Time for Karen

Alesha Dixon announces that she's leaving Strictly Come Dancing for somewhere more suited to her level of expertise and gravitas, Britain's Got Talent, leaving a gap for a judge once again.

So it's got to be the Hardy!

"I give in to sin because you have to make this life liveable..."

So this was the New Years Day edition of Q The 80s...

Big Country "In A Big Country"
Bomb The Bass featuring Maureen "I Say A Little Prayer"

UB40 "If It Happens Again"
Debbie Harry "French Kissin' In The USA"

Tom Petty "I Won't Back Down"
Bangles "If She Knew What She Wants"

Club Nouveau "Lean On Me"
Status Quo "Lies"

Depeche Mode "Strangelove"
Chicago "Hard Habit To Break"

FLOPPY DISC:
Stranglers "Big In America"

Beautiful South "You Keep It All In"
Kraftwerk "Pocket Calculator"



Girlschool "Hit And Run"
Midnight Starr "Headlines"

Glenn Frey "The Heat Is On"
Pebbles "Girlfriend"

Level 42 "Lessons In Love"
Gap Band "Burn Rubber (Why You Wanna Hurt Me)"

Breathe "Hands To Heaven"
Marvin Gaye "My Love Is Waiting"

Queen "The Invisible Man"
Shalamar "Disappearing Act"

Then Jerico "The Motive (Living Without You)"
Siouxsie and the Banshees "Cities In Dust"

THE NOBODY'S DIARY:
Devo "Whip It"


Coldcut & Junior Reid "Stop This Crazy Thing"
Bluebells "Cath"

Slade "We'll Bring The House Down"
Bobby Brown "On Our Own"

Billy Idol "White Wedding"
Human League "The Lebanon"

Gillan "Restless"
Tanita Tikaram "Good Tradition"

Sigue Sigue Sputnik "Success"
Billy Joel "All For Leyna"

S Express "Superfly Guy"
Nick Heyward "Warning Sign"



Gladys Knight "Licence To Kill"
Undertones "My Perfect Cousin"

FLOPPY DISC:
Lionel Richie "My Love"

Kool & the Gang "Celebration"
Barracudas "Summer Fun"

A-Ha "The Sun Always Shines On TV"
Tracie "The House That Jack Built"

The show is repeated on Thursday at 6pm, and the next edition will be on Sunday, same time. Q Radio can be found on Freeview channel 716 or online here...

All four members namechecked in the lyrics

Q The 80s returns in its normal form after the brief madness of Christmas Day, and we return to our tried and even slightly trusted format of a three-hour 80s show.

The music will mix the familiar with the forgotten and will include the embed below, plus a song teased by the title of this blog entry.



We'll have two more Floppy Discs - failed singles by major artists - and an all-crucial entry from The Nobody's Diary, which showcases the acts of the 80s that never quite made it.

Sunday evening (New Years Day, natch) at 6pm. Q Radio is on Freeview channel 716 or online here. Happy New Year...

That's Asda price

Back to one of my bugbears, but with a rare positive slant. I'm one of many thousands of drivers who, I'm sure, feel quite grateful towards Asda.

A couple of months back, Asda brought down the price of its unleaded petrol to 129.9 pence per litre. This sort of price hasn't been seen, even in the forecourts of the traditionally cheaper supermarkets, for some time. I was dedicated straightaway to finding branches of Asda whenever my car needed one of its many refuellings, with a Hull branch of Asda handily having a 24-hour garage with self-service pumps.

After a short while, the other fuel outlets began to follow suit. Other supermarkets have dropped their fuel down to below 130p a litre, while Shell and Texaco garages - though not all - have also cut their prices. The cheapest Esso and Total filling stations I've encountered have managed to take themselves to 130.9 pence per litre. Only BP - which has an oil leak to pay for - remains high above the Asda benchmark, with the lowest I've seen 132.9 pence per litre. Some are still as high as 138.9 pence. I'm amazed when I see car drivers using their pumps. Then there are the many brands that operate at motorway service stations who currently feel unaffected by Asda's efforts and continue to charge crazy money - I'm pretty certain that if Asda somehow publicised its branches that are based close to motorways, they'd get traffic prepared to briefly turn off and fill up there.

