, but no less marvellous than he was 30 years ago when his band were the most exciting thing in British music.

And the singer/guitarist still had the fire, and the voice that sounded like he’s gargled with a cocktail of malt whiskey and molten lava.

He also had redoubtable original line-up bassist Ali McMordie, who seemed to have adopted the look of U2’s The Edge mixed with an escapee from a maximum-security prison.

With Ian McCallum on six-string and Steve Grantley on drums the Fingers raced through a set representative of three decades and nine studio albums Highlights included a clutch of freshman album greats: Wasted Life, Suspect Device and Barbed Wire Love; augmented by the hits At the Edge, Nobody’s Heroes, Bits of Kids, Just Fade Away, Silver Lining and later crowd-pleasers including the terrific Strummerville.

But it was a rousing Doesn’t Make it Alright, set closer Tin Soldiers and the inevitable encore Alternative Ulster that elevated the gig to legendary status, and made the grey-haired hoard pogo until they all appeared to have come down with sciatica and had to have a wee rest. If only your kids could have seen you.

Russian about

2009-03-11T03:02:00.000-07:00

EVERYBODY loves music, right? So how come whenever you see a busker you want to punch him?

Could it be because most buskers idea of a performance is to take a song that was written for bass, guitar, drums, keyboards and a full orchestra, not to mention brass section, choir and moog synthesiser, and designed to be sung in harmony, by children, and interpret it on a battered acoustic guitar with two strings missing, while singing like a cat caught in a cement mixer?

Or could it be that for most of them stage attire is an anorak, jeans and trainers, and their show consists of standing still, looking board, and singing like a cat caught in a cement mixer? You know, like Oasis.

Or could it be because of the songs they choose to assault harmless shopping centre dwellers with?

I think it’s the latter. Rarely, in fact never, do you see a busker performing anything by The Cramps, or the British Electric Foundation, or Crass, or the Jesus and Mary Chain, or Pere Ubu, or Can. I could go on.

What you do get, which is what I encountered in Bristol, is someone doing their best to make Stereophonics and Kid Rock sound even less bearable than normal.

Honestly, it takes something to make Have a Nice Day, already recorded in this blog as the most useless song ever written, and make it sound like the original version is a work of brilliance.

But the young man cranking out this monstrosity outside the Costa Coffee in Bristol city centre was doing his best.

Now, I’m an anti-violence kind of guy. So I would never really hit a busker. I would merely offer him a list of clinics where an acoustic guitar can be surgically removed from the large intestine under local anaesthetic.

But on this occasion, mainly because I was feeling charitable, and also because he was six feet four and armed with an acoustic guitar, with an almost full complement of strings, I decided to repair to said Costa Coffee, accompanied by Football Dynamo, subtitled Modern Russia and the People’s Game.

No sooner was I inside than I found out the hot-drink emporium was being run by one of the world’s last remaining soviet hard liners.

There were about 30 people in the queue with only two young girls running about with pots of hot milk. And the soviet hard liner was in charge of them.

This guy, probably still under Politburo command, was steadfastly taking orders from every one in the queue. This took him hardly any time at all.

But each order took the girls with the pots yonks to deliver. So about 30 people were standing around, waiting for ages while the two pot-carriers were gradually turning to gingerbread latte under the stress of it all.

Meanwhile, their antics were sound tracked by the mournful sound of Have a Nice Day wafting through the open door.

For a split second I though about trying to ease the choked-up soviet supply chain with a bit of free market economics in the guise of grabbing the soviet hard liner by the lapels and yelling: “Why don’t you help them?”

But I’m a non-violence kind of guy. Plus he was six feet four and armed with a cash register and a ladle.

So I delved into Marc Bennetts’ examination of post-Communist football in Russia. Mr Bennetts is a British linguist who now lives in Moscow. He’s also a football fan, if you can call supporting Nottingham Forest as being a football fan.

One thing he ain’t is a journalist. Or a writer. That’s two things. He’s neither. That’s the book’s downfall. He doesn’t quite get to grips with his questioning. But it’s a good effort none the less, which is more than you could say for the serving system in the coffee house or the busker’s version of Have a Nice Day.

Mr Bennetts spends a lot of time roaming around Moscow and St Petersburgh visiting weird football clubs and talking to an array of characters so bizarre they make Bristol coffee shop managers and buskers seem nearly normal.

The cast list of eccentrics includes Brazilian love-machine and striker Wagner Love, polonium poisoning victim Alexander Litvinenko, petrol bomb naming Stalin protege Vyacheslav Molotov, ‘black Spider’ goalie Lev Yashin and, of course, alleged Abba fan Vladimir Putin. Not to mention Gazprom, which is an energy company and not a school dance dedicated to Paul Gascoigne.

You also learn a lot about the history of Russia, while picking up a few facts about Spartak Moscow, Zenit St Petersburg and the Chechen wonder team Terek Grozny, which you can name drop at any dinner party.

But the best bit is, by far, an interview Mr Bennetts has with ex-Chelsea, Charlton and Portsmouth midfielder Alexi Smertin.

At the time of this encounter Mr Smertin was playing for an underperforming Moscow Dynamo side, but what Mr Bennetts wanted to know was about his time in West London.

Mr Smertin, the author points out, is an ‘articulate speaker’ and not exactly your common or garden footballer.

Let’s allow Alexi to put it in his own inimitable fashion:

“Most people think footballers are thick. And rightly so. In England, I tried to learn the language, but it was extremely hard when you are surrounded by guys whose vocabulary is limited to ‘f***’ and who make mistakes with grammatical tenses.

“I noticed that after spending a lot of time with them and their ‘what the f*** you doing geezer?’ take on the language of Shakespeare and Dickens, I found it quite hard to communicate with English people in a non-football environment.”

He also noted Russian players read more than the English ones. “And not just glossy magazines.”

Well said.

I finally got served in the soviet hard liner’s coffee shack, by which time there was nowhere to sit and another 30 people queuing behind me.

So I supped up and left. The young busker was throttling Kid Rock’s agrestic abomination All Summer Long as I passed him.

I was going to suggest a list of operating theatres where a four-stringed acoustic guitar can be surgically removed from a man’s oesophagus, but after the experience I had just been through I found it hard to communicate with English musicians in a non-coffee environment.

Kiss of death

2009-03-10T03:29:00.001-07:00

SHE kissed a girl, she liked it and hoped her boyfriend wouldn’t mind. Is she kidding? Of course he’s not going to mind? Not in the post-feminist world of Katy Perry anyway.

I, on the other hand, did mind. Particularly as I was picking my way through the bag department of Dingles when this mind-boggling slice of male wish fulfillment upset the delicate balance of my inner ear by merely being audible.

And, being a grumpy old man and all, I pretty much decided to blame everything that is wrong with modern society on this squirt of cynical musical striptease.

Ms Perry, you see, muses at length about why she kissed a female with whom she had not been previously introduced, and then describes it in graphic detail.

It felt so wrong, it felt so right. Apparently it tasted of cherry chapstick as well. Makes a change from Lambert and Butler King Size I suppose.

Well, Ms Perry, let me tell you this. Your ditty may be squarely aimed at the market demographic populated by young women, but the only people benefiting from you philosophical explorations on human sexual response are old men. Dirty ones at that.

Spending the video standing in a fountain wearing nothing but your undies doesn’t make you Germaine Greer either.

Anyway, I was so upset I put down the handbag I was examining and beat a hasty retreat. All the way to the Costa Coffee in the Drake Circus mall Waterstones. The one that looks more like a branch of MFI than a library.

That‘s where I depressed myself further by thinking about how far we’ve fallen since the heady days of the 1960s counter-culture, when people of Ms Perry’s age were manning the barricades not posing in their panties.

And as I did this I comforted myself with a gingerbread latte.

It felt so wrong, it felt so right. But what the hell, it tasted of gingerbread. They didn’t do cherry chapstick flavour.

And as I let my taste buds go to Woodstock I read Peter Doggett’s There A Riot Going On, subtitled Revolutionaries, Rock Stars, and the Rise and Fall of the 60s Counter-culture.

No one was singing about same-sex kissing in those days as they were more than likely singing about street fighting men and not being fooled again, and the times they are a changing and brown sugar.

Whooa! Hang on. It turns out things haven’t changed that much after all, and thanks Mr Doggett for pointing it out.

His brilliant exploration of doomed rebellion reveals that while the youth of the 1960s was all for equal rights this extended to everyone except women.

Exhibit A: the Rolling Stones’ Brown Sugar, described by Mr Doggett as a celebration of ‘slavery and sexual violence’.

It’s basically the tale of a bloke who gets hold of a young black slave girl and has his way with her. He even goes into graphic detail about what she tasted like. It wasn’t cherry chapstick either. Or gingerbread latte.

And it didn’t stop at song lyrics. When Mick and his lads played Hyde Park in 1968 the crowd got a little over excited and leapt on the stage. Guess who was ordered off? That’s right, the ‘chicks’.

And which wholesome male rock star uttered this charming summation of the value of womankind?

“Women should be used as sex objects. I think it’s what they are best at. I don’t think it’s any insult, because that’s what their main purpose in life is.”

Hands up who said Alice Cooper.

The former Mr Vincent Furnier may have donned a woman’s name, but he sure never walked around in her shoes.

He also compounded the felony by describing feminists as “horny dykes.”

Like he’d know.

All this inspired the much put upon Yoko Ono to pronounce ‘woman is the n***** of the world’.

Eventually macho rockers such as her hubby John Lennon and Country Joe McDonald came around to a woman’s way of thinking, with Mr Lennon penning the famous song titled after Ms Ono’s equally famous quote. The guys may even have done some housework.

There’s a Riot Going On is a fine book which in 525 pages, not including notes, goes way beyond just feminism and examines the way we were from 1966 to 1972 when the counter-culture gave up the ghost on Richard Nixon’s landslide election triumph.

Ultimately, Mr Doggett concludes, the revolutionaries just sold out, swayed by fame and a chance of a financially secure and comfortable future.

Arch Yippie revolutionary Jerry Rubin, a mainstay of the 1968 Democratic convention mayhem in Chicago, became a stockbroker. Even Bob Dylan got accused of abandoning his ideals and supporting Israel.

Not that some needed to shift to the right. Who’s this with a razor sharp grasp of historical truth, for instance?

“We’re just not strong enough on leaders. You need someone who’s gonna make people jump. You need a Hitler figure just to say ‘this is what it is‘ And Hitler was right for Germany at the time, they were really being s*** on. He turned out mad at the end, but when he started, he was there, he just did marvellous things for the German people. You need a Hitler figure, internationally, for kids.”

Take a bow Roger Daltrey. And you thought Tommy was the one who was deaf, dumb and blind.

Need more convincing? Who might have given this ringing endorsement of ‘rivers of blood’ pot-stirrer Enoch Powell?

“I think Enoch is the man. I’m all for him. This country is overcrowded. The immigrants should be sent home. That’s it.”

How many of you got Rod Stewart? I wonder if he’ll be saying that at Home Park.

So with Mick, Bob, Alice, Roger and dear old Rod doing so much for human rights and overthrowing the system it’s amazing that leading reactionary, vice president and tax-evader extraordinaire Spiro Agnew had anything to moan about.

But he did. He complained about all the “deserters, malcontents, radicals, incendiaries, the civil and uncivil disobedient among our youth, the Revolutionary Action Movement, Yippies, hippies, yahoos, Black Panthers, lions and tigers alike,” and proclaimed: “I would swap the whole damn zoo for a single platoon of the kind of young Americans I saw in Vietnam.”

It felt so wrong, Spiro, it felt so right. As in wing.

Latest standings:

1 Wimpey 1983 (Pistols) 7 cool points

2 Pannier Market (Jona Lewie/Cher/Mock Turtles) 6 cool points

3 Armada Centre (John Waite/Captain Pugwash) 4 cool points

4 Home Park (Rod Stewart/Robbie Savage/Killers/Temuri

Ketsbia/Duffy/Earth/Wind/Fire/Emotions) 3 cool points

5 Body Shop (Allannah Myles) 1 cool point

6 The Ark (Queen/Foreigner) 0 cool points

6 TK Maxx (Robert Palmer) 0 cool points

8 Madhouse (Whiteshake) -3 cool points.

9 Dingles (Katy Perry) -3.5 cool points

10 Zavvi RIP (Saturdays/Wombats) -4 cool points

11 Lloyds/TSB (Kid Rock/Madonna) -7 cool points

12 HMV (Stereophonics/Girls Aloud) -15 cool points

13 The Emirates (Jam/Kingsmen/Killers/Talking Heads/Elvis) disqualified.

Theatre of hate

2009-03-04T06:40:00.000-08:00

DERRYS has just been sold. And I hope the department store’s new owner doesn’t mess with the ground floor Pronto Coffee Bar which serves a mean Café Mocha and provides as good a setting as any to muse on facing the final curtain and one of the most disturbing creations in literary history.

I’m talking about Morris ‘Mickey’ Sabbath of course, the anti-hero of Philip Roth’s 1995 masterwork Sabbath’s Theatre.

I was ploughing my way through this book - and its usual Roth obsessions of death, sex, Judaism, sex, ageing, sex, and obnoxiousness - while simultaneously ploughing my way through £2.05 of probably the best hot drink I’ve tasted since I went on my caffeine overload quest.

Honestly, talk about both sides of the coin, here I was reading about one man’s personal journey into a living hell, while sipping something poured by the angels in a setting which was like a departure lounge to the hereafter.

Sixty-four-year-old Sabbath is a fairly nasty piece of work. Imagine Victor Meldrew with the morals of a City banker and the sex drive of Ron Jeremy and you’re some way to getting the picture.

Want proof? Here’s how Mickey envisages his own description of himself on his gravestone: Morris Sabbath, Mickey, Beloved Whoremonger, Seducer, Sodomist, Abuser of Women, Destoyer of Morals, Ensnarer of Youth, Uxoricide, Suicide, 1929-1994.

Nice chap.

Now, I like Philip Roth. I try to read one of his books every year. But this is the most difficult one I’ve tackled. It’s not that it’s hard to read, it’s just that it’s hard to sympathise with a man who may have murdered his first wife, cheats on his second, does unspeakable carnal things to his mistress, relieves himself on her grave, and abuses his best mate’s hospitality by seducing his wife and doing something ungentlemanly to his 19-year-old daughter’s undergarments.

He’s also a failed puppeteer, famous for once managing to grope a young woman he’d selected from the audience to assist him during an open air public performance.

You don’t get that at the Sun Dial. Often.

And although I was getting to the bit where Mr Roth starts to become brilliant - Mickey visiting a New York Jewish cemetery - I was also feeling a bit down about the whole woman abusing, morals destroying, youth ensnaring, uxorcide, suicide scenario.

That’s when I had my first taste of Café Mocha.

It was like a shaft of heavenly light had just shone into my life. Wait a minute, the Pronto Coffee Bar is right next to Derrys’ lighting and crockery sections, it was the beam from an angle-poise lamp bouncing of a tea set.

