You’ll have heard of Stoptober, a national health initiative in which smokers kick the habit during October and, in many cases, raise money for charity while doing so. You’re probably familiar with Movember too, since there’s no avoiding the goof in the office chortling about his “hilarious” new moustache that he hopes makes him look like a Mexican bandit, while pressing send on yet another “Please donate...” email.
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Graham Nash’s book is as much a lesson in pop history as it is a warts-and-all memoir. The co-founder of The Hollies, he made it out of post-war poverty in Manchester with a series of hits including “Carrie Anne”, “Simple Man” and “Marrakesh Express”, before becoming a leading light in the Laurel Canyon folk scene alongside collaborators David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Neil Young, and his then lover, Joni Mitchell.
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There has been much whooping over the announcement that banjo-loving folkies Mumford & Sons have reached an “indefinite hiatus”. Mumford-bashing has, of course, become something of a national sport. Look at them with their private educations and their Wurzels’ waistcoats, the daft chumps!
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On reading about Stephanie Smith, the blogger and New York Post reporter who pledged to make 300 sandwiches for her boyfriend, Eric, in exchange for a marriage proposal, I felt a little surge of smugness. Thank God, I thought to myself, my bloke is suitably evolved that he knows that if he wants a sandwich he has to go to the fridge. He also knows that if he wants the fridge to contain sandwich-making material he needs to visit a supermarket first. These are concepts that have never had to be explained. Ain't life grand?
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I love music and I love film. You might say they are my main passions in life if you don't count disco nail varnish and the pulled-pork sandwiches served in the pub opposite my house. So several weeks ago when the BBC announced a season of programmes called Sound of Cinema to be rolled out across both TV and radio, I let out a little cheer and blocked out a large chunk of my September diary with the reminders: "comfy clothes", "snacks" and "Radio 3".
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Fleetwood Mac may have had their ups and downs but they sure know a thing or two about timing. Last year singer Stevie Nicks told Rolling Stone that 2013 would be “the year of Fleetwood Mac”. And so it has proved. Thirty-six years on from their 40 million-selling album Rumours, a languid, harmony-laden work about heartbreak which now resides in one in six US households, the Mac are back on top.
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It's possible that when the actress Naomi Watts, ensconced in a suite at Claridge's, donned a set of headphones to speak to Radio 5 Live's Simon Mayo for an interview, she had already read the abominable reviews for the film, Diana, that she was supposed to be promoting and thought to herself: "Why bother?" Or it could be that room service had arrived earlier than expected – and given the choice between Simon Mayo and a plate of macaroons, well, it's a tough one even for the most committed self-publicist.
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"Hear the inspiring story of the man with terminal cancer who achieved his goal as a magician and comedian," went the blurb for Richard Bacon's show on BBC Radio 5 Live. Oh God, I thought. Must we? You see, I had imagined, in a cynical moment, a kind of queasy Bucket List-style scenario in which a pale-faced man in surgical gowns and smothered in tubing is wheeled on to a stage in order to pull a rabbit out of a hat for the last time as the audience howl in tear-stained approval, possibly with choirs of angels looking on.
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When two-year-old Alysia Abbott's mother died in 1973 it was assumed that she would be adopted by her aunt Janet. A child needs a mother, so the thinking goes, and the one thing that Alysia didn't need according to her extended family and America's legislating bodies, was a homosexual father.
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Summer's over, the kids are back at school and Radio 4's has blown the budget on a new drama season. When I first heard about the station's revival of British New Wave I adopted my best excited face. I mean, just look at the people involved – James Purefoy, Emily Watson, Sheridan Smith and John Thomson. But then I remembered that this is Radio 4, for much of the time a repository for the kind of half-arsed, sketchily drawn drama that makes the TV soap Doctors look like Ibsen.
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I always knew she was small but, even so, I'm not quite prepared for how teeny and bird-like Yoko Ono is. Or, come to think of it, how glamorous. The home movies taken by her and Lennon in the 1970s reveal a figure with big, fluffy hair and pensive, wary features. But the woman sitting next to me is smiling broadly and is stylishly clad in dark jeans, tight black sweater and chunky boots. Her hair is cropped and spiky and her signature sunglasses sit halfway down her nose, her eyes twinkling over the top. She is part rock star, part sexy librarian.
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