I don’t have many artifacts from my school days; no writing or art, no photos of me in my uniform or with my friends at the time. About all I have is my exam certificates and two school reports, one from the Upper Sixth and the one above from the Fifth year.

The grades in the two columns are for “Standard of Work” and “Attitude To Work” but I don’t remember what the percentages refer to. They make no sense anyway. I’ve no idea how my English score of 65% got me a double-A when 67% in Maths only got me a D and C. I didn’t care about those low grades because by that stage I hated Maths. The teacher was boring and there were some thugs at the back of the class who liked picking on me, but mostly because I was terrible at it and couldn’t see the point of it beyond a certain level. It’s been over 35 years since I left school and I still have had no need for Logarithms or Algebra.

My best (and favourite) subjects were Art and English. In the latter I had the best teacher I ever had in Miss Thomson, a very brassy Scottish woman whose hot temper and vicious sarcasm scared the shit out of us when we were nervous newbies at the school but who we came to appreciate as a sharp, funny woman as we got older. A few of us even got invited to her house for a party when school finished. I remember her telling us she personally thought Tennyson was boring but we had to study his poems because he was on the curriculum, and that she couldn’t take Othello seriously as a tragedy because the main character was such a gullible idiot. A view which colors my opinion of the play to this day.

The general theme running through both of the reports (and all the other ones I remember) is pretty much the same: Lee is a bright boy but he must try harder. Quotes like “It is evident he has not worked as dilligently as he might have in certain subjects” and “While he should, and will, achieve good grades, he may not reach his full potential” sum up my life really. I’ve never been an ambitious, go-getting striver, studying all night to achieve lofty goals. My parents didn’t push me and I was happy just being “clever” because being brilliant is too much bloody work.

I only took two A-Levels in the Sixth Form (Art and English Lit) which gave me plenty of free time to hang around the Common Room or the local park (where I started smoking), but I still got to the point near exam time when I was sick of studying. I remember being at Fulham Library revising for my English A-Level, going through Othello for the millionth time trying to memorize quotes, when my brain just couldn’t do it anymore and I gave up. I closed up my books, went home, and put them in my bedroom closet thinking I didn’t give a shit if I passed or not. It’s the sort of impulsive gesture you make when you’re 17, but I was so relieved to have that stress off me — fuck the future. Luckily I was aiming for art school instead of University which only required five O-Levels minimum to get in and I already had those. I finished the final English paper (there were three) a half hour before time was up and the supervising teacher told me I wouldn’t pass if I left that early. Surprisingly I did pass (but only just) which upset my grand, punk-rock gesture a bit.

Maths might have been pointless but studying English Lit turned out to be the most useful thing I ever did — way more than Art — because it taught me to think critically. Though even in that I was a shirker according to this line from my Sixth Form report about my English work: “There is a warning for Lee to avoid flippancy because it can lead to superficiality in written work.” I got a chuckle out of that because you could pretty much apply it to my blog writing today.

Download: Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime – The Korgis (mp3)

Before I had enough of a social life to start buying Time Out every week, the late Barry Norman was the first film critic I was aware of and my first exposure to the idea that film wasn’t just “the pictures” but an art form worth talking about seriously. I got my love of movies from my Dad but, seeing as he wasn’t around, Norman’s show was a place for me to take that interest. For Americans who’ve never heard of him, he was our Roger Ebert.

His urbane, laid back style was a million miles from TV these days. He was just a rumpled journalist sitting in a chair talking, with bags under his eyes that looked like he had been up late in some dingy cinema.

Film was on the BBC for an amazing 26 years from 1972-1998. The first decade of which was during a golden era for Hollywood films and his shows of the mid-70s were my first exposure to classics like Taxi Driver and Chinatown which I saw over and over again once I was old enough to. Hollywood changed post-Star Wars and through the 80s and 90s Norman often bemoaned that they didn’t make films for grown ups anymore which, sadly, is even more true today.

This is the famous theme music to the show, forever linked in our minds with sitting in dark rooms watching flickering images on a screen.

Download: I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free – Billy Taylor (mp3)

Note from Peter Powell’s intro that the band on before this was Brotherhood of Man. What a time to be alive.

I love everything about this 1977 photo of a young Teddy Boy in London. With his immaculate DA, purple drape jacket, pink socks, and white brothel creepers he looks like a proper dandy. Then there’s the Evening News box, a London newspaper which doesn’t exist anymore, and the Wimpy Bar which is a rare sight in England too now. He’s probably having a burger before heading down the King’s Road to beat up some Punk rockers.

You used to still see a lot of Teds in the 1970s, but at some point in the 80s they just seemed to vanish. I think maybe a lot of the youngsters got into Rockabilly style but I don’t know where the older ones went. Probably moved to Essex where they’re now retired and voting for UKIP.

This is a Rockabilly classic from 1956 that has been covered by The Yardbirds, Aerosmith, and Motörhead but this version still rocks like crazy, man, crazy. 

Download: The Train Kept A-Rollin’ – Johnny Burnette (mp3)

Both of these are from great albums which came out last year that I’ve only just discovered. Better late than never, eh?




Britta Phillips is the bass player in indie dreampop band Luna and last year she released her first ever solo album Luck Or Magic. As you can imagine from her other job it’s a dreamy and shimmering record with this lush opening track sounding like a lost Bond theme.



Diane Birch has released two albums of 70s-ish pop/rock that evoked Fleetwood Mac and Carole King which were decent but not that special to my ears. Since then she’s moved to Berlin and put out the self-produced and released mini-album Nous which shows her going in a new and more interesting direction of gorgeous, minimalist ballads like this one.

This clip is from a TV show in 1978 called Blackcurrent presented by DJ Greg Edwards. According to the person who uploaded this to YouTube it was a British version of Soul Train but I have no memory of it at all. I do remember there was a short-lived British Soul Train show in the 1980s presented by Jeffrey Daniels but this one is new to me. Nothing on Google either. Anyone?

Whatever the show was, this is fantastic. Hi-Tension were one of the first black British bands who could play the funk as well as their American cousins and they’re really smoking here.

Losing John Noakes the other week was bad enough, but now the children’s television legend that was Brian Cant has left us too. If you’re a British person of a certain age the news would have been greatly upsetting and a reminder of the passing of time. Having them both die so close to each other was like having a curtain come down on your childhood.

Cant was the sort of older, friendly uncle figure you don’t get on kid’s telly anymore now all the presenters try to be your cool best friend instead. With a 20-year career that took in narrating Camberwick Green, Trumpton, and Chigley, and presenting both Play School and Play Away, he was a constant fixture for our entire childhood and his voice part of it’s soundtrack. We literally grew up with him, and hearing that warm voice sparks happy memories just like an old teddy bear or a bag of boiled sweets.

Here’s a lovely song from Chigley that Half Man Half Biscuit covered (sort of).

Download: The Little Steam Train – Brian Cant (mp3)

Not sure if this 1982 single is quite great enough to be called a lost classic, but it does follow the pattern of only being a very minor hit by a band that broke up soon after one more flop single and a solitary album. I certainly liked it enough to buy it on 12″ at the time.

King Trigger were hyped as the next big thing back then — they were on the cover of Sounds before they even had a record out — but it never panned out for them. Maybe because their percussive, tribal sound was too similar to the likes of Pigbag, Adam & The Ants, and Bow Wow Wow. The big production by Steve Lillywhite on this also makes them sound like a more friendly Killing Joke. Guess the charts can only handle so much Burundi drumming at one time.

Download: The River (12″ Version) – King Trigger (mp3)