No matter. I was in paradise. As Sabbath’s perverted antics drove him lower and lower I descended through layers, not of depravation, but of marvellous mellow Mocha majesty.

I have no clue as to how anyone makes this drink, but it’s magnificent and comes in distinct bands, like council tax only white and brown and you get value for money.

Using a long spoon I mined my way through its snowy cap of froth, then something light brown and coffee flavoured, a layer of milky white liquid chocolate, and into a basement of pure cream.

It was only then I realised I was about the youngest person sitting in the crowded Pronto Coffee Bar.

Now, I’m no spring chicken but everyone here was as snow-capped as the Café Mocha. The ones with hair anyway.

And beige. They were all wearing clothes the colour of the second layer of my drink. With milk chocolate white slacks and cream shoes.

There were more of them going up the escalator which towers over the Pronto Coffee Bar.

And for a minute I thought I was in a newly refurbished purgatory waiting to ascend, not to bedding and kitchenware, but to the pearly gates.

But then I was jolted back to reality by the sight of an elderly man doing something indescribable with a woman young enough to be his granddaughter.

Turned out it wasn’t Mickey Sabbath but someone asking directions to the Post Office counter.

Still, I left the Pronto Coffee Bar happier than I entered, thanks to the Café Mocha.

And, like Mickey Sabbath, I was glad I had not shuffled off this mortal coil. In his case because everything he hates is here, and in my case because everything I love is.

Dead body shop

2009-03-03T06:08:00.001-08:00

I WAS in something called the Body Shop struggling with the alien concept of buying a bar of soap and wishing I was listening to the Cramps in honour of the late, lamented Lux Interior.

But instead all I got was Alannah Myles singing Black Velvet.

Now, for some reason women seem to love this song. It doesn’t do anything for me. Ditto soap.

I’m not saying I don’t wash or anything. I do, at least once a month. It’s just that I don’t buy soap. That’s why I struggle with the concept of a shop selling bowls full of the stuff. I mean, why buy something when you can just pick it up for nothing in hotel rooms?

Isn’t that where shampoo comes from too? And towels? And lap top computers? Maybe not the last one.

So I was listening to Black Velvet, which is actually a song about Elvis Presley, his dyed black locks being what the title is on about.

Don’t believe me? Check the lyrics: ‘Mama’s baby is in the heart of every schoolgirl, Love Me Tender leaves ‘em crying in the aisles’.

OK, so a song about the King is pretty cool, but this is just too straight, if you catch my drift.

I prefer something as warped as a cricket bat left out in the rain.

Enter Lux Interior.

Sadly the Cramps’ front man left the building just last month. Like Elvis, the victim of heart failure.

At least, I think he left the building. As a guy who sang so often about the undead he may still walk among us.

But let’s assume he’s headed north, or south, probably north. And who wouldn’t let a guy into paradise after he’d spent a lifetime singing about human flies, teenage werewolves and dancing zombies? Not to mention pussies that can do the dog.

Mr Interior, like the similarly raven-haired maestro Elvis, was one of the true greats of rock ‘n’ roll.

It was scandalous no one paid tribute to him at the Brits the other week. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the Pet Shop Boys and Kings of Leon you could have been mistaken for thinking you were watching a reality show filmed in a Wetherspoons pub.

They even gave awards to a bunch of office staff out for a post-work pint, and some hairdressers on a hen night. These, I later discovered, turned out to be Elbow and Girls Aloud.

The show was therefore totally bereft of anyone singing about Teenage Goo Goo Muck or dispensing such sensible advice as Don’t Eat Stuff off the Sidewalk, or even asking What’s Inside a Girl? Terrible.

So I’m paying tribute to you here Mr Interior. From now on, whenever I see a girl in a bikini carrying a machine gun I’ll think of you.

After all, you sang one of the best opening lines in any song ever. The brilliant Garbage Man begins with the sublime: ‘You ain’t no punk, punk, you wanna talk about the real junk?’

A sentiment that leaps into my mind every time I see Green Day.

So Mr Interior, I’ll drink a toast to you. And fall behind the sofa clutching my throat later to emerge covered in hair and with that £2 coin I lost in 2003.

Enjoy the hereafter, Lux. I can just picture you now, entertaining the angels, with the Devil’s tunes.

Latest standings:

1 Wimpey 1983 (Pistols) 7 cool points

2 Pannier Market (Jona Lewie/Cher/Mock Turtles) 6 cool points

3 Armada Centre (John Waite/Captain Pugwash) 4 cool points

4 Home Park (Rod Stewart/Robbie Savage/Killers/Temuri

Ketsbia/Duffy/Earth/Wind/Fire/Emotions) 3 cool points

5 Body Shop (Alannah Myles) 1 cool point

6 The Ark (Queen/Foreigner) 0 cool points

6 TK Maxx (Robert Palmer) 0 cool points

8 Madhouse (Whiteshake) -3 cool points.

9 Zavvi RIP (Saturdays/Wombats) -4 cool points 10 Lloyds/TSB (Kid Rock/Madonna) -7 cool points

11 HMV (Stereophonics/Girls Aloud) -15 cool points

12 The Emirates (Jam/Kingsmen/Killers/Talking Heads/Elvis) disqualified.

Derby day

2009-02-13T01:21:00.000-08:00

I WAS at Home Park, listening to Do Ya Think I’m Sexy and watching Rod Stewart. But it was February, a full five months before the ex-Faces man’s scheduled gig, and a blizzard was swirling about me.

How was this possible? Simple. The tannoy was blasting Rod’s lurid description of a singles’ bar pick-up and the Rod I was watching turned out to be, on closer inspection, Derby County’s reckless ball-winner Robbie Savage.

Easy mistake to make. Same big nose. Same misguided hair-do. Same propensity to fall over all the time and complain to the ref. Well, maybe not the last one.

So, after the Emirates’ attempt to wrestle the Coolest Place in Plymouth if Not the World title from the 1983 Cornwall Street Wimpey, it was Home Park’s turn.

While Arsenal gave us an uber-cool playlist comprising The Jam, The Killers, The Kingsmen, Talking Heads and Elvis Presley, but got disqualified for displaying as much passion as a dead halibut, or Nicholas Anelka, Argyle went for the bizarrely eclectic.

After heralding the start of the game with Rod the Mod’s 1978 chart topper (guaranteed to induce overweight uncles to the dance floor at any family celebration), The Pilgrims handed the stage to Mr Savage who disappointed no-one with his tried and trusted pantomime villain routine comprising falling over, moaning at the ref, having a big nose and displaying Worzel Gummidge’s barnet.

This prompted the musical highlight of the day. Actually, it produced the footballing highlight too, what with Argyle playing like a bunch of fubsy wheely bins and Derby doing not much better, but managing to win 3-0 due to the Greens’ hopelessness.

So as Mr Savage roamed about the midfield, throwing himself about and emerging from the mud with a Gallic shrug and a ‘c’mon ref, yellow card at least’ appeal, the 10,000 souls who had braved near arctic conditions harmoniously accompanied him with a little number along the lines of: “booo, hissss, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

Indeed there is no finer sound in the English language than 10,000 courageous souls splitting their sides at the antics of a one-paced, overweight, hatchet man, as he falls headlong into some mud. Especially if he used to play for Leicester City.

This cool number made up for the slightly uncool Rod effort, produced at the time in his career when he had abandoned blues, soul and any sort of credibility, for ersatz disco and a pair of trousers that should have been outlawed by the United Nations.

In fact, someone once wrote that no performer had betrayed is talent so much as Mr Stewart.

Imagine. The man who gave us Maggie May, Handbags and Gladrags and, my favourite, What Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser out of Me), chucked it all in for fame, riches, and amorous liaisons which produced seven children by five women including four models and an actress, and the chance to record Scotland’s 1978 World Cup single.

How could he?

And how could Argyle go so madly cosmopolitan during half time? Well, they did, hitting us with, in a touching echo of the Emirates’ forlorn hope, The Killers’ Mr Brightside.

Like all Killers’ compositions, this is half brilliant and half annoying, partly for its similarity to David Bowie‘s Queen Bitch. Still, it‘s on the cool side of the pitch.

I don’t know about the house music that followed it, though. Argyle decided to accompany people’s Pukka Pie buying with something that thumped along in a similar fashion to Mr Savage while the lyrics went along the lines of ‘One, two, three, four - keps pyre’. Mind you, it could have been ‘catch fire’ or even ‘Ketsbaia’ in honour of the ex-Newcastle United and Georgia forward Temuri Ketsbia. I’m proud to say I was unable to identify this work of art. I’m always proud when I can’t identify house music.

Still the bloke in front of me was singing along to it so it may have been a bit cool. Unlike the next song on the old spinner.

I’ve managed to avoid this since I started trying to find the coolest place on the planet, but finally it caught up with me.

I’m talking about Mercy by leather-tonsiled Welsh tornado Duffy. If you’ve been on Jupiter, or somewhere less accessible, like Millbrook, for the past two years, you may have missed this masterpiece of manufactured music.

No one else has.

Actually, it’s not a bad song, it’s just that it’s become more ubiquitous than Lily Allen, Kate Winslet, Graham Norton, or even Thomas Daley.

And the lyrics. Essentially a song in which Aimeé Ann Duffy pleads with a guy to stop using her as a bit on the side and walk her down the aisle, but, in a totally non-feminist way, decides that though she is fed up with this bit-on-the-side business, she can’t break free from his spell.

And the lyrics. They mainly just repeat ‘I’m begging you for mercy, why don’t you release me’ over, and over, and over, and… I’ve checked up. It contains the word ‘begging’ 21 times, ‘mercy’ 15 times, and the phrase ‘release me’ 10 times.

It always reminds me of a story about the great Jewish American comedian Mort Sahl, who during a premiere of the eternally long 1960s epic Exodus, turned to director Otto Preminger and pleaded ‘let my people go’.

Yes Miss Duffy, I’m begging you for mercy.

Unlike the final song Home Park embraced, which was the incredible Boogie Wonderland by Earth Wind and Fire AND the Emotions.

This unabashed lump of 1979 disco is about unappealing men and unattractive women who find love by shaking it under the lights at the discotheque.

Hence: “I find romance when I start to dance in boogie wonderland’. Delightful.

I don’t know about boogie wonderland, winter wonderland was more like it.

By the second half it was full-on snowing, Argyle were playing like guys suffering from hypothermia and Robbie Savage had frozen solid. Hang on, no he hadn’t, he always moves like that.

So, cool points. None for Rod’s disco phase, three for laughing at Robbie Savage, one for the Killers, minus one for the house music about Temuri Ketsbia, minus two for Duffy not releasing us, and one for Earth, Wind and Fire, and another for having another band join them in Boogie Wonderland.

That’s three points. Which is what the Rams went home with. Shame.

Latest standings:

1 Wimpey 1983 (Pistols) 7 cool points

2 Pannier Market (Jona Lewie/Cher/Mock Turtles) 6 cool points

3 Armada Centre (John Waite/Captain Pugwash) 4 cool points

4 Home Park (Rod Stewart/Robbie Savage/Killers/Temuri

Ketsbia/Duffy/Earth/Wind/Fire/Emotions) 3 cool points

5 The Ark (Queen/Foreigner) 0 cool points

5 TK Maxx (Robert Palmer) 0 cool points

7 Madhouse (Whiteshake) -3 cool points

8 Zavvi RIP (Saturdays/Wombats) -4 cool points

9 Lloyds/TSB (Kid Rock/Madonna) -7 cool points 10 HMV (Stereophonics/Girls Aloud) -15 cool points

11 The Emirates (Jam/Kingsmen/Killers/Talking Heads/Elvis) disqualified.

Stadium of Light Applause

2009-02-04T10:29:00.001-08:00

IT WAS the best of days it was the worst of days. I was in London, with good friends, watching Plymouth Argyle in the cup, at one of the world’s most amazing football stadiums. And I was being serenaded by great song after great song.

But something wasn’t quite right.

It wasn’t just that Argyle were beaten by a fairly uninspired, and profligate, Gunners. And it wasn’t just that the Emirates is more Theatre Royal than theatre of dreams.

It was the atmosphere. Or lack of it.

In fact, despite there being 60,000 people present, I’ve actually experienced more passion and spontaneous excitement in the queue at Sainsbury’s.

And despite attempting to rouse the rabble by blasting the Jam’s fulminating In The City over the digital public address, the so-called Arsenal fans remained about as lively as a bag of cement. Or Nicklas Bendtner.

If it wasn’t for the Pilgrims’ travelling army I could have been at some sort of marketing conference, run by, and for, somnambulists. Actually, I reckon I was.

My seat was just inside the Arsenal enclosure, but next to the Argyle segment, so there was a green mass just to my left, and plenty of Janners in the section I was in.

But it was still full of narcoleptic Gooners. The pair to my right were undoubtedly young media professionals, and behind me I had two minor Royals. OK, so I’m exaggerating, but not much. It was a father and son act, where the dad had to be a barrister or a consultant brain surgeon or something, and the son was so well bred he must have been a polo horse.

Anyway, instead of the chirpy cockney banter I’d grown to love at the old Highbury, some quarter of a century distant - you know, witty stuff like: ‘Oi Lee Chapman you ****ing useless ****, my gran could have scored that and she’s been dead five years’ - I got conversations along the lines of: “Oh, dearest pa-pa, our favourites are playing somewhat below par today, I am indubitably perturbed by the thought that they may suffer an unfortunate reversal.”

To wit the dearest pa-pa replied: “Verily my boy, and have you noticed Mr Bendtner, that under-deployed product of questionable usefulness, has failed to take advantage of a scoring opportunity which my dear grandmamma would undoubtedly have converted, and she has been with our heavenly father for half a decade.”

Now, the more dramatic the game got, the more the Arsenal fans behaved like they were waiting for the interval at the Royal Opera House, or for the arrival of the Queen at the Trooping of the Colour, or for Aaron Ramsey to do something.

And even the pre-game playlist didn’t get them a foot-tapping. Come on, The Jam’s In the City for heavens sake. What a song. I mean: “In the city there’s a thousand men in uniform, and I never thought they had the right to kill a man.”

This is in the city of Charles de Menezes.

OK, so Paul Weller’s brilliant slice of 1977 teenage punk aggression is not your bag. How about the Kingsmen’s Louie Louie? This classic 1960s US garage hit is about as subversive as you can get. The FBI investigated it, for crying out loud. That’s right, while Detroit and Chicago and Washington burned the Federal Bureau had teams of agents searching for messages in a song which is basically about a bloke catching a boat to the West Indies to visit his girlfriend. That’s serious subversion.

But did it get the Arsenal fans smashing their seats? Leave it out. The neigh-on comatose Emmanuel Eboue has more get up and go.

Still, at half time, with Argyle battling to preserve a goalless draw, the PA man tried to get the fire started with The Killers’ All These Things That I‘ve Done.

Now I’ve got my issues with the Killers, particularly their weird Bruce Springsteen tribute stage, but this song is excellent, particularly memorable for its brilliant ‘I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier’ hook.

So if ever there was a song genetically pre-disposed to get people singing along, it’s this, right? Wrong. Maybe normal people, but not Arsenal supporters.