129.9 pence is still far too expensive of course - I always point to episodes of Top Gear that are under three years old that show pumps charging 99.9 pence per litre - but Asda have at least made a start, and have recently upped the ante further by getting down to 128.7 pence. It proves that these fuel companies will charge only what customers are prepared to pay, despite them banging on about Government duty and the rising price of oil. I really hope that Asda, with all the good publicity and goodwill attained by their actions, will dare go for it again soon and whack down their prices further. In the meantime, it's quite nice to be able to fill the car to the brim and not see that day's wages almost entirely vanish in doing so.

"With my undying, death-defying love for you..."

This was the Q The 80s Christmas show...

Pretenders "2000 Miles"
David Essex "A Winter's Tale"

Japan "European Son"

Annie Lennox & Al Green "Put A Little Love In Your Heart"
Paul McCartney "Pipes Of Peace"



Robert Palmer "Johnny And Mary"
Suzanne Vega "Tom's Diner"

Gary Moore "Over The Hills And Far Away"

Run DMC "Christmas In Hollis"
Chris Rea "Joys Of Christmas"

Frazier Chorus "Dream Kitchen"
Fashion "Love Shadow"

Smiley Culture "Police Officer"

All About Eve "December"
Queen "Thank God It's Christmas"

Waitresses "Christmas Wrapping"
Bryan Adams "Christmas Time"

Black Box "Ride On Time"



Jona Lewie "Stop The Cavalry"
Frankie Goes To Hollywood "The Power Of Love"

Spandau Ballet "She Loved Like Diamond"
Cyndi Lauper "All Through The Night"

Wax "Bridge To Your Heart"

Van Morrison & Cliff Richard "Whenever God Shines His Light"
Wham! "Last Christmas"

Our Daughter's Wedding "Lawnchairs"
Jenny Burton "Bad Habits"

Human League "Open Your Heart"

Jets "Rockin Around The Christmas Tree"
Bouncing Czechs "I'm A Little Christmas Cracker"

Band Aid "Do They Know It's Christmas"
Elton John "Cold As Christmas"


Farley Jackmaster Funk "Love Can't Turn Around"

Jon & Vangelis "I'll Find My Way Home"
Freiheit "Keeping The Dream Alive"

Prince and the Revolution "Pop Life"
Alison Moyet "Ordinary Girl"

Ashford and Simpson "Solid"

Crazyhead "Like Princes Do"
Coldcut "Coldcut's Christmas Break"

Michelle Shocked "Anchorage"
That Petrol Emotion "Big Decision"

Vesta Williams "Once Bitten Twice Shy"

Kate Bush "December Will Be Magic Again"
Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl "Fairytale Of New York"

Back to normal on New Year's Day, from 6pm!

As Argyll drove John to the Nakatomi

Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, so we have the honour of a Q The 80s Christmas special. Loads of Christmas songs of the 80s, some familiar and some forgotten (of course), plus other stuff.



This is in the show.

And yes, it'll be repeated on Thursday at 6pm when you're less occupied...

Two earholes per ear

After attending a football match at the weekend, I dropped into a branch of Subway for some sustenance prior to catching my train.

The young chap behind the counter was welcoming and helpful and everything you want from someone serving you in an eaterie. I found it hard, however, not to stare at him just a bit.

Clearly, this fellow had chosen to make a major cosmetic alteration to his appearance, but had gone beyond tattoos. He had decided to not just have his ears pierced, but his ears punctured.

I've seen a lot of people lately, almost always men, with these coloured discs pushed into their earlobes. I can't imagine either the frame of mind of someone who chooses these mutiliative decorations, or the pain barrier they must have gone through to have holes the size of ten pence pieces made in their ears and then a disc shoved into each.

