Tom Lennon • Freelance Writer: comedy and pop culture

Freelance writer specializing in comedy and the geekier end of the pop culture spectrum.

Latest Stuff

The Stand Down Margaret

The funniest thing I read today appeared in an article about 80s Anti-Thatch pop in this month's Uncut: It's 1980, and The Beat are scheduled to play "Stand Down Margaret" on the early evening kids' TV show, Cheggers Plays Pop. "We had to get the song on by stealth," laughs lead singer Dave Wakeling. "Our genial old Jamaican saxophonist, Saxa, explained to presenter Keith Chegwin that The Stand Down Margaret was an old Caribbean dance. 'Come now, Cheggers,' he was saying. 'Let me show you how to dance The Stand Down Margaret...' and he invents some ridiculous little dance routine. [...]

11-11-11: Crown and Cushion, Perry Barr

Le 11 novembre 2008 Clare et moi avons passé plusieurs heures circumnavigating la ville de Birmingham sur l'autobus du numéro 11. C'était idée de limites de Jon Bounds de 'Birmingham: n'est pas Merde.' We're still on the number 11 bus, we're still in Perry Barr and we're now passing the Crown and Cushion pub. There's been a Crown and Cushion standing at the corner of Wellington Road and Birchfield Road for as long as I remember, although it hasn't always been this Crown and Cushion.The current incumbent is a fairly modern-looking, functional affair that, by my somewhat unreliable estimation, was [...]

We’ve been rather busy this evening.

'Nuff said.

Kinky Friedman’s Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover

I wouldn't normally do this sort of thing, but this evening I've been reading The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover by the country singer, humourist, crime novelist, politician and self-appointed cigar czar Kinky Friedman and I just had to share the following gem: 'It is a rather tedious fact of life that most of us who are confined to the human condition spend a great deal of time wanting to be something we're not. Or someone we're not. The proctologist, scrupulously washing his hands before and after each patient, dreams of being Dr Albert Schweitzer. The rock star, [...]

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