I’m too old for nightclubs, too cynical for cable TV, and too greedy to lose weight in this lifetime or however many it takes to reach enlightenment. But I can wish all my family and friends, not to mention the countless thousands of followers of this blog, a happy and prosperous new year! Keep smiling …
Holiday … it would be so nice! Why stop when you’re on a roll? Surely the thing to do is to milk the cow while the going’s good? But experience proves that, whatever line of work you happen to be in, taking a break is the best option in the long run. Taking a break works on many levels. Firstly, you get…
Writing is perhaps the most beguiling of art forms. In fiction, for instance, we tend to avoid the more unpalatable facts of our existence and settle for a glossy approximation instead. We allude to these depths without being too explicit. And with good reason. Think what goes through your mind in an average twenty-four hour cycle. Would you really want this carnage imposed on your readers? The…
‘All right, love, you can come out of the cubicle…’ So begins a wonderfully anarchic sketch from the late Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, as their alter egos Derek and Clive. Their first album Derek and Clive (Live), made in 1976, received mixed reviews but was quickly adopted by the punk generation and hailed as a masterpiece. Peter Cook began life as a…