Thing is, however, Subway clearly have a uniform policy, based on either appearance or safety, that disallows any member of staff from wearing this stuff on duty. So the reason why I had trouble tearing my eyes away from this kindly chap wasn't because he had the discs in, but because he hadn't the discs in. He was behind the counter with two enormous holes in his ears.

I thought you were meant to put sticking plasters over them in the event of taking these items out, to avoid infection. Evidently not. They make me wince each time I see them; they remind me of the Amazonian chief with whom Sting was in cahoots in the late 1980s as he banged on about deforestation. I'm not sure what Subway policy is on lip plates, but I suspect it's roughly similar to how they view ear enhancements.

"Nancy's in a five-star hotel; Robbie's in a golf and country club; and Russell's camping..."

Bit irked about the Strictly Come Dancing final, to be honest. Jason Donovan, though the obvious outsider of the three prior to the curtain going up, didn't deserve to be ousted by the public after the first two dances. The judges' scores, though only a guide, proved that.

But all in all it was a tremendous watch and Harry Judd was, on a technical and clinical level, a worthy winner. I enjoyed the way he skilfully avoided Sir Bruce Forsyth's observation that he now had a career as a dancer ahead of him if he wanted it. If you're the drummer in a pop band of heart-throbs still having hits, you're not going to give that up for eight hours a day of jiving and foxtrotting. Not yet, anyway.

I liked Chelsee Heeley's partner, Pasha Kovalev, the only male pro dancer on the show without any evidence of ego or showbiz-seeking. The singing and musicianship was, as always, tremendous. Bruno Tonioli and Craig Revel Horwood remain the worthiest of the four judges. Zoe Ball was superb on It Takes Two. Contestants who came across well included Russell Grant, Anita Dobson, Robbie Savage and even Audley Harrison.

But there are gripes. Sir Bruce continued to cock up the autocue and Tess Daly is actually starting to grate now. She can do live telly but she isn't a reactive person to the often chaotic stuff around her; indeed, Alex Jones showed when removed from the constraints of autocue just how much sparkle and charisma she actually has. When you look at the combination of Sir Bruce and Tess, it's opposites working together - the old man can't read properly but can still show and improvise; the youthful sidekick can read properly but has no real awareness of what to do when the script has to be thrown away.

Len Goodman, meanwhile, has become a miserable, curmudgeonly, picky, lazy, soundbitten old get.

"I passed the howling woman and stood outside your door..."

Q The 80s did its stuff at the weekend, as always. It sounded like this...

Elton John "I'm Still Standing"
Candi Staton "Suspicious Minds"

A Flock Of Seagulls "Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You)"
T'Pau "Secret Garden"



Stray Cats "Stray Cat Strut"
Kim Wilde "Cambodia"

Iron Maiden "Wrathchild"
UB40 "So Here I Am"

Erasure "A Little Respect"
De La Soul "Say No Go"

FLOPPY DISC:
George Benson "What's On Your Mind"

Christians "Forgotten Town"
Men Without Hats "Safety Dance"

Amii Stewart "Friends"
The Cure "The Walk"

Michael Jackson "Bad"
Sheena Easton "Just Another Broken Heart"

Re-Flex "The Politics Of Dancing"
Heart "Who Will You Run To"

Gary Numan "I Die: You Die"
Simply Red "The Right Thing"

Split Enz "I Got You"
Whitney Houston "So Emotional"

Dexys Midnight Runners "Dance Stance"
Freddie McGregor "Just Don't Wanna Be Lonely"

THE NOBODY'S DIARY:
Love And Money "Candybar Express"



Huey Lewis & the News "If This Is It"
Lisa Stansfield "This Is The Right Time"

Rainbow "I Surrender"
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark "Secret"

Mike Oldfield "Moonlight Shadow"
Soft Cell "Where The Heart Is"