Hmm. Let’s try another. How about Talking Heads’ wonderful evocation of mid-life crisis and neurasthenia, set to a dance track, Once in a Lifetime? You’re living in one of the planet’s most stressful and overcrowded cities, and the place where Charles de Menezes met his demise at the hands of the very people we employ to protect us, to boot. Isn’t this musical exploration of mental break-down going to shove you over the edge? Just a little? Think again.

And then the coup de grace. Just before the game started the PA man tried to jump-start the supporters to life with Elvis Presley’s The Wonder of You.

That’s Elvis.

Presley.

The man who brought you rock n roll. The man who delivered up to the world: the teenager. The man responsible for ‘clambake, gonna have a clambake‘. Let’s forget that. This is Elvis, rock n roll rebellion personified. All right, I’ll admit, singing a late period song. But a classic none the less.

Well Arsenal managed to ruin this too, by setting it to a video - shown on a screen bigger than the ones you used to get when cinemas were cinemas and not multiplexes - which was essentially a love letter to Gunners’ boss Arsene Wenger.

It even had the lyrics in subtitle, and the Emirates mob was no doubt expected to sing along, probably altering the words to ‘the Wenger of you’. They didn’t. They did manage some polite applause when Arsenal scored. Oh, and someone laughed when Mr Bendtner tried to trap the ball.

Later, in the pub, as I reminisced about my first trip to Highbury, in 1983, when I had been fortunate to witness Welsh international carthorse Peter Nicholas score a particularly loopy own goal, it was put to me that I preferred the days when going to a football match involved standing in ’rivers of p*ss’.

Never having been any sort of an undinist, I argued that I did not enjoy standing in ‘rivers of p*ss‘, or even a pond, lake, sea or ocean of what had been filtered through someone‘s kidneys. Plus, I did indeed have many bad memories of standing in such fetid pools during many trips to football games, gigs and even pubs, in my youth.

And, being serious for a moment, no one really wants filth, fighting or four-letter words at sporting events, do they? But in sanitising our world are we not in danger of destroying all individuality, passion, spirit and, being blunt, heart? If you don’t love something enough to lose it a bit from time to time, you don’t love it. And who wants a world without love? Because if that‘s where you end up, you may find yourself asking, as Talking Heads memorably sang, ‘my God, what have I done?’

You might even find yourself agreeing with the Jam that the ‘young ideas’ have been turned ‘into fears’.

And you may, furthermore find yourself quoting the Kingsmen by chanting ‘it won’t be long me see me love’. If you do, I recommend you see a shrink. Instead, just shout “OK, let’s give it to em right now’.

So I’m giving it to the Emirates stadium, right now, a nugatory cool points total, even though it would have had a stadium full if the playlist had been played somewhere else. I’m also not including it in the Coolest Place in Plymouth if not the World list, because it’s not in Plymouth. And because Arsenal beat Argyle.

Latest standings:

1 Wimpey 1983 (Pistols) 7 cool points

2 Pannier Market (Jona Lewie/Cher/Mock Turtles) 6 cool points

3 Armada Centre (John Waite/Captain Pugwash) 4 cool points

4 The Ark (Queen/Foreigner) 0 cool points

4 TK Maxx (Robert Palmer) 0 cool points

6 Madhouse (Whiteshake) -3 cool points.

7 Zavvi RIP (Saturdays/Wombats) -4 cool points

8 Lloyds/TSB (Kid Rock/Madonna) -7 cool points

9 HMV (Stereophonics/Girls Aloud) -15 cool points.

Mega death

2009-02-02T02:11:00.001-08:00

WE MET in the late 1970s. The country was going to the dogs, the unions were on strike, the bins hadn’t been emptied for weeks. In fact it was a lot like today.

Only back then, I didn’t care. We were young and in love and the Cornwall Street Wimpey was the coolest place in Plymouth if not the world.

Indeed, bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven. Because I was a teenager in the first flowering of acne and she was a virgin. To be precise: the Virgin Megastore in Armada Way.

Our affair was intense. More than mere infatuation, more than going steady, we could have made it work.

VM, as I called her, was special. No one had what she had, namely the latest albums by the coolest punk, post-punk, hardcore, industrial and anarcho bands on the planet. Which meant Britain and America.

Only she could allow me access to these sounds. And access is what I sought, on Saturdays when I caught the train from St Austell, all the way to Armada Way and plugged myself in to the throbbing generator of rock ‘n’ roll.

At a time when the likes of Tesco and Woolworths could only offer you Boney M, Tina Charles, The Real Thing or Ottawan, VM could take you to sonic places you only dared to dream about.

She was so mature, so clever, so sophisticated, so with-it. VM had rack upon rack of 12-inch vinyl, teasing you with exotic promises from X-Ray Specs and the Voidoids.

From 1979 until 1986 our affair blossomed, as I progressed from 999 and Chelsea, through Killing Joke, to Husker Du, the London Cowboys and Jason and the Scorchers.

We had our bad days. That second Generation X album was a mistake.

But the good days, when a Damned t-shirt could lift your spirits, couldn’t be beaten.

And then she changed.

By the late 1980s VM had become just another record store, as keen on Phil Collins and Level 42 as your local WH Smith.

So I was diverted by the temptations of Meat Whiplash, near the Pannier Market, where she invited me in, not only to find Subway Sect being played, but people singing along to it. To be young was, indeed, very heaven.

And so the years passed. I grew older, greyer, more irritable and cynical. Not that you’d guess from reading these blogs.

And VM changed too. She moved to the other end of Armada Way, and then to the up-market neighbourhood of the Drake Circus mall. She must have married too, because she took on the name Zavvi and started sporting green.

Then I heard she was unwell and felt compelled to make a trip to her deathbed. It was worse than I thought. Queues of people, maybe unfeeling family members, were stripping her of her dignity. Books, Cds, DVDs and computer games were up to 30 per cent off.

And there was something worse.

She was playing Up, the Saturdays’ sub-Girls Aloud piece of fluff.

This song, which, with its talk of crossings and main intersections, sounds like a driving lesson set to music. You expect it to contain the line ‘please turn the car around using forward and reverse gears’. It was so supermarket-aisle it besmirched the memory of the woman VM had once been.

And then, as I left the store, a tear on my cheek, and a hollow feeling in my heart, she tried to call me back with one last whisper from the past.

She wheezed out the Wombats’ Is This Christmas, an attempt to show me that, even as she faced the great hereafter, in the form of a collapse into administration, she still had a little of the indie spirit in her bankrupt, economically downturned veins.

Sadly, the Wombats, modern heirs to the guitar-based adventurism we based our love on 30 years ago, are - like most current strum bands, whether indie, emo, or power pop - a pale shadow of the musical explorers from the days when rock still rolled.

I hurried away not daring to look back, and hearing only the death rattle of Girls Aloud’s The Promise as I sped from the mall.

Zavvi, nee VM, is no more. In her place is another HMV, still trying to converse with me via the language of the Stereophonics. Three times now, have I have crossed her threshold only to leave hurriedly assailed by not just More Life in a Tramps Vest, but Dakota and Have a Nice Day, possibly the most depressing, not to mention useless, song ever penned.

Still, I will always hold a candle for VM as she was, and the days when she would seduce me with the latest Slaughter and the Dogs single, but sadly must divest her of cool points for ascending to a retail afterlife to the tunes of the Saturdays and Wombats.

Latest standings:

1 Wimpey 1983 (Pistols) 7 cool points

2 Pannier Market (Jona Lewie/Cher/Mock Turtles) 6 cool points

3 Armada Centre (John Waite/Captain Pugwash) 4 cool points

4 The Ark (Queen/Foreigner) 0 cool points

4 TK Maxx (Robert Palmer) 0 cool points

6 Madhouse (Whiteshake) -3 cool points.

7 Zavvi RIP (Saturdays/Wombats) -4 cool points

8 Lloyds/TSB (Kid Rock/Madonna) -7 cool points

9 HMV (Stereophonics/Girls Aloud) -15 cool points.

Kid's stuff

2009-01-23T01:55:00.000-08:00

WITH all this talk of credit being crunched and economies down turning and recessions arriving like the inevitable umpteenth season of Dancing on Ice, I though I had better check on my savings. And boy was I in for a shock.

But first, let me tell you about the financial nest egg I have been hatching for the past 30 years.

In December 1978 I made the wise investment of opening an account with that fine fiscal institution Lloyds Bank.

This was because I had come into possession of a fabulous monetary bounty in the shape of a shiny new 50p piece. With the Queen’s head on it and everything.

This generous endowment was bestowed on me by my father for the reason that I had, the previous month, passed that most rigorous of examinations: O’ Level English Literature.

This was despite not actually getting to the end of George Elliott’s Silas Marner. In fact, not getting anywhere near the end of George Eliot’s Silas Marner.

And I didn’t even start Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford. Plus, my copy of William Shakespeare’s Henry the IV Part I met with a nasty mishap in chemistry.

I did read every edition of that marvellous literary publication Shoot! during the 1978/9 season, however. Unfortunately, this was not a favourite subject of the Oxford examinations board, despite Derby County winger Gordon ’Merlin’ Hill’s My Soccer Scene column being of Pulitzer Prize winning standard.

Still, thanks to those pocket revision guides, a packet of glucose tablets and staying up all night before the test, I managed to scrape a grade C.

In the ensuing jubilation, father passed me the family heirloom that was the 50p bit, and despite the temptation to splurge it on more editions of Shoot! I wisely entrusted it to Lloyds.

Not so wisely, it turned out 30 years down the line.

Being a trusting kind of guy I had decided to leave the currency to mature in one of the bank’s most lucrative accounts.

The sort of account designed for high rollers such as my self. High rollers with a C grade O’ Level in English Literature and a stack of Shoot! magazines cluttering his adolescent bedroom.

So after a third of a century, and with the prospect of financial meltdown facing us, I decided to cash in my chips, to collect my winnings and see how much my initial investment was worth in today’s money market.

In short, I wanted to know if I had accumulated enough to purchase a round of drinks in a pub on North Hill.

So I sauntered into the Lloyds/TSB branch in Royal Parade with my 30-year-old chequebook in hand and intent on liquefying my assets - and that’s where the true horror of the current banking disaster struck me.

There, on the wall of Lloyds/TSB was a huge TV screen.

And it was playing Kid Rock.

Now, I don’t need to tell you how shocking, insulting, disgusting and horrifying a Kid Rock video is. But I’m going to anyway.

And this wasn’t just any old Kid Rock nonsense. This was his execrable, feel-good, silly season, chart-topper, namely All Summer Long.

During this opus, Mr Rock assumes the identity, just for a change, of a brain-dead agrestic cretin.

He then formulates a mash up of the late Warren Zeavon’s excellent Werewolves of London, with his own home-spun, brainless lyrics, and a hefty dollop of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s southern rock classic Sweet Home Alabama.

As you can guess, I’m no fan of home-spun, brainlessness, nor agrestic cretinism, particularly in the guise of a tale about a reproductive encounter Mr Rock had back in 1989 when he was presumably less assuming of the identity of a brain-dead agrestic cretin to at least attract someone of the opposite gender.

And so I thought to myself: “So this is how the banks have been spending my bounteous investment. No wonder they are suffering the aftershocks of toxic debt and sub-prime lending. Not only have they been loaning cash to the likes of Mr Rock, who may have spent his mortgage on that boat he’s cavorting on in the video and on dressing like the sort of bloke you see at bus stops in Whitleigh, but they have also been decking out their foyers with ostentatious television sets.”

And then things go worse.

The next person to appear on the silver screen was none other than serial undergarment modeller and adoptive mother Madonna.

Only this time she was being abetted in her stomping disco machinations by scrawny boy-band evacuee Justin Timberlake, and someone called Timbaland.

Sadly a ravenous timber wolf did not also make an appearance in this promo.

The ex-Mrs Penn, ditto ex-Mrs Ritchie, did, however, manage to goosestep her way over the hulking remains of the US automotive industry during a performance, aided by her tried and trusted underwear sporting technique.

In fact the ex-Mrs Penn/Ritchie performed in a mind-bogglingly scary flesh-coloured basque, while she sang about having one last hump in the face of Armageddon.

The song, if the accumulation of grunting to a thumping backbeat can be described as such, was appositely titled 4 Minutes to Save the World.

Which is about what US big cheese Barack Obama will have now that the banking system is in collapse, partly, it appears to an outsider, because it has been wantonly bailing out epic Kid Rock videos and splashing out on TV screens for ostentatious foyers.

I was so shocked, insulted, disgusted and horrified I demanded the aggregation of my prudent 1978 deposit back, with the accrued interest, that very instant.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten that I had closed the account when I withdrew the £1.85 it contained in 1987, on a day when I was particularly in need of a pint of Websters’ bitter.

So in revenge for the whole monetary muck-up I’ve docked Lloyds/TSB cool points for: Kid Rock, his Whitleigh bus stop dress sense, Madonna’s underwear, not thinking of something better to do in the face of Armageddon, the banking crisis, having TV screens showing pop videos when you are trying to work out your finances, and me having no money.

That’s minus seven cool points. I’m taking another off because All Summer Long is horrible too.

Latest standings:

1 Wimpey 1983 (Pistols) 7 cool points

2 Pannier Market (Jona Lewie/Cher/Mock Turtles) 6 cool points

3 Armada Centre (John Waite/Captain Pugwash) 4 cool points

4 The Ark (Queen/Foreigner) 0 cool points

4 TK Maxx (Robert Palmer) 0 cool points

6 Madhouse (Whiteshake) -3 cool points.

7 Lloyds/TSB (Kid Rock/Madonna) -7 cool points

8 HMV (Stereophonics/Girls Aloud) -15 cool points.

Market forces

2008-12-22T03:06:00.001-08:00

IN MY daring quest to find the Coolest Place in Plymouth if Not The World by listening to in-store music I’ve shied away from Christmas records - until I enjoyed what can only be described as the Pannier Market Mash-up.

I’ll explain. But, first you have to know something about the pannier market, or as it’s now, somewhat grandly, known: Plymouth City Market.

This brilliant edifice is, for the uninitiated, a sort of pre-industrial version of the Drake Circus mall. Only for people without money. Or a life.

People like me, in fact.

It’s a wondrous place. Where else can you buy an Elvis CD box set, an aerial photograph of Anfield, a skull-and-crossbones pirate flag, one of those fluffy jackets with wolves on the back, and a tin badge bearing the seasonal message ‘**** off you nosey *******’? And all for less than the cost of a round of coffee’s in the Drake Circus Starbucks. Marvellous.

Now for the Christmas music bit. You see, if you’re trying to judge coolness you can’t take Christmas music into account. That’s because, with a few exceptions, Christmas records are rubbish.

The other thing is, a fairly cool place may feel compelled at yuletide to stop broadcasting proper songs and instead subject customers to the potentially lethal East-17 hit Back for Good, for instance, or, even worse, Wham’s lachrymose Last Christmas, or, if a sadist has been put in charge of the public address system, anything by Sir Cliff Richard, seasonal or not.

