Book review: I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen, By Sylvie Simmons

Where do you start with Leonard Cohen: poet, novelist, singer, songwriter, father, son, womaniser, traveller, bon viveur, drug-user, depressive, spiritual recluse? The sheer size of Sylvie Simmons's biography is testament to Cohen's many incarnations, assorted narratives and vast back catalogue.
Read more...

Radio column: Flush of joy

Is it acceptable to talk on the phone when you're sitting on the toilet? The American humourist David Sedaris says not, though his sister Tiffany would beg to differ. "Don't mind me," she has been known to say, with the strained tone of someone engaging in heavy lifting, while clasping the phone to her ear. "I'm just… trying to get… the lid… off this… jar." 
Read more...

Radio column: Waiting for the man

Focusing on a single band over a weekend is a tricky business on the radio. Get it wrong and you risk provoking the ire of the music police, who are a bit like the fashion police only more militant. They will rain hellfire and damnation down on you on Twitter, picket outside your office and very likely follow you home, barge into your house, skim through your record collection and locate the copy of Kylie and Jason's "Especially for You" that you had studiously hidden from your family, and hold it up as evidence of your abominable taste.
Read more...

Radio column: Wrong direction for the travelling man

Over the past week the ghosts of dead DJs have been stalking the corridors of the BBC. Among the nastier apparitions has been Jimmy Savile, a man alleged to have abused scores of children though who, because of his connections and charitable work, was deemed beyond reproach. More cheeringly, we have also seen the reappearance, from beyond the grave, of Kenny Everett, a groundbreaking DJ and comic who was denounced from some quarters as a pervert on the basis of his homosexuality.
Read more...

Radio column: Tory stories starting to show their age

Consider, for a moment, the title of Radio 4's Five More Ages of Brandreth. Should anyone be wondering what was going through the minds of commissioning editors when they gave the series the green light, the clue is surely in the word "more".

Read more...