Soul II Soul "Get A Life"
Jim Diamond "Hi Ho Silver"

Housemartins "Five Get Over Excited"
Ruby Turner featuring Jonathan Butler "If You're Ready (Come Go With Me)"

Rod Stewart "Sweet Surrender"
Matchbox "When You Ask About Love"



Liza Minnelli "Losing My Mind"
Mtume "Juicy Fruit"

FLOPPY DISC:
The Madness "I Pronounce You"

Duran Duran "Skin Trade"
Kiss "Creatures Of The Night"

Gwen Guthrie "They Long To Be Close To You"
Happy Mondays "Hallelujah"

The show is repeated this Thursday. Meanwhile, it was the last "normal" edition of the programme, as next Sunday happens to be Christmas Day. Hooray! This will entail a rather splendid Christmas special, featuring festive singles of the 80s that fit both remits of the familiar and the forgotten (as ever), plus a few mistakenly festive tunes too. We'll also play some of the best Floppy Discs and entries from The Nobody's Diary featured during the year, and pay tribute to stars of the 1980s who passed away in 2011. Normal time on Christmas Day - 6pm. It's not as if there is anything better to do...

Q The 80s is on Freeview channel 716 and online here.

Donated to the soundtrack when he heard the show was about bikers

Q The 80s is on this weekend, as ever. It's final "normal" edition of the programme, as the following Sunday happens to be Christmas Day, which means - yes - a Christmas special. Yay!

Anyway, it's the regular but never remotely tedious mixture of the familiar and the forgotten from the 1980s that you can enjoy from 6pm on Sunday, including the song teased by the title of this blog, and another given away by the following embed...



We'll also have two Floppy Discs - failed singles from major artists - and another entry from The Nobody's Diary, where we showcase the acts of the 80s that didn't quite make it.

The Christmas special, by the way, as well as being crammed full of Christmas songs from the 1980s, will feature some of our (well, my) favourite Floppy Discs and entries from The Nobody's Diary featured over the past 12 months.

We're on Q Radio at 6pm this Sunday, repeated on Thursday at the same time. The radio station is on Freeview channel 716 and online here.

Taking a big blow

This is my own personal nozzle. Any ideas what it's for?

It was a gift presented to me in the daft hours of Sunday morning by a kindly copper. Yep, after driving what I estimate to be 1.5 million miles in my life, in all weathers, at all hours, in all places, for all kinds of reasons, I was breathalysed for the first time.

It was Saturday night, and the cop had watched me, at 3am, leave the bar where I have my longtime residency. I managed 100 yards before the blue lights flashed behind me. After a cursory discussion about one of my tiny number plate lights being out, he brought out the breathalyser.

I'd been on soft drinks all night, as is the norm for me when working, and so the word ZERO emerged on the screen after I completed my little exhalation. I'd already informed him that a) I was the DJ as opposed to a punter; and b) I had been on diet Coke all night, but he still whipped out the in-car intoximeter. I should add that I didn't just belligerently offer these facts, but did so in response to his questions "where have you been?" and "have you drunk any alcohol?". Despite my latter reply, he still tested me out - and then looked a bit surprised when it traced no alcohol at all, as if he was used to dealing with inebriated liars.

He then reminded me about the number plate light and allowed me to go.

It's December, and every copper is doing it, of course, and quite right too. I'm just surprised it's taken so long for me to blow into the box for the first time. It nearly happened earlier this year in Manchester but the officer accepted my offer of a smell of my breath to save time and let me on my way. And yes, I'd been on the soft drinks all night again.

And, presumably for DNA-related reasons, I am now the proud owner of my own police breathalyser nozzle. I'm half-expecting to have gained quite a collection by the end of the festive season.

Poor Robin Tripp wasn't so diligent...

"Where better to do your best dance than the semi final?"

So we're approaching the Strictly Come Dancing final this weekend and even though the largely predicted trio of couples have come through, the show hasn't suffered for it.