So that’s why I have refused point blank to enter any shop that is airing any of those offensive noises or any of the traditional Christmas staples including Do They Know It’s Christmas, Merry Xmas Everyone, I Wish it Could be Christmas Everyday and any song going by the title of The Power of Love.

That also explains why all I’ve bought for people this Christmas is an Elvis CD box set, an aerial photograph of Anfield, a skull-and-crossbones pirate flag, one of those fluffy jackets with wolves on the back, and a tin badge bearing the seasonal message ‘**** off you nosey *******’.

I just hope the vicar‘s wife likes badges.

Now, back to the pannier market. I was wandering through this coliseum of collectable consumer durables when I found myself, at just about the bit where I was admiring the fluffy jackets with wolves on the back, bombarded by Jona Lewie’s perennially popular, and perennially annoying, anti-war tear-jerker Stop the Cavalry.

Mr Lewie, for the uninitiated, was one of those weird middle-aged men that Rough Trade inflicted on us as the 1970s converged with the 1980s.

Now, had he been a pre-1990s Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe or Graham Parker, this would have resulted in the pannier market being the target for a fusillade of cool points.

As Mr Lewis is not one of those, or even Lene Lovich, and because his record has some hideous oom-pah-pahing in it, and is therefore less endurable than the First World War, he gets just one point, for not being Sir Cliff or East-17.

Anyhow, to avoid death by oom-pah-pah I fled to the elegant gents’ toilets where I admired my ablutions under the disco-esque purple lighting.

On re-emerging I sallied past the fantastic noodle bar and the stall selling pirate flags only to find a real-life artillery attack was in progress.

Then I realised it wasn’t the sound of Howitzers blowing all hell out of the second hand DVD stand but something even louder and more terrifying.

It was Cher.

Yes, Cherilyn Sarkisian, better known as the former Mrs Sonny Bono and the former Mrs Gregg Allman, was attempting to annihilate as many people as possible with her ferocious cowboy-outlaw-how’s-about-it-big-boy metaphor Just Like Jesse James.

This tender Wild West-themed musical chat-up caused me to run for my life, zipping past the booth flogging tin badges bearing the seasonal message ‘**** off you nosey *******’ and towards the pet shop and bag stand.

But as I reached this area I was stopped in my tracks by what I at first took to be a burst of machine gun fire but on closer listening emerged as the jangly guitar antics of the Mock Turtles’ Can You Dig It.

I don’t know about Mock Turtles, mock baggy is more to the point.

This band, fronted by the brother of that bloke who plays Alan Partridge, were a sort of not-quite-cool version of the Stone Roses. If they had been the Stone Roses they would have been really cool. Still, they could also have been Flowered Up, so small mercies and all that.

And I also thought that a baggy hit from the early 1990s was pretty appropriate for the pannier market, Plymouth being, lets face it, the only place in the world were you still see men with curtain haircuts and voluminous pants, outside of Shaun Ryder’s house that is.

Plymouth is also soft rock capital of the world, so it was no surprise to hear Ms Sarkisian’s tale of frontier town frolics, and, it being December, something with a seasonal message, even if it was to do with conflict down the ages.

I also realised that if I ran around the pannier market fast enough I could sample all three of these songs at once.

So this is what I did, creating the aforementioned Pannier Market Mash-up. It went a little like this:

Jangly guitar intro, oom pah-pah, you’re struttin’ into town like your slingin’ a gun, can you dig it, oh yeah, marching to and from the enemy, honey are you looking for some trouble tonight, can you did it, oh yeah, nuclear fall out zone, shoot ‘em all down, can you dig it, dub a dub a dum dum, dub a dub a dum, tonight youre gonna go down in flames just like Jesse James, I will stop the cavalry, so **** off you nosey *******.

Actually, this last bit was yelled at me by a geezer with a curtain haircut, wearing a fluffy jacket with wolves on the back, wrapped in a pirate flag and sporting a tin badge bearing the seasonal message… you get the picture.

On second thoughts this may just have been a figment of my imagination.

So how did the pannier market, sorry Plymouth City Market, fare in the Coolest Place in Plymouth if not the World stakes?

Not bad really. I’m giving it one cool point for Mr Lewie not being Sir Cliff or East-17, another for the anti-war message, but minus one for the oom-pah-pahs, one point for the Mock Turtles being sort of cool and not being Flowered Up, one point for Cher’s weird gold-rush-gunfight-for-casual-pick-up metaphor, despite her voice being more terrifying than a shell blowing up, a point for the disco lights in the loos, and another for the fluffy jackets with wolves on the back and the tin badges bearing the seasonal message ‘**** off you nosey *******’. That’s six whole cool points. Beat that you post-industrial Drake Circus mall. Latest standings:

1 Wimpey 1983 (Pistols) 7 cool points

2 Pannier Market (Jona Lewie/Cher/Mock Turtles) 6 cool points

3 Armada Centre (John Waite/Captain Pugwash) 4 cool points

4 The Ark (Queen/Foreigner) 0 cool points

4 TK Maxx (Robert Palmer) 0 cool points

6 Madhouse (Whiteshake) -3 cool points.

7 HMV (Stereophonics/Girls Aloud) -15 cool points.

Personality crisis

2008-12-17T03:03:00.001-08:00

CIAO. I’ve found myself going slightly Italian of late, due in no small part to the enjoyable visit I paid to Il Pezzettino in what I can only describe as the Calabrian enclave that is Stoke village.

It was in this fine establishment that I enjoyed that most Italian of beverages, a hot chocolate, beneath a fluttering red, white and green tricolour, the beaming smile of Fabio Cannavaro and his World Cup winners and a host of Mediterranean munchables.

I was also reading William Goldman’s marvellous The Princess Bride, featuring the dastardly Sicilian Vizzini, and listening to four young men on an adjoining table as they discussed that great Italian boxer Joe Calzaghe.

What do you mean he’s not Italian? He’s as Italiano as Giorgio Chinaglia and Giuseppe Wilson, and probably Caffé Nero too.

And don’t you know that hot chocolate was invented by the Emperor Nestle in about 235AD. Empoli is the hot chocolate capital of the world is it not? A giant factory in the heart of the city pumps out gallon after gallon day and night through a complex set of pipes which discharge into barges on the Adriatic coast. Or have I got that slightly wrong?

No matter, I was sipping a delightful drink, which lived up to its name by being both chocolaty and very hot, while I read Mr Goldman’s witty post-modern fairy tale and ear wigged on the four lads’ conversation.

A tale of fencing, fighting, torture, poison, true love, hate, revenge, giants, hunters, bad men, good men, beautiful ladies, snakes, spiders, beasts, chases, escapes, lies, truth, passion and miracles.

Yes, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award has them all. Except for torture. No, hang on a minute, it was presented by Gary Lineker. Only joking.

Actually, this is the description on the jacket of The Princess Bride, but it pretty much fits the back-slapping marathon that has the nation gripped for about one evening just before Christmas each year.

And this is where the four lads come in because they were adamant that Senor Calzaghe should be the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year (this was the day before the award was presented) because he was : A) a brilliant boxer, and B) nothing to do with the Olympics or motorcars.

I concurred with their sensible choice, but decided that the award being:

A) on the never-known-to-rig-the-voting-in-anything BBC, and B) the BBC being the appointed national TV channel of the Olympics, that this, and every other award it is associated with, would be given to someone with something to do with the Olympics.

Count Senor Calzaghe, obvious winner that he is, out.

“But he’s been undefeated for 15 years,” said one lad.

So has Fezzik, the giant in The Princess Bride, but I don’s see him winning the old camera-stuck-on-a -plinth trophy.

“Andy Murray,” said another one of the young fellows. “I’ll vote for him when he wins something.”

I agreed with this statement too, as I marvelled at the little flakes of chocolate that were floating on my very hot hot chocolate, but thought the chances of Mr Murray landing a grand slam were as remote as those of the evil Prince Humperdink winning the heart of the beautiful Buttercup in the book.

“Don’t get me started on Lewis Hamilton,” offered another. “It doesn’t count as sport if you are in a car.”

Again I agreed, this time topping up my drink with an extra portion they had kindly supplied me in a little metal jug, and wondering if the dashing Spanish sword-wielder Inigo would count as a sportsman because he brandishes a foil.

There was then some muttering about Chris Hoy and other cyclists, who again shouldn’t count as sportsmen because they are on a machine. You’re not going to go very far if the wheel comes off even if you have got thighs the size of a woman’s waist, which made me think of Fezzik again and how if I was Mr Goldman I’d be thinking of bringing a law suit against the makers of Shrek.

With this I noticed that my cup had Segafredo Zanetti Quality written on it, and Hot Ciok too, none of which I could find explained in my Collins Gem Italian Dictionary, or indeed the pages of The Princess Bride, although, after reading the modern classic, I now know that there’s a big difference between sort of dead, mostly dead and all dead.

If you are sort of dead you can be brought back to life by a miracle man, same goes for mostly dead, but he will need to coat his magic in chocolate, a bit like my drink.

If you’re all dead you’re Gareth Gates’ career, or Christine Ohuruogu’s odds in the Sports Personality bun fight.

The four young men had sensibly decided by now not to discuss her chances anyway, and it’s not hard to reason why.

This gave me an opportunity to delve back into The Princess Bride, which is a cracking read even if you haven’t seen the movie.

Mr Goldman, the brilliant screenwriter responsible for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Marathon Man among others, wrote his novel after penning the movie script.

But he takes things way further.

“I suppose it will go to that big-nosed swimmer,” one of the youthful chaps surmised, bringing me back to the Sports Personality awards.

This I took as a fairly accurate description of Olympic medallist Rebecca Adlington, and caused me to imagine her as Buttercup, The Princess Bride herself, minus the Jimmy Choos and big nose, of course.

Buttercup’s desire not to join the royal family of Florin, because even though you end up with huge amounts of cash and power you’re shackled to an annoying prince who likes killing animals (I hope you’re reading this Kate Middleton), is the central theme of this enjoyable romp.

Sensibly, Buttercup would rather marry her true love, the farm boy Westley, because A) he’s nice, and B) she doesn’t want to end up as Sports Personality of the Year like other princesses I could mention.

Westley has set out to win Buttercup‘s heart, with the help of the aforementioned Inigo and Fezzik, and the miracle man and the mysterious Dread Pirate Roberts, who is not Somalian.

Of course, he is hampered in his amorous pursuit by the egregious Prince Humperdink, his evil sidekick Count Rugen and that pesky Sicilian Vizzini who ends up… no I won’t spoil it.

There’s loads of fencing, fighting, torture, poison, true love, hate, revenge, etc, etc, you get the picture.

But in the end, the course of the true love, just like the dregs of my hot chocolate, runs smooth. Ahh.

Now if only Senor Calzaghe had won the Sports Personality award this blog would too have had a fairy tale ending.

Pirate radio

2008-11-26T02:07:00.000-08:00

HEY, Plymouth is a bit like one of those sweets you get in a tin of Quality Street, not the ones in the brown rappers that are always left after everyone has delved in, but the Strawberry Delight ones. And this is because the city is sort of hard on the outside but soft in the middle, if you get my meaning.

For Plymouth, the hard bit is represented by its historical association with pirates and other seafaring folk, for instance, and the soft bit in the middle is, as I’ve said before, soft rock.

In my quest to find The Coolest Place in Plymouth if Not the World I’ve already come across Queen, Foreigner, Whiteshake and now what do I find while strolling through Plymouth’s proto-mall, the Armada Centre, but John Waite’s 1984 chartbuster Missing You.

That’s John Waite, ex-leader of histrionic big-sound popsters The Babys, not to be confused with grizzled bar-fly crooner Tom Waits.

Still, Mr Waite’s slab of MOR misery, Missing You, is actually a brilliant song which relays the sad tale of a jilted John who keeps telling himself he ain’t missing his former lover when it’s obvious he’s obsessed and these days would be in danger of having a harassment charge slammed on him, especially after the bit where his ‘heart is breaking down this long-distance line tonight’ and he’s telling her ‘how desperate I‘ve become’. Get the handcuffs.

And talk about apposite. As I gambolled past Laura Ashley’s flower-print sofas and Wilkinson’s plastic buckets I imagined Mr Waite was actually the voice of British retail crying to the credit-crunched shoppers as they storm past its deflationary wares.

“Since you’ve been gone away.” Indeed.

Now, despite being of the flaccid form of rock music, Missing You is a fine record and definitely on the cool side of the river.

It’s so cool it’s even been covered by the wonderful Alison Krauss, in a duet with Mr Waite. And Lemonheads’ front man Evan Dando has had a stab too. Cool or what?

However, like the brown-wrappered Quality Street no one likes, I wouldn’t bother with the Tina Turner effort, or the Rod Stewart one and I’d steer clear of Mr Waite’s 12-inch version if you‘ve got an allergy to synths.

There is however, another version that is definitely worth seeking out - the Captain Pugwash rehash.

On the day I mused through the Armada Centre Mr Waite was performing a must-be-heard-to-be-believed duet of Missing You with the animated captain of the Black Pig.

Or rather with the Captain Pugwash ride that is stationed on the corner of Peacocks, which is a woman’s clothes shop near the lift and not a vendor of extravagant peafowl.

Capt Pugwash was augmenting Mr Waite’s tale of trial separation with excerpts from his theme tune, the fantastic Trumpet Hornpipe.

This worked very well, the jaunty sea shanty adding a true flavour of ocean waves Plymouth to the Armada Centre’s antiseptic shininess.

Ahhh, makes you wish you were being sprayed with something wet and salty. On second thoughts, maybe not.

But, like the recession, it was so topical. I wondered if the Somali pirates that have been causing such bother of late ever gathered around the mainbrace, whatever that is, and enjoyed a knees up to the Trumpet Hornpipe.

I also wondered if any of these buccaneering buccaneers were called Pugwash, Master Mate or Tom the Cabin Boy. Or even the urban myth versions Master Bates, Seaman… you know the rest.

Or do these pesky picaroons parade around the plank, or as it’s called in this country the Rio Ferdinand.

No matter, I’m going to dish out cool points like they were captured super tankers in the shipping lanes of the Gulf of Aden, or wherever else those pirate fellows swash their buckles.

And I’m going to add to them in honour of the Teddy Bears’ Picnic ride which is just a bit down the corridor from the Captain Pugwash one.

But, don’t you just hate it when you’re riding on one of those things and some little kid comes alone and stares at you during the whole ride, like he’s the one that should be having a go. Honestly, kids today, don’t know when it’s impolite to stare. Anyone would think you shouldn’t be on the thing.

Sorry, got carried away then, back to the cool points. So that’s one point for Missing You, one for Alison Krauss’ version, one for Capt Pugwash’s Trumpet Hornpipe and one for the Teddy Bears’ Picnic ride.

Incidentally, those bears only have one tea cup between the three of them. That’s not very hygienic. And I want to know who’s had the slice of cake that’s missing. The big bear has a funny look on his face, I’ll bet he had something to do with it.

Sorry, carried away again. That’s four cool points for the Armada Centre.

