My Radio Interview with Cockney Rebel Connections
It was a real pleasure recently to be given a one-hour interview slot on the independent radio show Cockney Rebel Connections.
Continue ReadingAuthor: Phil Andrews
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Get That Job by Christine Reidhead – Review
One of the many blessings of being an adolescent is that adult pursuits such as finding a job and paying one’s way in the world lie too far into the future to be at all pressing.
Continue ReadingThe Goodies: Insane ’70s Slapstick and a Little Cameo – Tim Brooke-Taylor (1940-2020)
The 1970s was a golden age of innovative and unique, if somewhat dated, situation comedy. But amid all the sometimes predictable sitcoms and the cringe-makingly politically incorrect stand-up there were two comedic institutions which stood so aloof amongst their peers that they defined genres all of their own.
Continue ReadingThe Challenge of Casting Adolescence for an Adult Readership
It was at first slightly deflating when recently I received, for the first time since The Best Year Of Our Lives was published two and a half years ago, a negative review on Amazon.
Continue ReadingA Farewell to a King – Neil Peart (1952-2020)
Everyone who is at the top of their game these days is referred to as a king or queen of something or other. In the case of Neil Peart, whose sad passing last week confirmed the end of the Rush era, his kingdom was a land where percussive perfection met insightful lyricism of a quality that placed him alongside the very bardest of the bards who have graced popular music in recent decades.
Continue ReadingOperation Thunderbolt, the Raid on Entebbe – 4th July 1976
. Terrorist outrages were as much a thing in the 1970s as they are today, but the protagonists and their causes were often different and their method, if crude, was in many respects more audacious and daring. To some extent this was down to the fact that surveillance methods were less well developed and thus […]
Continue ReadingWanted – Your Lord Toffingham Memories
There are so many things the 1970s will rightly be remembered for – glam rock, tank tops, flares and platforms, big hair, cold wars and cod wars, the fuel crisis, the unburied dead, power cuts, strikes, trades union militancy, the rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust, the Goodies, the long hot summer of 1976 to name but a few. But of all the memories that those of us who are of a certain age refuse to lay to rest, one of the most precious must surely be that of the splendid Lord Toffingham.
Continue ReadingAlice Cooper at the O2 Arena
As a birthday treat to myself I took me along to the O2 Arena in London to see Alice Cooper, 71 years young, performing the London stage of his Ol’ Black Eyes Is Back tour.
Continue ReadingJames Hunt vs. Niki Lauda 1976 – The Greatest Ever Formula One World Championship?
. As great sporting rivalries go, they don’t come any more tense or bitter than that which existed between British playboy racing car driver James Hunt and his steely Austrian competitor Niki Lauda. And nowhere did this stark contrast of style and character manifest itself more explosively than in the unforgettable Formula One World Championship […]
Continue ReadingJohn Curry, Olympic Champion – the 1976 Olympics
. 1976 was an Olympic year, and the choice of Montreal as the host city had, as has so often been the case in more recent years, been to some extent a political decision. It was the Cold War era and the Canadian city had staged its bid in competition with Los Angeles and Moscow. […]
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