Kicking out two couples from five would have been more interesting had there not been two obvious rank outsiders from the quintet of pairings that took to the floor at the weekend, but even so the fact that Jason Donovan found himself in the bottom two last week meant that nothing could be taken for granted. A hellraising display from Alex Jones coupled with Harry Judd turning an ankle slightly and the whole thing was up in the air.

As it turned out, however, the three market leaders barely put a toe wrong. Judd is brilliant but very clinical and I still wonder whether his personality is enough to make him a winner, as he hasn't got that extra bit of obvious chutzpah to hang on to. Donovan, with his intensity in performance and ability to act as a spokesman for them all, and Chelsea Heeley, whose bubbliness has become less irritating as the weeks have passed, both have something extra off the floor to endear them to the crowd.

The two that left at the weekend, Alex Jones and Holly Valance, were telegraphed as likely to depart prior to broadcast, and once Jones got the terribly patronising comments about "deserving" to be in the semi-finals and that she "should be proud" of herself, it was clear the judges didn't see her as a finalist in waiting. The marks proved it. That said, even though she finished fifth out of five, she didn't seem as obvious to exit as Valance, the icy Aussie who was forced to do the dance most deeply unsuited to her laid-back attitude, the Charleston. Wearing sequinned hotpants that were inexplicably pulled up to her navel, she surpassed anything Russell Grant and Audley Harrison had honourably achieved earlier in the series for the title of least suitable dance for any celebrity, and she looked just relieved when it was over, not caring a jot what others thought of it because it couldn't be any worse than how she viewed it herself.

That meant that it was something of an anti-climax when Jones was the first to be declared out of the competition, as an early ejection for Valance might have just prompted audible tension as Jones and Donovan lined up for the final announcement of who was staying and who wasn't. As soon as the two Aussies were pitted together, with Jones out and the other two safely through, the tension evaporated. The public were not going to oust Donovan, with his perfect 40 score for an extraordinarily hot Argentine tango that could have easily represented 90 seconds of pornographic pre-amble, against Valance and her hotpants.

Strictly... has done Jones the world of good. Cast generally as a bit lightweight and slow since joining The One Show, she has shown in the last three months without the restriction of autocue that she has wit, self-awareness and rather brilliantly, she becomes so much more Welsh when being herself, as if the BBC had asked her to tone it down and make her accent more generic when chatting each weeknight. She has become very likeable indeed and maybe she'll be trusted to do better stuff on telly as a consequence of it.

So, the final. My money is on Heeley to win, as her talent is the most natural and her personality the most warming. She has flowered as a celebrity too, being possibly the least well-known of all the amateurs that lined up at the start of the run but now being instantly recognisable by face, smile and those fabulous Eccles vowels, which were mocked ungentlemanly by Sir Bruce Forsyth several times at the weekend.

Heeley also has an advantage over Judd in that her partner, Pasha Kovalev, makes no concessions for her amateur status and throws her in at the deep end. Judd's partner, Aliona Vilani, is a magnificent performer but has incurred the wrath of judges and audience in the past by doing too much scene setting when choreographing a dance and not enough traditional steps. It probably cost Matt Baker the title last year.

Donovan is the outsider, which may suit him given his regular position at the top of the show's earliest leaderboards as other celebrities took longer to settle, but he is the only one with real A-list status and a CV of achievement behind him that will potentially prompt block-voting. Out-and-out popularity with the television audience will decide the final if nobody makes a mess of their dancing, and this is where Donovan's main hope should rest. There is goodwill also for his partner Kristina Rihanoff, whose history on the programme has been via clunking incompetents until this year - John Sergeant, Joe Calzaghe and Goldie all had their limitations, to put it charitably - and so her own long-awaited rise to the top has been noted by the viewers.

Of course, we get show dances in the final too, which ultimately can be the actual difference between first and second. Nobody thought Tom Chambers would win, for example, until he did this...

"Let's just say our love is right, would you kiss and a-hold me tight..."