But unfortunately, it hasn’t toppled Wimpey 1983 from the summit of the current Coolest Place in Plymouth if not the World league. Good try though. Latest standings:

1 Wimpey 1983 (Pistols) 7 cool points

2 Armada Centre (John Waite/Captain Pugwash) 4 cool points

3 The Ark (Queen/Foreigner) 0 cool points

4 TK Maxx (Robert Palmer) 0 cool points

5 Madhouse (Whiteshake) -3 cool points.

6 HMV (Stereophonics/Girls Aloud) -15 cool points.

Cauliflower ears

2008-11-24T02:15:00.000-08:00

AS I entered the HMV store in New George Street I was alarmed by what can only be described as the agonised bellow of a water buffalo being castrated without the benefit of an anaesthetic.

That’s right, they were playing the Stereophonics.

Fortunately, the song was coming to an end so I was able to forge ahead to the book section thinking I’d survived the worst they could throw at me.

Boy, was I wrong.

Within seconds of the atmosphere being cleared of Stereophonics pollution, something almost as bad happened.

They played Girls Aloud.

Yup, the new Girls Aloud single The Promise.

Now, the only promise I want Mrs Cole, the three plastic ones and the weird-looking one to make is to promise to never sing again. Unfortunately, seeing as they’ve been hanging around for years and have never aged one second and show no signs of giving up being Girls Aloud for a geological epoch I guess I’m stuck with them.

So they assaulted me with their 19th, yes that’s right: 19th, hit single and if you haven’t heard their latest up-tempo, sixties style, jangly offering, you are in for a real treat. Provided you’re the sort of person who likes Muzak.

The Promise basically rehashes the theme tune to the 1970s BBC celebrity quiz show Blankety Blank, only with the ingenious idea of taking the lyrics - which just went ‘blankty blank, blankety blank’ - and dumbing them down a bit.

I guess they didn’t want to keep the original in case people thought the producer had told the girls: “Forget about learning the words, just sing whatever comes into your heads.”

So I had to endure The Promise while I waited in an immense queue to buy my book.

Now I’ve read James Joyce’s Ulysses, and I’ve also read the lyrics to The Promise, and I gotta tell you, Ulysses is easier to understand - and makes more sense.

That’s because The Promise makes no sense whatsoever, and strangles all life out of the English language, and then burns the corpse for good measure.

The song has something to do with a young woman, or women, singing about making a promise, but it is starting to fade.

This promise seems to be that the woman/women didn’t want to fall in love with a man who is described in terms that make him immensely desirable. What’s that all about?

It contains bizarre lines, such as ‘my Aladdin’s lamp is down’, ‘Giving up just looking into windows’, and ‘Here I am, walking Primrose’.

What the…

Still, compared to Stereophonics it’s James Joyce’s Ulysses.

The Welsh three-piece, aside from making a racket that sounds like industrial machinery being played inside an abattoir, manage to mutilate our mother tongue even more than Girls Aloud, or whoever writes their songs.

That brilliant journalist Everett True, in Hey Ho Let’s Go, his biography of the Ramones, called the Stereophonics a crime against music.

I think he was being a bit generous. I’d up the charge to a crime against humanity.

And I say this, because someone, Hitler maybe, who knows, had decided to follow The Promise by broadcasting The Stereophonics’ More Life in a Tramp’s Vest.

That’s the Stereophonics followed by Girls Aloud followed by the Stereophonics. Someone call the United Nations.

What is wrong with you HMV? I though the idea of playing music in-store was to get people to come in?

Then I realised the cunning plan. The store was packed, right? The queue was immense, correct? Perhaps they were trying to clear the place.

Playing the Stereophonics followed by Girls Aloud followed by the Stereophonics is like ordering an artillery bombardment, followed by a nerve gas attack, and then dropping the atomic bomb. And not in a good way, either.

Despite this HMV remained crowded with people, so I had to endure the lumpen stomper that is More Life in a Tramp’s Vest while I paid for my book.

Actually, more intelligence in a flea’s brain would be more accurate. This ditty is, I think, told from the perspective of a supermarket shelf-stacker who can’t wait for knocking-off time.

Stereophonics’ main man Kelly Jones manages to rhyme ‘final hour’ with ‘cauliflower’ with ‘buying a car’.

Dylan Thomas he ain’t.

So it brings me to award the sought after cool points in my continuing quest to find the Coolest Place in Plymouth if not the World, and you can guess that for HMV it’s going to be pretty bad news.

In fact, it’s going to be even worse, because I expect HMV, home of great music Cds and all, and a place where you can buy a Ramones t-shirt, to have some credibility. It does itself no favours broadcasting a Stereophonics and Girls Aloud sandwich.

So for playing Girls Aloud it gets minus seven cool points. That’s one for each member, one for the horrible song, and another for their connection to Ashley Cole.

For the Stereophonics I’m docking a further eight.

This is because I’m working on a law my brother brought into being when he won a competition at some useless disco roadshow in 1982. I can’t remember what he had to do, eat an onion or name the capital city of France or something. Anyhow, he had the choice between taking home an Adam and the Ants t-shirt or a Fame t-shirt. He chose the Fame one.

When I asked him about his strange choice, he replied, logically: “If I took the Adam and the Ants t-shirt people will think I like them, but if I took Fame they’ll know I’m taking the p***.”

There’s nothing worse that pretending to be cool and being totally naff.

At least Girls Aloud don’t think they’re artists. Mr Jones take note.

So HMV became the latest shop failing to dislodge Wimpey 1983 from the top of the current Coolest Place in Plymouth if not the World league.

Latest standings:

1 Wimpey 1983 (Pistols) 7 cool points

2 The Ark (Queen/Foreigner) 0 cool points

3 TK Maxx (Robert Palmer) 0 cool points

4 Madhouse (Whiteshake) -3 cool points.

5 HMV (Stereophonics/Girls Aloud) -15 cool points.

Mad Maxx

2008-11-21T01:44:00.001-08:00

WE ALL know Plymouth is famous as a hotbed of intellectual debate and high culture, and immensely fashionable to boot, but it has its dark underbelly and that is its status as the capital city of soft rock.

This tragic fact became evident as I continued my quest to find the coolest place in the metropolis, if not the planet, via the mechanism of listening to publicly broadcast music.

If you read my last posting to the blogosphere you’ll recall that the Cornwall Street Wimpey has held the undisputed crown of cool since 1983 when some misguided burger-flipper played the populace the Sex Pistols as they ate.

My latest attempt to divest the meat-and-bun-vendor of its title took me to that habitat of habitual fashionistas: the bargain clothing store Madhouse, in Armada Way.

Surely in a place so closely associated with cut-price bomber jackets I’d find credible music. Alas no.

But first a word about Madhouse. This fine establishment is not, in fact, anything like a mental hospital. At least none of the ones I’ve been kept in, I mean visited.

It is also nothing like the 1980s TV comedy series staring Russ Abbot.

The young lady behind the counter didn’t look anything like Copperman or Mr Abbot’s sidekick, the mountainous Bella Emberg. Mind you, if you added a couple of hundred pounds… Only joking, she was very nice.

Unlike the music, which was stuck in the decade characterized by profligate consumerism and Liverpool FC being any good.

That’s because Madhouse was playing, wait for it, Here I Go Again by serial hair-spray abusers Whitesnake.

This 1987 song may have topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, but it gets precisely minus three Cool Points for being horrible and making no sense whatsoever.

The basic lyric seems to be the ramblings of a tramp as he regrets doing very little with his life and then resolves to keep on tramping.

I’ve docked another point for the video which featured a young woman rolling around on car bonnets in what must have been the US version of Vospers’, wearing nothing but her undies. This did not occur the last time I took a trip to Marsh Mills.

There then follow several scenes where the same woman willfully attempts to distract Whiteshake singer David Coverdale as he is driving an expensive automobile. At one stage she hangs out of the passenger side window flashing her legs and at another juncture gives Mr Coverdale a passionate kiss while he seems to be overtaking.

And they fine you for talking on your mobile phone these days.

In haste I rushed from Madhouse lest I lost what was left of my marbles.

And headed straight for that treasure trove of fine consumer durables: TK Maxx.

If you have never been in TK Maxx on a Saturday afternoon I can highly recommend it, especially to all you thrill-seekers out there.

The best way I can describe it, is as the retail equivalent of the Normandy landings, only less civilised.

And what musical delight did I find playing? Only Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love.

Those of you unfamiliar with this 1986 monster hit need to understand that it was popular mostly for its video, which featured Mr Palmer dressed in the guise of a trainee bank clerk dancing like he was being slowly electrocuted in front of a band of identically, and sensibly, dressed young ladies.

For some inexplicable reason this video became a major talking point, causing men to salivate and feminists to moan about the objectification of women.

It had neither effect on me. I just thought the women looked so bored and moved with such little rhythm that they must have been lobotomised. Then I realised this is how everyone responds to Robert Palmer’s Addicted to Love.

It’s also fairly appropriate that a song that starts with ‘the lights are on but you’re not home’ was playing in TK Maxx.

Although, the version the store was blasting out must have been some sort of special re-mix because Mr Palmer appeared to be singing a duet with a women with an incredibly husky and sexy voice.

Maybe it was Bonnie Tyler, or Eartha Kitt, or Linda Blair in the Exorcist.

But whoever, it was certainly different.

Mr Palmer would sing ‘you can’t sleep you can’t eat, there’s no doubt you’re in deep’ and the husky woman would respond with ‘can all till trained staff please report to the front desk’.

I preferred it to the original version. In fact, I’m going to give it a whole Cool Point just for that.

Unfortunately, I’m going to take it away again because if you examine the lyrics to Addicted to Love it’s pretty creepy.

The song is sung by a man, possibly a trainee bank clerk, who is endeavouring to seduce a woman by basically telling her she is biologically driven to accept his advances. He’s convincing her that she is going through some sort of amorous cold turkey and that only by letting him have his oats is she going to feel well enough to do anything, including shopping in TK Maxx.

At one point, the lecherous money-lender even sings: “Your will is not your own, your heart swells, your teeth grind, another kiss and you’ll be mine’.

This woman is clearly going into some form of anaphylactic shock. Swelling heart, grinding teeth? She needs fresh air and an ambulance, not Mr Palmer, dressed like someone from Barclays’ front counter, slobbering all over her.

So both TK Maxx and Madhouse fail to dislodge Wimpey 1983 from the top of the current Coolest Place in Plymouth if not the World league. Latest standings:

1 Wimpey 1983 (Sex Pistols) 7 cool points

2 The Ark (Queen/Foreigner) 0 cool points

3 TK Maxx (Robert Palmer) 0 cool points

4 Madhouse (Whiteshake) -3 cool points.

We Aren't The Champions

2008-11-20T01:58:00.001-08:00

EVERY man needs a hobby, a wise old feller once said to me, as he dropped the cat, the glue pot and the helium-filled balloons.

And he was right, though word of warning: do not let your defence barrister rely on this in court.

So I have a hobby. Apart from reading books in coffee shacks, and watching TV in Chinese takeaways, and eating foreign cheese during the European Championships.

I like listening to music. In public places.

You know, that great free gift to mankind: mellifluous tunes played over the PA system in any supermarket, newsagent’s or public convenience.

Nothing beats enjoying the food of love while waiting in a mile long queue in Primark or attempting to leave your strides unbepissed as you jostle for position in the erebus of a cavern that is the Armada Way gents.

It all started back in 1983, when my good friend Vic Smith and I were enjoying that traditional pastime of young men: a cup of tea in the Cornwall Street Wimpey.

While half-way through the tiniest cup of char known to man, and which at about 25p was proving to be a less than sound investment, Vic suddenly looked up in astonishment and said: “They’re playing Pretty Vacant.”

And they were. The in-house stereo system was entertaining the assorted diners with the Sex Pistols’ classic 1977 chart favourite.

This was immensely appropriate because the term ‘pretty vacant’ was a fairly accurate description of the flavour of a cup of Wimpey tea in those days.

And it got me thinking. You can’t get cooler than playing the Pistols to the sort of shopper who likes a cheeseburger with their shake.

So the Cornwall Street Wimpey officially became the coolest place in Plymouth, if not the world. Thanks to Rotten, Cook, Jones and Matlock.

That is, until now.

I’ve decided to trawl the city once again in search for the shop/pub/loo playing the coolest vibes, bro.

And I started with the Ark pet emporium in Colin Campbell Court. This was only because I desperately needed to buy whatever it was that could unstick a helium-filled balloon and a cat.

But I found something I didn’t expect: soft rock.

When I entered the land of small animals I found they were being harangued with the sound of Queen’s bombastic air-puncher We Are The Champions.

Tiny rats, gerbils and hamsters cowered in their cages as the 1970s rock goliaths reinforced the natural order with a song that pretty much spells out man’s dominion over the animal kingdom.

Yes, we are the champions my friend, and you little mammals, well, you are serving your sentence, but have committed no crime.

And when fabulous Freddie Mercury lets rip with ‘it’s been no bed of roses, no pleasure cruise’, you just know he’s tried to find a parking space in Colin Campbell Court on a Saturday afternoon. God rest his soul.

So for Queen, despite the song causing the rodent population of the Ark to suffer a bout of clinical depression, I awarded the store a whole three Cool Points – one for the song, one for Freddie’s moustache and one for Brian May’s astrophysics degree.

And then I took them away again.

Because, before I could exit, the up-tempo fist-waver was followed by the hideous cacophony of Foreigner’s I Want To Know What Love Is.

This had the effect of turning every creature in the store into a gibbering, maudlin wreck.

Gerbils were at the bars of their cages, pleading with me: “I want to know what love is, I want you to show me.”

And an African Grey parrot mouthed: “It looks like love has finally found me,” as he pointed to the price tag on his cage and gave me the thumbs up.

Even a sad-looking baboon wailed: “In my life there’s been heartache and pain, don’t know if I can face it again.”

Actually, this turned out to be someone who had wandered in from the bus stop in Western Approach.

I still felt sorry for these poor creatures, and wanted to take them all home with me. But I couldn’t. With a tearful eye I hurried out into picturesque Colin Campbell Court, before the awful guitar solo made me throw up.

So the Ark gets nul points for coolness, despite having Queen in its ranks. That means The Cornwall Street Wimpey (1983) is still the undefeated champion of the world. But for how much longer?

First of the Mohicans

2008-11-11T05:14:00.001-08:00

I’M NOT in favour of cruelty to animals, or bad writing about rock and roll, or coffee shops running out of chocolate - but I got all three when I took The Wasp Factory to the Marks and Spencer Espresso Bar in the Drake Circus mall.

Iain Banks’ gothic tale of two demented brothers is pretty grim reading, but not as grim as sitting in the complex’s freezing lobby trying to consume a rapidly cooling cup of Earl Grey tea.

I don’t know about M and S - S and M would have been more like it.

I’d ended up having to drink tea because my original order of mocha had been given short shrift due to the Espresso Bar having run out of chocolate. Mocha is, it transpires, a hellish cross-breeding of coffee and chocolate.

