Nick Lowe

To the Royal Festival Hall this week to see Nick Lowe. I loved him back then when he looked like this on the left but I seem to love his music even more now he looks like this.

My boyfriend isn't too keen that Mr Lowe has taken to tapping out his old rockin' hits like I Knew The Bride at half-speed, but I just think, well, they're his songs and he can play 'em how he likes. A good night.

The joy of Stotty

Relatives visiting from up north have brought with them necessities for this Mackem down in London. First off are a few copies of The Sunderland Echo, essential reading, but better than that are a couple of stotty cakes from Greggs the Bakers. Pure delight. I've already got them in my lunchbox and they could just turn out to be the best thing about today.

Just in case you don't know what a stotty cake is, and you'd like to know, you can find out more here.

The tube station clang

It's not very often that I get excited when I hear a certain noise on my way to work each day. But there's a clang, a heavy clang, in the tube station I leave from every once in a while that fills my heart with glee. It's a heavy metal clang which signifies something's happening with the track or the points or whatever it is in the station in the tunnel out of view, and it can mean only one thing. An empty train is coming and I will get a seat.

Robert Dazzler, Esq.

What - or who - was the original Bobby Dazzler? In the north-east where I'm from, a bobby dazzler was usually referred to a baby or a child who was, like, super-cute as in: "That bairn's gorgeous, isn't she? A right bobby dazzler." Or, it was used to referred to something like a piece of jewellry that was shiny and huge, as in: "Her engagement ring's a right bobby dazzler". But where does the phrase bobby dazzler come from - anyone know? I'd love to think there was a person called Robert Dazzler, Esq.

Fish fingers and Suggs

I had a rant at the telly last night when I saw Suggs advertising fish fingers. Nothing wrong with fish fingers, I love 'em and I'm quite fond of Suggs too. But I ranted away when I saw him selling his soul to the adman. Why couldn't he have been advertising something trendy, Doc Marten shoes, Brylcreem - anything but fish fingers? And when I finished my rant my boyfriend said he couldn't understand what I was going on about... and that's when it hit me. I was ranting because seeing Suggs on TV doing an advert, for something as mundane as fish fingers, meant the end of era as I knew it. It reminded me I'm not the 17 year old Madness fan I was once. I'm grown up and so is Suggs. It took a while for the realisation of the rant to hit home but when it did, a lump welled up in my throat and I had a bit of a moment.

If you haven't yet had your youth pulled to pieces by watching Suggs advertising fish fingers, it's online right here.

P-p-p-put back that penguin

Bought some penguin chocolate biscuits on the weekly shop at Morrisons. I saw them and thought: "Crikey, I haven't eaten those in years". So we took them home and I had one the other night and guess what - the biscuits are tiny. When did they shrink?

Or maybe the biscuits have stayed the same size and it's my hands that have got big?

What's your favourite Carry On... film?

Everyone has their favourite Carry On film. Oh go on, yes you do.

My top three favourite Carry On films are, in order of preference: Carry on at your Convenience, Carry on Screaming and Carry On Abroad. What's yours?

Where did the dollybird go?

She was around much of the 70s while I was growing up as I remember seeing her in the tabloids. On a Sunday night she'd be on the telly, enticing the male readers of the red tops to tune in to find out her sizzling hot secrets with the footballer/telly star of the day. And she was always blonde with huge knockers. Where's she gone?

Miss Brahams from Are You Being Served was a dolly bird, 'cos it says so here.

Bring back the hot and sweaty gig

Last time I was at Brixton Academy was earlier this year to see this band and I was there again last night to see Editors. It was a good gig, but that's all it was - good. There was no excitement, no getting lost in the music, no hot and sweaty jumping up and down, living just to sing along to the band. Where's it gone, that missing ingredident that sets a gig on fire and gives it some spark? It was the first gig I'd been to since the smoking ban came in so there was no smoking and not much drinking going on either. While that might bode well for gig goers' livers and lungs, it did nothing for the atmosphere and made the gig seem like a well mannered if noisy middle-class school assembly. When the band did their encore it wasn't the power of clap and cheer that brought them back on, it was probably written into their contract before they went home and had a cup of tea. Which I guess is what most of the audience did too. Bring back the hot and sweaty, noisy raucous gig.