Of bulges, ancient Eastbourne, bye-bye Ramsey Street, the high life, good fortune, prehistory and a pop princess

RIP Gil Gerard, aka Buck Rogers, with his impressive space weapon! [click any pic to embiggen]

It's another snippets post, dear reader:

• Oops! news: An ancient skeleton that for decades was mistakenly cited as African, and as "the earliest black Briton", has been scientifically identified as a locally-born girl, probably from what is today the coastal resort of Eastbourne.
• The soap that wouldn't die news: The beloved Aussie soap Neighbours - that launched the careers of such heavyweights as Kylie Minogue, Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, Natalie Imbruglia, Margot Robbie and Liam Hemsworth - has ended for good (again! It was revived after its last grand finale in 2022 as a streaming show on Amazon), after 40 years.

• Luxurious living news: Coco Chanel's Mediterranean villa La Pausa [above], at which she hosted the kind of parties that we would never be invited to, but the likes of Jean Cocteau, Colette, Igor Stravisnksy, Luchino Visconti and Salvador Dalí were, has been completely restored and reopened as a cultural centre.
• Lucky bastards news: A Welsh couple is celebrating winning £1 million on the lottery - for the second time, seven years after their first million-pound win! "All day long I'd biddy biddy bum, if I were a wealthy man." But I'm not. Dammit.

• Mountain-climbing dinosaurs? news: Thousands of dinosaur footprints have been discovered on a rock cliff - about 600 metres (nearly 2,000 feet) above the nearest road - high up in the Italian Alps.
• And finally: The race to be Britain's Xmas #1 single is hotting up - with Wham! and Mariah-fucking-Carey both in the running again - but one of the bookies' favourites this year is... Our Princess Kylie! Fingers crossed for Friday, when the Xmas Chart is announced...

Kylie Minogue - X-M-A-S!

And the weather? Blustery, but not that cold if you're out of the wind.

Bonga, Bonga, Bonga

It is that time of year when all bets are off as to what rubbish will top the UK charts for the Festering Season. Undoubtedly it will be some codswallop by a warbler who won X-Factor or similar (who, by this time next year, will no doubt be appearing on Splash! or Celebrity Super Spa or another grotesque "reality TV" concoction).

However, it is also the season for newspapers to dig out some of the worst seasonal pop pap ever released, and, in the true spirit of Xmas, I thought I'd share a slew of absolute corkers.

How about The Cheeky Girls and Andy Newton-Lee [whoooo?]?

Cheeky Girls with Andy Newton-Lee - Xmas-time Love

Then there's Miss Cyndi Lauper's worst ever moment:

Cyndi Lauper - Christmas Conga

And finally, if anyone ever thought the New Kids on the Block were "cool", surely that must have been dispelled by this!

New Kids on the Block - Funky, Funky Christmas

It'll all be over soon.

Oh, the horror...

We're hardly halfway through November and already the dreaded Festering Season has taken over - the shops are a slew of cheap crap tinsel and unfunny cards (although I have so far yet to hear a piped version of Cliff Richard or Slade through a PA system, thankfully), the heteroids are starting to look grimmer than usual as they try and steer their screaming progeny away from the latest wildly expensive "must-have" gadgets and toys filling the shelves, and the musical bandwagon has already started in earnest, as faded former stars start to team up for their tearful Xmas collections, including these...



Rod Stewart has released his first-ever seasonal album Merry Christmas, Baby, featuring a series of duets including Michael Buble on Winter Wonderland.



The formerly cool Cee-Lo Green, not content with also appearing on Mr Stewart's Xmas album, has decided to inflict one of his own on us called CeeLo’s Magic Moment which features duets with The Muppets and Christina Aguilera. I don't know how you'd be able to tell them apart. Possibly by smell.



Just when you thought it was safe, Donny Osmond and Susan Boyle are to release their saccharine duet This Is The Moment from her new album Standing Ovation. My ears are beginning to bleed, but there's more...



As succinctly reviewed by Mike at Pop Trash Addicts, Spice Girls Emma Bunton and Melanie C "have joined forces to record an insanely tragic cover of I Know Him So Well...you need a big voice to pull it off and these sad bitches can barely hold a note between them."



And as if the tragi-comedy couldn't get any more horrifying, none other than "not gay at all" John Travolta and his unfeasibly odd hair have teamed up with the heavily Polyfilla-ed Olivia Newton John for an album of "classics" This Christmas. I've just puked in the mince pies...

Suffice to say I won't be buying any of them.

Roll on January.

Bah Humbug.

Whatever happened to Paul Burnett?