Q The 80s was, yes, on at the weekend! They're still letting us do this each week. Here's how we sounded...

Peter Gabriel "Sledgehammer"
Mica Paris "Breathe Life Into Me"

Psychedelic Furs "Heaven"
Paul McCartney "Press"

SOS Band "Just Be Good To Me"
Rolling Stones "She's So Cold"

Elkie Brooks "Fool If You Think It's Over"
Fine Young Cannibals "Johnny Come Home"

Magnum "It Must Have Been Love"
George Benson "Feel Like Makin' Love"

FLOPPY DISC:
Grace Jones "I'm Not Perfect (But I'm Perfect For You)"

The Smiths "This Charming Man"
Tracey Ullman "Move Over Darling"



D Mob featuring Cathy Dennis "C'Mon And Get My Love"
Billy Idol "To Be A Lover"

The Jam "Going Underground"
Amazulu "Don't You Just Know It"

Pasadenas "Enchanted Lady"
Ozzy Osbourne "Shot In The Dark"

Jane Wiedlin "Rush Hour"
New Order "State Of The Nation"

Junior "Too Late"
Howard Jones "New Song"

New Model Army "Stupid Questions"
Kids From Fame "Hi-Fidelity"

THE NOBODY'S DIARY:
Mighty Lemon Drops "The Other Side Of You"



Flash and the Pan "Waiting For A Train"
Berlin "You Don't Know"

Pinkees "Danger Games"
Cool Notes "Spend The Night"

Hue & Cry "Labour Of Love"
Alyson Williams "Sleep Talk"

Stranglers "Golden Brown"
Madonna "The Look Of Love"

Marillion "Lavender"
Gene Chandler "Does She Have A Friend?"

Spandau Ballet "Lifeline"
Sting "Russians"



Hot Chocolate "Are You Getting Enough Of What Makes You Happy"
Broken English "Comin' On Strong"

FLOPPY DISC:
The Clash "Know Your Rights"

Los Lobos "Come On Let's Go"
Enya "Evening Falls"

David Bowie "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)"
Imagination "Thank You My Love"

The show is repeated on Thursday, and then our final programme before Christmas airs next Sunday. All shows start at 6pm. Q Radio is on Freeview channel 716 or online here. And there will be a show on Christmas night!

Written specifically for a Rolling Stones tribute act

Q The 80s is on this weekend. Sunday night, 6pm, Q Radio - and you can find us here or on Freeview channel 716.

The usual remit - a stack of 80s songs that mix the familiar with the forgotten and contain a couple of Floppy Discs - failed singles from major artists - and an entry from The Nobody's Diary, which is our glance back at the artists of the decade that never quite made it.

The title of this blog entry gives you a clue as to the identity of one song, while the embed below entirely ends any mystery about another.



See you Sunday evening...

The best time of the day meets the best day of his time

Alex, my dear friend and total hero, got married in a gorgeous, ancient East Sussex hotel at the weekend. It was a smashing do, classy and enormous fun, befitting the character of the man. His new wife, Kerry, is of course totally stunning, and it was a privilege to be there.



Alex's speech lasted half an hour and was pure stand-up comedy. Then Clive, one of his two best men who also uses the professional name Bill Shipton (one for 1980s soft porn fans there), gave a speech which reduced grizzled broadcasters and cynics to a hysterical jelly.

Edwina Hayes sang this at the ceremony and there was a lot of "something in my eye" nonsense going an afterwards...



And I got to meet Janice Long ("They told me at Live Aid that if Status Quo's microphones failed, I had to go on and fill") and Neale James ("Matthew Bannister said I had six months to go at Radio 1. I could either flounce out like the others or have six months of great fun, so I had six months of great fun") so all was fantastic, really.

Alex is now totally loved up and can't stop grinning. But we all agreed that upon his return from honeymoon and to the airwaves, he'll be still a cynical old get, and our favourite cynical old get at that. Congratulations to them both.