There was, it follows, no hot chocolate on offer too. That left me with the choice of a latte or cappuccino or an espresso.

Having had enough of lattes and cappuccinos lately, and having learned that an espresso takes about two gulps to drink, I went for the pot of tea.

A bit of a cop out, I know, but I wanted to read through a whole chapter.

This turned out to be as difficult as getting Newcastle United away from the bottom of the league.

Firstly, the mall is noisy. Very noisy. There was a non-stop hubbub of voices, which sound not unlike the ones inside a mad person’s head, except these aren’t screaming things like ‘kill’, ‘maim’ and ‘visit Starbucks’ (don‘t ask me how I know this).

Then there was the sub Antarctic temperature in this portion of the mall, as a bone-chilling mistral blitzed its way through the foyer every time someone went through the automatic doors.

Then there was the unique musical-tables game that was going on all around me. One woman in particular seemed hell bent on moving every table and chair in my vicinity until she had collected enough furniture to seat a family the size of The Waltons including in-laws.

I did, however, learn how to preserve the heat in a cup of tea, a vital survival skill in the tundra-like environs I found myself in.

After my first cup froze faster than I could say ‘oi, stop moving those tables around’, I discovered that the best thing to do is pour a tiny bit into your cup from the pot and don’t add any milk.

Of course, this means you look like some sort of nut job, but bearing mind I was surrounded by people shifting furniture willy-nilly I was in good company.

So I turned to Mr Banks’ debut novel and, once again, I was caught in the ‘writers should leave rock and roll alone’ trap.

This book is all about a particularly nasty piece of teenage work called Frank who does unspeakable things to tiny animals and little children on a north east coast Scottish island where he lives with his mad scientist dad.

I’m not sure if you are supposed to have sympathy with this character, because I just wanted to punch his lights out most of the time.

But the bit that got me hot under the collar the most was when Frank went into his nearest town to see a punk band from Inverness with the cliché-ridden name of the Vomits.

Mr Banks wrote: “The lead singer had a Mohican haircut and lots of chains and zips.”

Frank is 16. The book tells us he was nine in 1973. That makes it set in 1980. Punk bands didn’t have ‘Mohican’ sporting singers for another year at least.

This era of punk was BTE - Before the Exploited.

Remember them? That loveable group of musos from Edinburgh famous for going on Top of the Pops and performing Dead Cities, a re-write of The Clash’s City of the Dead with the ingenious gimmick of having all the wit and intelligence taken out of it. Oh, and the tune.

Still, the Exploited were not totally lame, unlike, say, Razorlight, and did in fact make some half-brilliant records. Attack was one of them.

They also, by virtue of their skinhead meets punk ethos, virtually invented the genre of Oi as we know and admire it, although Sham 69, the Cockney Rejects and others may like to shoulder some of the blame.

This made the Exploited’s Mohican-sporting singer Wattie Buchan a prime mover and a bona fide fashion leader.

Before the Exploited punks had spiky hair, often died. Once he’d got his mug in Sounds you couldn’t move for clones of the rotund ex-squaddie.

But the thing is, the Exploited were skinheads until 1981 when Wattie adopted his ground-breaking barnet.

I find it hard to believe there would be a Mohicaned punk singer kicking around Inverness before Wattie. Although I could be wrong.

Still, I reckon it was Mr Banks, who brought out his book in 1984, that might have got slightly confused.

There were also no Mohican-wearing punks at the M and S Espresso Bar on the day I mixed my Earl Grey tea with the Wasp Factory, although the serial furniture re-arranger was only one rung down the ladder from being manic and aggressive enough to have fronted either the Exploited or the Vomits or even to have been Frank’s long-vanished mother.

All on my Owen

2008-11-10T04:33:00.000-08:00

I WAS doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice and a band with a wrecked singer as I enjoyed the pacific surroundings of the wonderful Canadian Muffin Company.

That’s because I was sipping an amazing concoction called a Café Amandine and reading John Irving’s anti-war epic A Prayer for Owen Meany.

In fact, I was feeling pretty peacenik myself standing at the counter in my Clash Straight to Hell t-shirt, the song it was advertising being about ‘bamboo kids’ with the ‘Amerasian blues‘, plus having Irving’s brick-like book wedged under my arm.

In it, John Wheelwright, the central character and pal to tragic little Owen Meany, escapes the Vietnam War and winds up in Canada, like thousands of draft-dodgers.

And I felt a bit like him, what with my clothing brandishing the name of a band that had sung the anti-draft classic The Call Up.

But, of course, while this country is involved in two messy wars, we have no conscription.

However, my erstwhile colleague, that fine journalist Rob Preece, had warned me that Coffee Republic may have its own army, even if it doesn’t have a state broadcaster or royal family, and after I wrote that I did not enjoy their flat-screen TV idea it may be about to declare war on me.

So I had fled to the safe haven of the Canadian Muffin Company, in Armada Way, in the hope of being allowed to claim political asylum.

Unfortunately, political asylum was not written on the huge board above the coffee machines, and I suspected that Macchiato and Senza Schiuma were drinks and not ways of taking out citizenship.

So I just ordered the Café Amandine, £2 worth of cappuccino with almond syrup in it, and sat at a tiny table for one, below beautiful pictures of British Colombia in spring and autumn.

Only I wasn’t alone - I had Owen Meany with me.

He’s the boy with the wrecked voice John Wheelwright is doomed to remember. A brilliant literary creation, tiny Owen can only speak in a weird scream so ALL HIS WORDS ARE PRINTED IN BLOCK CAPITALS LIKE THIS.

I was at the bit where his folky, protest singer cousin Hester, in my mind a version of someone like Joan Baez in this early incarnation, is revealed to have transformed herself, by the late 1980s, into a successful rock singer called Hester the Molester.

This is the only part of A Prayer for Owen Meany that I have a problem with. Who on earth was the later Hester the Molester supposed to be based on? Tina Turner? Nope. Pat Benatar? Don’t think so. Madonna? You’re kidding.

It annoyed me, and reinforced my long-held accusation that writers don’t do rock and roll very well. I once almost defenestrated Hanif Kureishi’s Buddha of Suburbia because its depiction of glam rock and punk was so wide of the mark. And don’t even get me started on Tony Parsons.

So I was sipping the taste-bud teasing Café Amandine and planning on how to contact Mr Irving and suggest he re-write the offending parts of the book and have Hester join Canada’s greatest punk rock outfit DOA instead.

This was the band with the wrecked singer I started off with. DOA, from Vancover, led by the indefatigable Joey ‘****head’ Keithley.

I was thinking of writing to Mr Irving about the group’s emotional 1981 performance at the Lyceum Ballroom, in London’s swinging Strand, which I had the pleasure of witnessing from what in today’s parlance would be termed ‘the mosh pit’.

DOA, aside from being the greatest punk rock band ever to come from above the 49th Parallel, had a stringent anti-war manifesto, as exemplified in such great songs as World War Three and pretty much everything on their splendid War on 45 mini album.

Now, one of the great messages that brilliant but doomed Owen Meany espouses in Mr Irving’s novel is that people only protested about the Vietnam War because of the draft. People weren’t marching on Washington DC throughout the 1960s to moan about the bombing of Hanoi, they were moaning about the fact that they were going to have to go over there and do the bombing.

I thought of the lack of popular opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan today. Everyone says they are against them, but no one says it, if you follow my drift.

DOA certainly said they were against war. But no one listened.

Way back when, the aforementioned Mr Keighley made himself famous, or notorious, with the highly amusing punk rock stunt of passing water on his audience at one gig.

Uproarious, I’m sure you’ll agree.

At the Lyceum Ballroom, a young lad with spiky black hair and a sleeveless Anti-Nowhere League t-shirt, was, I recall vividly, attempting to scale the stage while urging the vocalist to repeat the feat.

I’m glad to say Mr Keighley resisted the temptation, which was good because, firstly, I’m not in favour of such behaviour, and, secondly, I was standing next to the spiky-headed youth and, being already covered in the phlegm of about 4,000 ecstatic punks had had enough of other people’s bodily fluids. So we remained unbepissed and got on with enjoying renditions of The Enemy and I’m Right You’re Wrong, their message, like the phlegm, going over everyone’s heads.

And, 27 years later, I got on with enjoying my Café Amandine and the environs of the Canadian Muffin Company, probably the best coffee shop I have so far visited in Plymouth.

It was reasonably full of well mannered young ladies, middle-aged ladies and elderly ladies, none of whom looked like they were about to protest against foreign wars or were fans of DOA. They left that to me and Owen Meany.

half-man-half-cappuccino

2008-10-20T02:55:00.001-07:00

THERE are a few things that set us homo sapiens apart from the animal kingdom: our large brains, opposable thumbs, the power of speech, the ability to withstand the singing of James Blunt and, naturally, how we drink a cappuccino.

I’m particularly interested in this topic because I was reading DogFellow’s Ghost, by Plymouth author Gavin Smith, and sampling a frothy coffee concoction in a place called Caffe Nero, in Cornwall Street, when it struck me how different we are from the beasts of the field. Well, some of us anyway.

DogFellow’s Ghost is a marvellous new novel which reworks HG Wells’ The Island of Dr Moreau from the perspective of one of the nutty boffin’s man/beast creations.

If you can’t imagine a creature as bizarre as a half-man-half-mutt I recommend reading either of these great books. Alternatively you could try hanging about outside a pharmacy at opening time.

Or you could try watching me getting to grips with a cappuccino in Caffe Nero.

This was a great place, if you like to quaff your caffeine in a weirdly cosmopolitan atmosphere, where a free latte is dangled in front of you like a politician’s promise.

Caffe Nero is, I take it from the name and menu board, of Italian decent.

It gets all Italiano on you as soon as you enter, with offers of espresso Milano, macchiato and ristretto.

I haven’t the foggiest what any of these are. I’d have asked the bloke behind the counter but he was, I discerned by his accent, a native of Eastern Europe, and somewhat stressed by the queue that was developing in front of him.

So I just ordered a cappuccino because it was the only coffee drink I knew about, positioned myself on one of the comfy seats and wondered why an Italian coffee house was employing blokes from east of Prague and playing an album of gentle American folk-rock which sounded like it was produced by someone like John Mellencamp or one of his ilk.

I was also trying to get to grips with my cappuccino. Or to be more precise: the cup.

This fine brew had been handed to me in a receptacle which resembled something you would put down for the cat.

It was very shallow and so wide the drink had a surface area of the approximate size to Lake Garda.

OK, maybe I’m exaggerating, but the circumference of the cup was so huge the drink was losing heat at an alarming rate. In fact, it was cooling faster than the ardour of a young Romeo who has just found his Juliet has arrived in the bedroom disguised as one of Gavin Smith’s man-beasts, or Wayne Rooney.

As my drink froze in front of me I was also gripped by indecision as to how to tackle it. Do I raise the cup to my mouth, homo sapien-style, or just start liking from it like something from the jungle or a greasy spoon café?

I decided to do the former. But first I had to work out how I was going to get past the cloud-like mass of foam that sits atop a cappuccino.

Do you stick you mush straight into it and drink, risking finding out there is no coffee under the bubbles, and coming up resembling artist Robert Lenkiewicz in full white-beard mode, or do you use that little spoon they give you to shovel small amounts of froth into your mouth until there is only the 1cm deep pool of coffee in the bottom of your dish left?

I opted for the latter, even though it took me so long to eat my way through the bubbles the temperature of my 1cm of coffee was approaching absolute zero by the time I reached it. Damn.

I decided to give up on the cappuccino and delve into DogFellow’s Ghost, where I was at the bit where a sneaky journalist called Henderson starts poking his nose into things he shouldn’t and gets drunk at the same time.

“Hmmmm,” I though, “that doesn’t sound like any journalist I know.”

Actually, it sound like pretty much all the journalists I know. Me included. Particularly the bit about the poking of noses into other people’s business. And the bit about getting drunk.

Reading on further I discovered that cups are an important part of the novel’s plot, and a key prop for DogFellow to find out which of his man-beast mates has remained true to his human side and which have regressed into their animalistic nature.

In short, if you can drink from a cup you are human, if you like lapping from a cat bowl you’re probably a cat.

It was at this point I though I had better stop licking the last muffin crumbs of the plate. Especially as it wasn’t my plate. I apologised to the old lady and offered her use of my free Caffe Nero loyalty card in exchange.

Just like the brain/thumb/speech/James Blunt/cappuccino thing sets us above our furred and feathered friends, so doth the Caffe Nero loyalty card set it higher up the food chain than Starbucks and Coffee Republic.

This ingenious marketing ploy involves giving you a little card with nine white dots on one side. Every time you buy something from Caffe Nero they stamp one of the dots. When you have all nine you get ‘your tenth coffee absolutely free’.

One of the great themes of DogFellow’s Ghost is loyalty. Should half-man-half-pooch DogFellow stay true to his screw-loose scientist boss/maker, or start knocking about with nosey/half-cut hack Henderson who promises to show him the wonders of Paris? Decisions, decisions. If you want the answer I recommend you get the book. You won’t be disappointed.

As for me, I shall stay true to Caffe Nero, because I admire loyalty and faithfulness, and because I’m so tight it’s worth listening to more John Mellencamp just to get a free drink.

But first there are so many other coffee emporiums to enjoy. So the free supping must wait, and at the rate at which I’m chalking the establishments off, probably until Rome burns, or DogFellow gets to Paris, or Tottenham Hotspur get off the bottom of the Premier League. It may be some time.

The Diamond Geezer

2008-10-06T02:18:00.001-07:00

I LOVE Plymouth. Where else can you stumble on a joyful street party in full swing at 9.15am on a Saturday?

Stonehouse, that’s where. I was ambling along North Road West, my head in John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces, when I found myself amidst a group of young men who were merrily enjoying a community celebration while simultaneously helping themselves to a large stock of Stella Artois cans piled on the pavement.

I had no idea whether this wonderful example of neighbourly love and bonding had been in progress all night or had spontaneously broken out like a dose of inner city flu.

No matter, it was a fine sight to see, and then one of the upstanding young fellows ventured to speak to me.

“Ere, mate, do you know the number of a black cab firm?” he politely inquired.

Amazing even myself, I was able to extract such digits from my vault-like memory. A trick not inconsiderable when you realise I can’t usually remember the number of my own mobile. Then again, I never ring it. Nor does anyone else, come to think of it. Funny that.

Still, the polite young man was delighted to receive this information and progressed to inform me that I was a ‘diamond geezer’. Actually he prefixed this with an adjective in the form of a common vulgarism usually employed to describe the physical act of mammalian reproduction.

Knowing my act of random kindness had been so well received I strolled on, head in the air, smile on my face, wearing the expression of someone who was undisputably a ‘****ing diamond geezer’.

It didn’t last. A mere 30 minutes later and I was feeling pretty down. The

reason: rain. I was scurrying down North Hill, after an appointment with a vendor of computer printer ink that I won’t go into now, frantically hunting for a coffee shop, but every coffee haunt, bar, café and bondage emporium was shut.

