My good friend and erstwhile gig-pimp Pete Ashton is currently on Day 4 of his mammoth Going Deaf For a Fortnight extravaganza. To those unfamiliar with GDFAF, the concept is simple: over a two-week period you go out and visit as many local music venues as possible. Preferably while a band is playing, and preferably one a night [although a night off is permitted].It's Pete's brain-child. He first did it in 2005 as some sort of masochistic-social-breaching -experiment-type thing and over 14 consecutive nights he went 13 gigs. I met him shortly afterwards and it wasn't a pretty sight. He [...]

In a move that has shocked political and media pundits alike, Prime Minister Gordon Brown today announced that the Labour Party’s next Party Political Broadcast will be a “high-octane, adrenaline-fuelled epic” featuring the cult 1980s action movie icon Chuck Norris. Bearded black-belt Norris – who shot to fame in a string of straight-to-video classics like ‘Delta Force’, ‘Lone Wolf McQuade’ and ‘Delta Force 2’ – will play the role of a maverick Labour Party activist canvassing the mean, suburban streets of Kanye East, a troubled but fictional marginal constituency. In the 5 minute film Norris will be seen to [...]

So there I was, driving home from work the other afternoon, smoking a cigarette and half listening to Radio 4's 'PM' programme on my tinny but temperamental car stereo. They were discussing somebody or other’s reaction to something or other, but I wasn't really paying too much attention. You know how it is. I was stuck in traffic, but it didn’t get me down. I’m not what you might call an angry driver. I don’t tend to suffer from bouts of road rage, although I have had the occasional en-street sulk and highway huff. In any case, it wasn’t as [...]

"Don't want to be a puppet or a ventriloquist'Cause there's no ventilation on a critical list"- Elvis Costello: 'Strict Time'As I write this, there’s a programme on TV called The 50 Greatest Documentaries. It follows the traditional, time-honoured format of these crappy list shows in that it seems to take up a ninety-seven hour slab of prime-time TV scheduling [I’m nocturnal: midnight is prime-time for me]. To be fair, it’s on More4 - the UK home to Jon Stewart's Daily Show, The West Wing & Father Ted - so it’s not as bad as it could be. For one thing, [...]