Love Me Do!: "Beatles" Progress by Michael Braun (Graymalkin Media 1964)

The New Statesman printed an article by Paul Johnson called ‘The Menace of Beatlism’. He wrote that: ‘Bewildered by a rapidly changing society, excessively fearful of becoming out of date, our leaders are increasingly turning to young people as guides and mentors – or, to vary the metaphor, as geiger-counters to guide them against the perils of mental obsolescence.’ During the following week the paper received nearly 250 letters about the article. The correspondents were three to one against Mr Johnson, and one reader suggested he try monkey glands.

What do you call an addendum to an addendum? Feeding A Print Run Of 5000

"Victoria, if the Spice Girls ever do reform, any chance of you lot doing a cover version of the Crass song, 'I Ain't Thick, It's Just a Trick'? I mean, I've got the T shirt and everything."

"Sorry David, I've set my heart on us doing a cover version of the Poison Girls's 'Cry No More' for the comeback album. Ask All Saints."

Christ, nothing like stumbling across a draft post hidden away in your dashboard to hit home the fact that you are and always will be a one-trick blogger.

The struck out title, the snatch of imagined dialogue above with the (wrong) accompanying picture - see previous post for elucidation - and the italicised text below dates from the 1st of December of last year.

Sod it, I'm posting it anyway. It's one post closer to one thousand published posts that I'm hurtling towards with increasing banality, and hopefully I'll catch some extra stray search engine traffic via the mention of Posh and Becks.

. . . Oh, and the Spice Girls have now reformed for a reunion tour; the New Statesman have seen the archive access light, so I can now link to Ian Aitch's book reviews direct; and the B52s track 'Housework' has just come on iTunes. I love a happy ending.

Hidden in draft, and dating from 12/1/06 1:42am

No idea if the New Statesman continues to have the annoying habit of charging for archive material, so I'm falling back on the good service provided by someone on the Leftist Trainspotters List who has cut and pasted a review from the October 2nd 2006 issue of the magazine on

Ian Aitch's review of "The Story of Crass" by George Berger and "The Day the Country Died" by Ian Glasper is no great shakes, but I liked this nugget from the review.

"On one occasion during the Falklands conflict, the band heard a rumour that a battleship, HMS Sheffield, had been willingly sacrificed by the British government in order to protect HMS Invincible, on which Prince Andrew was then serving. In response, Crass created a fake taped telephone conversation between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher discussing the matter. This recording was sent out anonymously to newspapers, and before long it surfaced in the US state department, which denounced it as the work of the Kremlin. The KGB was so impressed by the stunt that it, too, tried to recruit the band members. But they simply drank the free vodka and played dumb."

Drank "the free vodaka and played dumb.? Even back then they were 15 years ahead of Chumbawamba.