This was, after all, student land, and I guess there is no point opening a business early on a Saturday when most of your clientele are tucked up in someone else’s bed and nursing a WKD hangover.

The heavens had well and truly opened and I was under an intense bombardment of raindrops the size of water-filled birth-control balloons which drenched me and even left my John Kennedy Toole soaking up moisture like a Stonehouse street-partier.

Boy, I had never been happier to see the architectural misdemeanour we know as the Drake Circus mall.

Once inside, however, I had to find a coffee shop. I couldn’t go to Starbucks because I had already been there, and it was horrible. I couldn’t try Waterstones because that was where I had bought A Confederacy of Dunces on a previous visit and, even though it was now impersonating a sponge I feared being accused of shoplifting.

So I drifted around the pristine and antiseptic environs of the shopping mecca dripping water everywhere and leaving filthy boot-prints on the mirror-like flooring.

A young man who was attempting to vend a miniature flying helicopter approached me and offered me a turn, like I was some 14-year-old kid with the attention span of a wasp and not so wet I would not only have short circuited his device but probably plunged the entire pristine and antiseptic shopping mecca into blackness.

I gave him one of my ‘don’t be a blithering idiot’ looks.

“Raining outside is it?” he inquired.

“No, I’ve just swum fully clothed from the breakwater,” I didn’t say, because he was, after all, armed with a miniature flying helicopter.

“Yes,” I said. “It does appear to be precipitating somewhat heavily, and by the way, you’re a ****ing diamond geezer.”

A few minutes later I stumbled on what I was hunting for: a coffee shop.

To be exact BB’s Coffee and Muffins, tucked away on a corner by the car park entrance on the second floor.

This amazing place provided a bewildering array of coffees and muffins.

Oh, and toasties. I thought I had learned all there was to learn about Americanos and cappuccinos after my visits to Starbucks and Coffee Republic. But no. BB was offering me such exotic delights as an almond latte and a combination coffee/muffin or even multi-muffin deal. This was all too much for my by now liquid-filled cranium to cope with.

“What’s a vanilla latte?” I asked a man who I guess was BB.

“It’s a latte with vanilla in it,” he said, accurately if a little unhelpfully.

BB then mumbled something about syrup and pointed to a collection of jars and plungers which looked like the sort of device Peter Cushing always had in his lab in ancient Hammer horror flicks. Turned out this was what he used to put the vanilla in a vanilla latte.

So I told BB he was a ‘****ing diamond geezer’, bought this vanilla latte thing and took a seat.

Wow. The drink was really nice. And it smelled and tasted of vanilla. A little more expensive than Coffee Republic, but it came in a delightful clear glass and you didn’t have to put up with a TV showing BBC news.

And the clientele were nicer. Every table that wasn’t cluttered with the detritus of a previous customer’s coffee/muffin/toastie excess was being used by an elderly couple or a young family with a pushchair. Real shoppers. Not the stressed-out fashionistas who inhabited Starbucks or the pseudo-intellectuals who frequented Coffee Republic. These were the sort of folk who enjoyed coffee/muffins/toasties with their coats still on. And zipped up. I was home.

I was also glad I had A Confederacy of Dunces with me, even though it was now nine-tenths water.

John Kennedy Toole sadly killed himself in 1969 because he couldn’t get this book published. Fortunately for civilisation his mother persisted and got it printed. It won the Pulitzer Prize.

Every single page of this masterwork is brilliant and hilarious. I started reading the bit where the loathsome/loveable anti-hero Ignatius Reilly gets told my his alcoholic mum that he has to get a job because she has to pay off a man whose balcony she demolished when she crashed her car into it. Uproarious antics ensue.

I found myself laughing out loud, which drew worried glances from BB and some of the oldsters with their coats done up. I guessed they thought I was probably reading a book about Tottenham Hotspur.

Still, I continued to read about Ignatius’s comical behaviour, particularly a visit to a cinema to watch a musical set in a circus, and Toole’s masterful description of the setting: New Orleans. The writer depicts the city affectionately as a decaying and shambling shadow of former glories.

In one memorable early passage, Toole writes: “This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, jades, litterbugs and lesbians.”

He’d have loved Stonehouse.

I squelched the book shut and downed the dregs of the vanilla latte and sloshed my way home, deciding to pass through North Road West just in case the street party was still going on.

Sadly, it was not, the young fellows obviously having successfully contacted a black cab firm and taken their celebration on the road.

But luckily there was a second community conviviality in full effect a mere 50 yards from where I encountered the dawn delirium.

And it was still only 10.50am.

This time a group of young people, one of whom was, I think, female, although it would have taken gynecological exploration to ascertain this for definite, were grouped outside the Boots pharmacy, or ‘pharmac’ as the sign says because the letter y has either dropped off, been stolen or joined the mobile jubilee that had started off down the road.

This group were being led in their partying by a large unkempt fellow, perhaps North Road West’s version of Ignatius Reilly, who was fronting an ovation to possibly John Kennedy Toole himself, or, more likely, the arrival of certain vital medicines at the ‘pharmac’.

Still, he was doing an honourable job of stirring up fraternal spirit amongst his peers with the aid of a can of Special Brew as a baton, ushering them to follow what I took for a mellifluous folk song the lyrics of which went along the lines of: “Urgh, urgh, urgh, mumble, mumble, mumble, ****ing, ****ing, ****, ha, ha, ha.”

“You’re a ****ing diamond geezer,” I yelled from across the road.

This wholesome community cheered as one and raised their cans of Special Brew in salute. I love Plymouth.

Coffee republican

2008-10-01T02:31:00.001-07:00

I’VE never been to Brazil or Colombia, but I have been to a place called Coffee Republic - and that’s where I learned about Gary Lineker’s lucky football boots.

Yes, I’m talking about my ongoing quest to sample the delights of the plethora of coffee places that have infested Plymouth city centre. And read a different book in each one.

Well this time I not only explored a new emporium but it seems I actually entered a different country. You know, a teeny sovereign state tucked away inside another nation and being completely different from everything around it, like the Vatican City, Monte Carlo or Bodmin.

The place I went to was the aforementioned Coffee Republic, in Armada Way, which must also be part of the European Union because I didn’t need to show my passport to buy a drink.

This self-governing entity was clearly a step up the snack-food chain from Starbucks by dint of the fact that you only had to deal with one staff member in order to get refreshment.

And it was a pleasant young woman. Due to the cafeteria’s name I had expected the pouring to be performed by a Latino boarder guard type, with a razed forest of chin stubble, and a bad attitude. You know, the sort of girl who usually works in burger vans.

But this was far more customer friendly. And she actually knew about the coffees.

“What’s a skinny latte?” I asked.

“It’s a latte made with skimmed milk,” she responded. “Normally our lattes are made with semi-skimmed milk.”

Good answer. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I had no idea what a latte was. So I said this: “What’s the difference between a latte and a cappuccino?”

“Not a lot,” came the reply. “Except a cappuccino is a bit more frothy.”

I was still bamboozled. Something I don’t know about is more frothy than another thing I don’t know about.

There was only one thing to do. I ordered a latte. Hey, I’m a journalist after all. It’s what I do, find things out.

“Supremo, regular or tall?” the young lady inquired.

This made me think that she had misidentified me as some sort of secret agent and was giving me a password.

“Er, the squirrel hides his nuts in autumn,” I answered, because I’d seen a spy do this in a Hollywood B-movie and couldn’t remember “Klaatu barada nikto’.

Turned out she was talking about sizes of coffee mug.

“A small one,” I said.

“You mean a tall one,” she answered.

“No, a small one.”

“A tall one.”

You’re ahead of me. A tall one is a small one. In the wonderful land of Coffee Republic.

When I was a kid I liked a story about the Billy Goat Gruffs, a family of ruminants who had a spot of bother crossing a bridge. A bit like the Tamar only with a troll instead of an electronic tag.

I recalled these being called Big Billy Goat Gruff, Middle-sized Billy Goat Gruff and Little Billy Goat Gruff. Not Supremo Billy Goat Gruff, Regular Billy Goat Gruff and Tall Billy Goat Gruff. Still they lived in the land of Far Far Away, not in marvellous Coffee Republic.

So I collected my latte and sat down in a high-backed chair, with a huge flat-screen TV above me on the wall, on which Liverpool Supremo, or should that be Big, Rafa Benitez was trying to explain his inexplicable team selections. On the BBC. Coffee Republic obviously doesn’t have its own state broadcaster.

By this stage I was starting to wonder what had happened to Coffee Republic’s royal family. Were they sent into exile, or executed Russian revolution style, or were they just stripped of their powers and left to mope around for everyone to laugh at, like the Duchess of York?

Then I noticed the menu board, which was divided into sections which read: Coffee Republic, Tea Republic, Chocolate Republic and Shake Republic.

So this was some sort of cartel, or a group of nations that had come together to trade in coffee, tea, chocolate, and ,er, shake, whatever that is. Or was it somewhere in an earthquake zone, or an Arab nation full of terrible spellers?

I put all this pontificating to one side and delved into this week’s book: the wonderful Gary Lineker, Strikingly Different, The Acclaimed Biography, by Colin Malam, with a foreword by Bobby Charlton. What a title.

I was the only person in Coffee Republic reading a book about Gary Linker, with a foreword by Bobby Charlton.

“Strange,” I thought.

Flicking open the paperback I began to peruse Chapter Four, in which our hero gets himself transferred from Leicester City to Everton. This was seen as a good move, so you can tell it was a long time ago.

The chapter was entitled Annus Mirabilis, which it emerged was not a description of Peter Reid but of Gary’s year at Goodison.

He was miserable because Everton finished second to Liverpool in both the league and cup, and thanks to the Anfield mob were banned from competing in the European Cup, this being the season after the Heysel Stadium tragedy.

But Gaz was also miffed because he had lost his lucky boots and therefore missed a goal against Oxford United (I told you it was a long time ago) that would have won the Toffees the championship. He later got the boots back and scored ‘five goals in two games’.

“They were falling apart, but I had them repaired and took them to the finals of the 1986 World Cup,” he said.

Gary finished as the tournament’s top scorer, got transferred to Barcelona, presented Match of the Day and was given loads of crisps. He also played for Spurs, so not everything went well.

On reading all this I was suddenly pole-axed by the thought that national hero Gary Lineker might actually think he is Billy Dane from the boy’s comic strip of my youth Billy’s Boots. Billy had a pair of special boots that had belonged to a famous old centre forward called Dead Shot Keen.

When he wore them his was brilliant, when he didn’t he was useless. This explains a lot about Gary Lineker, and why he missed that penalty against Brazil in 1992.

It also made me wonder about what happened to my lucky pair of socks. The ones that used to belong to world-famous movie legend Cary Grant. I bought them off a man in a casbah, or was it Stonehouse Creek car boot sale.

Anyway, he told me that if I wore them I would instantly become sophisticated, urbane, attractive, witty and wealthy, like Mr Grant. Then I realised I had them on. I think I may have been done.

On my way back to the UK from Coffee Republic I listened to the Jam’s 1978 mod-punk masterstroke All Mod Cons. Nothing to do with coffee, republics, Gary Lineker or Cary Grant. Just a great record.

The Tall Americano

2008-09-22T01:42:00.001-07:00

I DON’T know if you’ve ever read Dante Alighieri’s 14th Century poem Inferno, in which he gives a detailed and pretty gruesome account of a journey through Hell. Well, I wouldn’t bother if you’ve ever experienced Primark on a Saturday afternoon.

Honestly, nothing Hades can offer in the way of hideous torture and degradation can compare with the horrors of being stuck in a queue for what feels like five hours with about 4,000 women who have long since reached the end of their tether and then some.

Still, you can always unwind with a trip to that oasis of tranquility that is known as Starbucks, which is what I did.

What with the Paralympics ending, not that I actually managed to watch any meaningful action, I’ve called time on my visiting-a-different-Chinese-takeaway-ever-night project.

So instead I’ve decided to pay a call to every coffee shop in Plymouth, and this time I’m going to ensure cultural erudition by bringing a book with me. And colouring it in. Only joking, I‘m going to read it.

So I was on a shopping trip with my 11-year-old daughter and her friend, hence the Primark/Underworld experience, and we wound up in aforementioned Starbucks.

This is the first time I have been in Starbucks. In fact, it’s about the first time I have ever been in any of the zillions of new coffee emporiums that have sprung up in the city centre like mind-bending fungi.

And to keep me sane I had a copy of JM Coetzee’s 1999 Booker Prize winner Disgrace in my mitt.

Just as well. There were 17 people in front of me in the queue. I was on chapter 11 before I got served. Actually, I was up to chapter 10 already, but it still took ages to get my order.

Now, Starbuck is a character in one of the all-time great novels, Moby Dick, that marvellous tale of adventure, male bonding, and whale-slaughtering.

He’s also a character in one of the all-time rubbish TV series, Battlestar Galactica, that less-than-marvellous tale of adventure, male bonding and Cylon-slaughtering.

Well, if Moby Dick was at one end of the cultural spectrum and Battlestar Galactica was at the other, Starbucks, the coffee emporium, would be more Lorne Greene than Herman Melville, if you catch my drift.

So I was in this huge queue, reading Disgrace, which is yet another novel about an old/middle-aged/decrepit man who has carnal knowledge of an attractive young woman. Happens all the time. Everywhere I go twentysomethings are chucking themselves at blokes old enough to have fought in the world war. The first one. I don’t think.

Still, this happens a lot in novels. Probably because they are written by old/middle-aged/decrepit men.

In Disgrace the main character is fired from his job as an English lecturer at a South African university for indulging in extra-curricula frolics with one of his students. Actually, I thought this was par for the course with university lecturers. Isn’t this how you get to be a professor? I must have been mistaken.

The lecturer/lecher guy ends up living with his bucolic daughter in the bush. She also happens to be an aficionado of the practices associated with the island of Lesbos.

I was just at the bit where he was complaining that you can’t put a mutt down, or even lop off his crown jewels, for sniffing around the local females because that would be punishing him for just following his nature. Sounds like a good excuse.

Then, without warning, I was actually being served. I say this, what really happened was I was inducted into a bizarre ritual which ended with you having to deal with three different people in order to get your drink.

Starbucks had about eight people serving. They looked like they had an average age of 12. Most of them were whizzing about, like they were in the Large Hadron Collider contraption, doing things with big pots of milk.

But one lad was talking to me. He was leaning over the top of a tower-block of a counter stuffed with cakes and pastries. I‘m thinking: “He’s either on a step ladder or has stilts for legs.”

At this juncture, I’ll just point out that I don’t know the first thing about coffee. Regular readers of my blogs probably won’t be surprised to learn this, having already ascertained that I don’t know the first thing about anything that has happened since the 1980s.

So when asked what I would like, I looked up at a huge board above the young lad’s head. This I found difficult to read and even more difficult to understand. It seemed to contain a bewildering amount of info about different hot drinks. Honestly, it may as well have been one of those blackboards you see in any film about scientists, you know the one that’s covered in calculations that end up equaling the end of the world by meteor strike/global warming/Girls Aloud.

