John Bonham: The Last Interview

In the 1970s Led Zeppelin had built a reputation for hard living to match their music. Stories abounded of the wild nights they spent with large numbers of willing young women, the taking of vast quantise of drugs and Jimmy Page's interest with the occult. The mystique of the band was further enhanced by their manager Peter Grant restricting their dealings with the media.  In 1980 when hosting a now long forgotten music show called Alright Now, Billy Connolly had a rare interview with John Bonham. After calling Bonham the greatest Rock drummer in the World, Connolly introduce a clip of the Led Zeppelin film The Song Remains the Same which features him spending time in the pub, racing fast cars, spending time at home with his family and performing a drum solo. The interview itself is a light hearted affair as Bonham answers to Connolly questions range from shrugs of the shoulders to no more than 2 words. Sadly later in 1980 Bonham died after an alochic bender and then after Led Zeppelin disbanded. The interview can viewed on Youtube and shows a man who did take the world all that seriously.

Unseasonal Xmas TV specials

Not all specials shown at Xmas make any reference to the holiday, in fact some will go some way to distance themselves from it. Here are 3 such specials from 1989.


Only Fools and Horses  - The Jolly Boys Outing

In the first episode after Rodney's marriage to Cassandra, Del manages to get his brother to join up the titular annual meeting even after making even after giving the most spectacular wrong answer during a game of Trivial Pursuits. The group make their way to Margate (after a delay caused by Rodney accidentally kicking a football into a policeman) during a sunny August bank holiday and enjoy their day out. However their coach blows up due faulty wiring. The group then split to find accommodation with Del hooking up again with Racquel. The episode end with Rodney punching Cassandra's after mistakenly thinking that he was making a play for her.


Miss Marple - A Caribbean Mystery

When one of her nephews pays for her to escape a extremely cold winter, Miss Marple goes to Barbados but however violent death follows her. And soon she is using her deductive skills  to get to the bottom of the mystery with the help of a tycoon played in a guest role by Donald  Pleascene. The episode went out on Xmas day night and attracted a large number of complaints over it's  depiction of murder and drug use. One such person was Richard Curtis who wrote the whimsical Lenny Henry starring fantasy  Bernard and the Genie as a response.


Bergerac - Second Time Around

Written by Ian Kenndy Martin who created The Sweeney, Second Time Around is not your usual episode of the Jersey based show. In the first 10 minutes a crook handcuff one of his former associates to a metal ornamental chair and throws them into a pool for the man to die. Made at a time when Bergerac was a show that was taking it's dues from Miami Vice, John Nettles as Jim Bergerac goes for the Don Johnson/Sonny Crockett look. the music soundtrack is of the big boomy syth variety that was poplar then, the episode was filmed during what was an obviously hot summer therefore making Jersey looking even more exotic and then there is a sequence which goes from a car chase to a speed boat chase which ends with a bad guy escaping from the clutches of the law by being picked up helicopter thereby making you wonder how it was done on a late 1980s BBC budget. Despite having a larger than usual body count the episode went out before the watershed on Boxing Day night.

Lessons learnt from Pointless picture rounds

Some surprising things can discovered about how much people know about certain things especially when they have been shown in pictures.

Jockey AP McCoy who was voted in 2010 BBC Sports Personalty of the year is not as well know as that win would  suggest.

Despite it's status as a symbol of water cooler talking subject matter, Breaking Bad is not really widely  known

Nobody recognises Simon Le Bon when he is wearing a beard.

Radio Review: Stardust

BBC Radio 4, Drama

Starring Matthew Beard, Sophie Rundle, Charlotte Riley, Frances Barber


In the mid 1990s Dirk Maggs came to be known for bringing the likes of Batman, Superman and Judge Dredd in an number of serialised dramas that played out as instalments on Mark Goodier's BBC Radio 1 afternoon show. For his latest production (which he wrote and co-directed) Maggs takes a plunge into the world of fallen stars, witches and feuding brothers in his adaptation of Neil Gaiman's fantasy novel that had been previously made into a film with Robert De Niro. Maggs with his cast and use of sound effects create a rich and evocative world, one sequence worth mentioning is one with a Billy Goat turned man thinking he is still a billy goat trying to head butt a Unicorn with the expected and bloody results. Of the cast Frances Barber as a Witch out to get the heart of a fallen star turned young women so that she and her sisters can became young  again. Dirk Maggs once again cements as the man who brings the fantastical to radio with style and panache..


Stardust can be heard on BBC I-player until late January 2017

Easing chart congestion

In 2014 the British singles charts saw 42 no1s , In 2015 the number was 26 and this year it was just 11. How has this situation happened? Well the charts equate 100 streaming hits for 1 song as 1 sale, this has led to long runs at the top of the charts for the likes of Drake have had long runs at the top of the charts. Well now  action has been taken with the number of streaming hits going up to 150 to equate to 1 sale, the hope being a much greater range of artists will get into the charts. One has to remember back in the days of just good old fashioned sales that both Bryan Adams and Wet, Wet, Wet had marathon runs at the top of the charts.

BBC SPOTY 2016 round up


Sports Personality of the year

1. Andy Murray (Tennis)
2. Alistair Brownlee (Triathlon)
3. Nick Skelton (Showjumping)


Team of the Year

Leicester City (Football)


Coach of the Year

Eddie Jones (Rugby Union)


Overseas Personality

Simone Biles (Gymnastics)


Lifetime Achievement

Michael Phelps (Swimming)

What is it about Mrs Brown and her boys?

Taking pride of place at BBC1 Xmas night schedule is the show that was recently voted the best sit-com on British TV in the 21st Century beating the likes of The Office, has won awards including BAFTA and NTA wins, has hit viewership peaks of 11m and has even had a spin off film. Yet for all it's success it has been on the receiving end of some of the most vitriolic reviews that a TV show has got in recent years, so why the extreme reactions? Mrs Brown's Boy has  had a journey that has included radio, books stage shows and a prior film version that did involve creator Brendan O'Carroll. And then the TV show was launched in 2011 with little to no fanfare in a grave yard slot, from this some what muted start the show grew to become the massive hit it is today but the critics were if anything had the reverser reaction. The main charge they bring against the show is that for all it post modern trappings (gaffes are kept in, there are shots of the audience laughing at the action, musical numbers etc) it is a show that is deeply rooted in the era of the nadir of the  British sit com, the early 1970's.. This was a time when shows like On the Buses and Love thy Neighbour were massive hits at the time but now viewed through the prism of political correctness they are seen as appearing to lowest common denominator. Though On the Buses is at times repeated on ITV3, both it and Love thy Neighbour do not feature on all time great British sit-com lists. If anything Mrs Brown's Boys is seen as a massive step back when the past decade has seen the likes of The Office and The Thick of It had been redefining the language of the sit-com. The question of if Mrs Brown's Boys joins the pantheon of great British sit-coms like Dad's Army, Fawlty Towers and Only Fools and Horses to name just 3 will judged be in the fullness of time.