The Xmas chart has been announced for 2010, and once more I find a load of non-entities I have never heard of (or worse, never want to hear again in my life - bloody Rihanna or Black-Eyed Peas, for example) occupy the top slots. Even the Take That song is dull. And where is Kylie?



As you may already know, dear reader, 1981 was a cherished year in my developing adulthood. This was the year I left school, took up smoking and New Romanticism (in no particular order), and fell in love with Brideshead Revisited, Princess Diana and Adam Ant - and (in my memory at least) this was one of the best for music, ever!

Inevitably however, when you come to take a closer look (at the charts; the records that actually sold any kind of quantity) the picture is perhaps not quite so clear-cut. For every Special AKA, there was a Nolans. Kate Bush was big news, but so was Aneka's Japanese Boy. Spandau Ballet, Visage and Ultravox all arrived with a bang - but this was also Shakin' Stevens' best year. Soft Cell broke new ground with Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, yet Phil Collins and ELO out-sold them in the album charts by a huge margin. A truly eclectic mixture of styles flooded the market - from Ska to Heavy Metal to Rock-a-billy to Stars on 45!

Needless to say, the charts were our Gods. I listened avidly to Paul Burnett on Radio 1 every Tuesday lunchtime (when the Top 40 used to be announced), marking every hit into a notebook, and even grading them "good", "excellent" or "unbearable" - it was an obsession. I bought every single in the "excellent" category (and many of the "good" ones too). So I now have boxes of 7-inch vinyl, all mainly acquired in this era.

Of particular interest to the chart-o-phile was the Xmas chart. Because they were not compiled over the holidays (and whatever was in the higher echelons of the chart would rule the airwaves for the whole of that period) it was vital that at least some favourites just HAD to be in there!

So let us wallow in the nostalgia of this very week in 1981, as the Xmas countdown has been announced...

In a December chart that included Soft Cell's Bedsitter, Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses, My Own Way by Duran Duran, I Could Be Lucky by Altered Images, Get Down On It by Kool and the Gang and the magnificent Wild is the Wind by David Bowie, there had to be some winners and losers I suppose. Inevitably there is some shit by Cliff Richard, and a completely forgotten couple of numbers by Godley and Creme and Status Quo, but nevertheless quite a few enduring favourites do appear. Enjoy!

1 Don't You Want Me - HUMAN LEAGUE

The Human League - Don't You Want Me

2 Daddy's Home - CLIFF RICHARD [I simply cannot bring myself to post this one, sorry any Cliff fans out there.]

3 One of Us - ABBA

Abba - One Of Us

4 Ant Rap - ADAM AND THE ANTS

Adam and the Ants - Ant Rap

5 The Land of Make Believe - BUCKS FIZZ

Bucks Fizz - Land Of Make Believe

6 It Must Be Love - MADNESS

Madness - It Must Be Love

7 Wedding Bells - GODLEY AND CREME

Godley & Creme - Wedding Bells

8 Rock 'n' Roll - STATUS QUO

Status Quo - Rock 'n Roll

9 Mirror Mirror (Mon Amour) - DOLLAR

Dollar - Mirror Mirror

10 I'll Find My Way Home - JON AND VANGELIS

Jon & Vangelis - I'll Find My Way Home

Ah, memories...

Merry Christmas your arse, I pray God it’s our last...

All this bullshit in the news about the lyrics of the finest Christmas song ever made is beginning to get on my tits. It just makes me want to sing along even more...

Pogues and Kirsty MacColl - Fairytale of New York

You're a bum
You're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it's our last

The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing "Galway Bay"
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas Day

Indeed.

More about Fairytale of New York on the BBC

Shakin’ bloody Stevens!

The UK Charts have (officially) become a laughing stock this week. As we oldies remember, you used to have to sell a couple of million seven-inchers in Woolies every week to stay at the top, and many thousands to even enter the top 40... Nowadays it takes fifty chavs and a dog to buy it.

This week, due to the effects of the relaxation of the law which means that every download - no matter how weird - counts towards the so-called Top 40, we have a host of rubbish from yesteryear hitting the chart just because people are downloading them (at 50p a pop) for their parties! Just take a look at it and weep...

CHRISTMAS "CLASSICS" IN TOP 40
8 Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You
12 Pogues & Kirsty MacColl - Fairytale of New York
23 Wham! - Last Christmas
25 Andy Williams - It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
27 Wizzard - I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day
33 Shakin' Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone
37 Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody
38 Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas?

Does anyone really think that Leona Lewis deserves to be in the chart, let alone Mariah (warbling t**t) Carey, Andy Williams, and bloody Shakin' bloody Stevens??

No wonder EMI and HMV are going down the pan...