So I asked for two hot chocolates for the girls. And then… “Can I have a black coffee please,” I said.

You’d have thought I’d asked for a penny dreadful and a shot of absinthe.

The young lad nearly fell off his stepladder. He gave me a look of ’where the hell have you been for the last millennia?”

“You mean a Tall Americano,” he said.

“Yes. A black coffee,” I answered.

Now what’s wrong with calling a black coffee a black coffee? It describes a coffee, that’s black. A Tall Americano describes Clint Eastwood.

At this point things got complicated. The stepladder lad didn’t serve me, he didn’t even take my dosh. Instead he wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to another 12-year-old who handed it to a 12-year-old girl by the cash register.

I imagined that what he’d written was ’cretin, doesn’t know what a Tall Americano is’.

Anyhow, the queue then shuffled on until I got to the 12-year-old girl on the till, who before she served me informed everyone that she needed to go to the toilet. Fortunately, this meant removing herself to the smallest room and not just passing water where she was standing.

“Thanks for sharing that,” I thought and waited for her to return.

I paid the £6-something for three drinks and waited for them. How out of touch can you get. The person who takes your money doesn’t give you your beverages, you idiot. What rock have you been lying under? No the queue shuffles on until you get to the end of the counter and then another 12-year-old girl starts dishing out the cuppas. In any old order. A bloke three people behind you could get his before you, and you could get yours before someone in front.

“It’s a nightmare system,” an intelligent-looking man in front of me said.

I concurred.

Still, my refreshments arrived and I found a table amongst the hoards of women who were treating this place as a sanctuary from the Somme-like horrors of endless shopping.

Boy was I glad I’d ordered a Tall Americano. I was in desperate need of an injection of caffeine. Actually, I was in need of an injection of eight pints of lager and a quadruple whisky chaser.

I flipped the Coetzee open and began to broaden my mind. The chapter I was up to turned out to be a pivotal one, where the lecturer who can’t keep his trousers buttoned, and his daughter, fell victim to a gang of particularly brutal and vicious criminals.

The pages discharged descriptions of violence, violation and extreme cruelty to animals.

“Thanks a bunch JM,” I thought. “I’ve just been through a highly traumatic shopping experience, which was already likely to give me nightmares, and now you land this on me.”

I started to realise that what was happening to the priapic professor and his offspring was an allegory for what white settlers had done to South Africa. Or something.

Maybe not the book for Starbucks. I should have brought Moby Dick, or Clint Eastwood: A Biography.

Pancake day

2008-09-19T02:20:00.001-07:00

YEAH, well thanks for telling me. I didn’t know the blimmin’ Paralympics had ended. There I was looking forward to at last catching some Bird’s Nest action and I find out that not only have they all packed up and gone home but Britain even won millions of medals without me.

I didn’t even get to see the five-a-side football. All I saw was four and a half minutes action last week in the Teen Sing, involving some people lobbing bean bags about and then a mammoth wheelchair race crash.

On reflection, this may have been the high spot of the tournament. So if I sound a little embittered, it’s because I am. For not only did I find a Chinese takeaway with a TV in it last night, it even worked and was not tuned to Emmerdale, or anything to do with photographing octopuses.

It even looked pretty sporty, and may just have been highlights of the closing ceremony from Beijing. But I wouldn’t know - because it was in Chinese.

Yup, the fabulous Pancake House, in delightful Demport, I mean Devonport, was broadcasting live Chinese TV. And the best part was it was subtitled - in Chinese.

This was something I have never come across in a Chinese takeaway before, and it wasn’t the only thing.

Pancake House, which by now I’m sure you’ll appreciate translates as Spring House, was like no other takeaway I’ve ever visited. In fact, it was like no other building I have ever visited.

For a start, there are doors everywhere. You walk in the front door and there is another door right in front of you, and one to the right. It’s like you are in a mushroom foo young maze.

Which door should I try, the one in front or the one to my right? A little voice in my head was saying ‘come in, come in‘. I decided to go through the door ahead, mainly because it was open and the other one was locked.

Then I found out the voice wasn’t coming from inside my head but from a little man standing behind the counter.

I immediately thought about that episode of top 1970s TV drama Mr Ben. The one where Mr Ben dressed up as a cowboy, and ended up in the Village People. Or did the Village People end up in him, I can’t remember. Come to think of it, I don’t think that was an episode of Mr Ben after all.

The little man behind the counter was very polite and friendly. He looked nothing like Uma Thurman or a Stepford Wife. Relief.

I ordered my usual, fifteen pints of lager and a bag of prawn cocktail crisps. Then I remembered I wasn’t in a pub and ordered my other usual, vegetable spring/pancake rolls and mushroom fried rice.

This last dish was not on Pancake House’s menu, but the polite and friendly little man said he could arrange it for me.

“No meat,” I said.

“No peas,” he answered.

“No. No meat,” I said again.

“Peas,” he said.

I was beginning to think I had joined a new version of that paper-stone-scissors-waste-of-time game, only this one involved just saying meat and peas until one of you collapsed and died.

“No. I would prefer it if there was not animal product in my mushrooms and rice my good fellow,” I explained.

“But you want peas?” he asked.

“No. I went before I came out,” I said, then realised my mistake.

“Yes, peas please,” I said forcefully, but by the alarmed look on his face I think he thought I was ordering: “Yes, peas, peas!”

Boy did he ever deliver. But more of that later.

I settled down to watch what soon became apparent was not the Paralympics but rather China’s version of the One Show, featuring an interview with a basketball player I’d never clapped eyes on before, and loads of adverts most of which seemed to be for China’s answer to Injury Lawyers for You.

So losing interest in the Beijing version of Adrian Chiles and that Irish bird, I began to explore the fascinating architectural wonder that was Pancake House.

From the outside it looked like any other mid terraced dwelling. But it had clearly been gutted and rebuilt inside by someone who was either visually impaired, totally insane, or that posh woman off Location, Location, Location, Location, Location, or whatever the hell it’s called now.

Someone had knocked down walls left right and centre and rebuilt them all over the shop, with doors everywhere too. From where I was standing I could see eight doors, some of which seemed to allow access to the neighbouring properties.

I began to think they were the doors to my mind, and that I had actually wandered into the inside of my own head. I soon realised I hadn’t because there was not a door with a sign on it reading ‘obsession with cheese, this way’.

The room was huge too, far bigger than it appeared from the outside. It made the Tardis look like one of those prefabs in Southway.

And the area behind the counter was bigger than the area in front of it.

It contained a dining table and chairs, a gas heater and, around a seemingly pointless bend caused by a wall that came out of nowhere, a bar.

Really, a bar, like the kind you get in nighclubs, with a padded leather front, but no optics. It was like someone had started to turn the place into Stringfellows and then gone ‘to hell with it, I’ll make a Chinese takeaway instead’.

I vainly searched for a glitter ball. There was none. Also no pot plants, cardboard boxes, or gaffer tape.

There was a pile of magazines. I flipped through. There were several issues of Elle, Eve and Red. Clearly, like Stringfellows and The New Golden Crown, this place was popular with that section of the population that listens to Michael Buble albums and can’t stop thinking about Hotel Du Chocolat, whatever the hell that is.

“Mmm, Red. As in Red China,” I thought as I looked at one mag, then realised the front cover depicted Latino Hollywood actress Salma Hayek rather than the Gang of Four. Or even Wire.

There was, thankfully, no computer, camera, car or technology filth amongst the publications.

But the issues of Elle, Eve and Red, which featured such notable and important world figures as Christina Aguilera and Jennifer Aniston, were reassuringly out of date. Most belonged in the summer of 2006. Which is where I wish they had left Christina and Jennifer.

There was also a TV guide from January 2004 with a picture of that British woman who used to be in ER on the front.

“Wasn’t it terrible about that Titanic?” I shouted at the polite and friendly little man.

He couldn’t hear me. He was in the kitchen. I could see him, through an open door, and then a little room and then another open door. He was talking to a woman who appeared to be doing all the cooking by herself.

Then she suddenly gave him a carrier bag and he fairly rushed at me delivering the comestibles.

We smiled at each other. “Meat,” he said.

“Peas,” I answered.

“Meat.”

“Peas. I win.”

Actually we didn’t do this. I did try to look into the room with the locked front door on my way out though. It formed the other half of the takeway’s façade.

Net curtains obscured my view but I could just make out huge yet miniaturised plants in pots. I’m not sure, but I think I could also see the outline of a pile of cardboard boxes, and a roll of gaffer tape, on an engraved plinth. Maybe not.

The food was lovely, however. And as for the peas, well they were like canon balls. Only green. And made of pea.

On the way home I slammed The Avengers’ 1983, female-fronted, Frisco punk rock classic long-player, daringly entitled The Avengers but also known as The Pink Album, into my in-car gramophone. This has nothing to do with the doors to my mind, knocking down walls, Chinese TV, paper-stone-scissors-pointless-activity game, meat, peas or even the Paralympics. It’s just a really great record.

Golden medals

2008-09-18T01:39:00.001-07:00

WHEN you have got the mid-week blues, when it’s the middle of September, when skies are grey and so is your underwear even though it was white when you put it on, that’s when you need a touch of the exciting, the exclusive and the exotic - and so I headed for Keyham.

The New Golden Crown, to be precise. Chinese Hot Food to Takeaway, it said on the menu, somewhat ungrammatically. And above the counter on the wall was a golden crown.

This was just like Pulp Fiction. I was going to order a Royale. With cheese.

Or, as I call it, vegetable fried rice.

The woman behind the counter even looked a little like Uma Thurman. Well, she was blonde anyway.

She was also a bit glum looking. This could have been because she was working at the Golden Shot, I mean Crown, or because she was in exotic Keyham, or because I had just walked in. I reckon it was because I had just walked in.

The Golden Oldie, I mean Crown, had filled me with expectation, to go along with the excitement, exclusivity and exoticness, which I’m amazed to learn is actually a word.

But on arrival I started to deflate quicker than Fern Britton with her stomach stapled.

The Golden Compass, I mean Crown, was, just like Yung’s, built into the front of a terraced house. It even had its own parking bay. “Nice one,” I thought to myself.

But on entering I experienced none of the matronly warmth and succour I had found in Beacon Park a mere 24 hours earlier. There was also nothing new about it, which is why I’m dropping the word from the title.

In fact, it looked on the inside a bit like the sort of down at heal pub you see on gloomy TV plays set in Glasgow. I half expected to see a gnarled old duffer sitting with his head on the bar and muttering something about Jimmy. As in: “Jimmy a number 79 off the menu, er, Jimmy.”

Don’t get me wrong, the place was spotless and tidy. It’s just that it was, how can I put this, as boring as watching Elbow play at the Mercury Music Prize bash. In slow motion. With the sound off. Introduced by Fearne Cotton.

There was a polite little window seat and just one tiny tree/shrub thing in a moderate sized pot.

Where were the hoofing great bonsai experiments I had come to expect?

Where was the humungous skyscraper of cardboard boxes? Where was the gaffer tape? Nowhere, that’s where.

The Golden Wedding, I mean Crown, did have a major redeeming feature however - a TV set. And this one hadn’t had its brain stem ripped out by an ovulating female for daring to show Top Gear.

It even appeared to be broadcasting the Paralympics. Well, there was a man in a hospital bed not looking too happy so I assumed this was an elite athlete who had just been told he needed a double hernia op or that jam roly-poly was off the NHS menu and had been replaced with a bumper dollop of MRSA.

But, on closer inspection, I discovered that this was not a live broadcast from Beijing, but something called Emmerdale, which appeared to be a fly-on-the-wall documentary depicting life in the land that time forgot, or as it’s better known, Yorkshire.

Quickly tiring of watching this tale of everyday farming folk I turned my attention to that resolute standby in Chinese takeaways: the magazine pile.

Again, this was somewhat pedestrian. As expected, the Golden Shower, I mean Crown, had supplied a fair quantity of glossies mainly aimed at that section of our population that buys Kathy Lette novels and Bodyform Ultra, whatever the hell that is.

I leafed through Cosmopolitan , Marie Claire and one called just Woman. I was pretty sure this was aimed at that section of the population that attends Westlife concerts and wears Jimmy Choos, whatever the hell they are.

If it had been aimed at men it would have been called Women.

But beneath, this, and we’re talking men here, so beneath is the right word, I discovered the sneakily hidden pile of smut I had come to expect.

You know, car and computer gizmo mags.

Yes, they were all here: something called GamesMaster, something called Edge and a whole host with the number 360 in the title. This, it turned out, was to do with a computer thing called an X-box, and not a dish on the Golden Balls, I mean Crown, menu, which only went up to 130 anyway.

I rapidly flicked through these to make sure they had not been soiled by the shiftless seed scatterer who had so defiled Engineering and Technology the previous evening.

I was holding the pages up to the light, in a hunt for tell tale markings, when I noticed the woman with a vague resemblance to Uma Thurman was looking at me like I was madder than Paul Gascoigne.

“Wasn’t it terrible about that Titanic?” I said, in a bid to make conversation.

The woman who could have been mistaken for Uma Thurman, by a bat, didn’t seem amused, probably because she was too busy heading off to get my order.

And then it happened. I chanced on a copy of Real Homes magazine, from August - 2000.

I couldn’t believe it. Here was a slice of real history. A document of how life used to be before 9/11, the War on Terror, Shock and Awe, 7/7, the Credit Crunch, Global Warming, economic slowdown, Big Brother, I’m a Celebrity, X-factor, Strictly Come Dancing, wags, migrant workers, Osama Bin Laden, Comical Ali, David Cameron, David Milliband, Nick Clegg, Roman Abramovich, Jean Charles de Menezes, Graham Norton, Wayne Rooney and Jade Goody. Not forgetting Carla Bruni.

What happy times they were, uber-fop Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen showing someone around a parlour oblivious to the threat of Al Quaida. Someone tending a flower bed innocent to the dangers posed by an influx of Polish plumbers.

Just to think, all these houses are now worth a fraction of what they were worth about six years after these pictures were taken, which makes them still worth more than they were worth when the pictures were taken. It’s just that no one can get a mortgage to buy one.

Uma-Thurman-from-a-distance turned up with my vegetable fried rice.

Actually she was younger and better looking than Ms Thurman. And probably a better actress.

I left the Golden Monkey, I mean Crown, and headed home to enjoy the dinner, which was fantastic, although it did contain pineapple. Now I have nothing against pineapple, but surely it’s not a vegetable. It’s a fruit isn’t it? Or was the Golden Calf, I mean Crown, playing a little trick on me, just to prove that it wasn’t boring really. And let’s face it, God didn’t put Chinese takeaways on this earth to make us laugh until our sides split. He gave us Tottenham Hotspur for that. Chinese takeaways are here to serve great food. And give a home to gaffer tape. And serve great food is what the Golden Brown, I mean Crown, did.

So as I drove home I listened to X’s fantastic 1981, husband-and-wife punk rock slice-of-genius-of-an-album Los Angeles. This has nothing to do with gold, crowns, the year 2000, 360 X-boxes, women’s magazines or even Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen. It’s just a great record.