La Pub Irlandese

You can take the boy out of Scotland, but in the end you can’t take Scotland out of the boy. Although I consider myself these days to be a Sophisticated Continental European who cooks with olive oil, knows that it’s bad form to order a Cappuccino after Midday, and who doesn’t urinate in the street [...]

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The Black Heart of Jim Bowen

I used to watch Bullseye regularly back in the 80s. It was in that dead zone on a Sunday afternoon between the football highlights on Scotsport and tea. Moreover, given that the competition was Harry Secombe singing Abide With Me on Highway over on BBC 1, Jim Bowen et al had a pretty much free [...]

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Manowar Lyrics Word Cloud

Ever wondered what would happen if you put the lyrics from an album by not-at-all-homoerotic metal band Manowar into Wordle? Of course you have. Well, in order to advance the science of metallogy I plugged in the words from all the songs on Into Glory Ride, and the result is displayed above. I can’t understand [...]

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Rhapsody for a Bohemian

When Freddie Mercury died back in the early 90s, it provided an opportunity for bigoted fucks in the Home Counties – who were of the opinion that only folk who had contracted AIDs via blood transfusions deserved any sympathy – to vent their spleen. A popular forum for these people then (and probably now) was [...]

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Canuck Comic Book Heroes

I was reading an article over the weekend on Canadian Comic Books during the Second World War. It seems that the Canadian government banned the importing of US comics as an austerity measure, and, with no Batman and Superman on the shelves anymore, Canadian publishers and entrepreneurs quickly rushed in to fill the gap with [...]

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