Justin Quirk

New FHM...

2011-10-27T11:37:00.004Z

The current issue of FHM includes my piece on 12 things that winter makes you do. #1 being...

Balloon in weight
You hit a certain point – usually early October – when putting the heating up and wearing an extra jumper just aren’t enough to keep out the chills. And your body tells you that what’s really going to warm you up is a massive beergut and a wobbling pair of mantits. Cue long periods of steady eating, with short recovery periods – a kind of ‘Inverted Ramadan’ – with heavy abuse of boxes of donuts, last night’s Chinese takeaway, whole pots of Doritos sauce and an entire roast chicken, which has been knocked down to 10p just before Tesco Express closes.

G n' R, Cycling Shorts and False Nostalgia…

2011-10-27T11:30:00.002Z

With the wave of nostalgia for 1991 showing no sign of abating, my Guardian article looks at the biggest album of that year, which nobody now seems to remember: Guns n' Roses' USE YOUR ILLUSION. You can read the piece and admire Axl's cycling shorts here.

The Art of Studio One

2011-10-27T11:26:00.003Z

Soul Jazz's new coffee table book celebrates the cover art of legendary reggae label Studio One. You can read the piece I wrote for The Guardian about the book here

David Rodigan in The Guardian

2011-07-24T16:46:00.004Z

My interview with David Rodigan ran in this weekend's Guardian Guide to tie in with his excellent new compilation Dubwize Shower. You can read the piece here, and check out Rodigan's website here.

Home of Metal in The Guardian

2011-07-24T16:44:00.001Z

My piece on Birmingham's fantastic HOME OF METAL exhibition was in the Guardian. You can read the piece here, and check out the exhibition here.

Travelodge Hard Sell in The Guardian

2011-06-20T10:54:00.003Z

I wrote the Hard Sell column in this weekend's Guardian Guide, about the current Travelodge campaign. You can watch the advert here, then read the column here.

New FHM...

2011-06-20T10:46:00.003Z

This month's FHM features Jessica Lowndes on the cover and my piece on 'Things You Only Do To Impress Women'. Including, at number 7…

Dance

An attempt to reconnect with your primal, physical self and telegraph the message out that you’re a sort of easy going libertine who’ll be an absolute beast in the sack. Or, as it showed up in the photos, an overpaid sunburned westerner jumping in the air with two depressed Masai warriors while the hotel staff clear away the all you can eat buffet in the background.

Reggae Britannia

2011-02-20T14:44:00.003Z

My piece on the BBC's Reggae Britannia series was on Friday's Guardian TV site. You can read it here.

Liz Jones' True Crime Masterclass, part 2...

2011-01-19T16:44:00.003Z

*This was written as a response to Liz Jones' piece on the Jo Yeates murder; you can read the original here.

Is Lovely Steven Lawrence Becoming Just Another Device To Drive Web Traffic?

By Liz Jones

It’s Friday night and I’m in the British Lion pub on Eltham High Street.

This is near where Steven Lawrence spent his last evening before he set off up the hill, past all the twinkly shops and bars (a Chicken Cottage, Jamal’s Mini Mart, an Esso garage – Eltham is nothing, if not something) towards his death.

The pub is ok but ordinary. The wine list, chalked on a board, says ‘Sunday Liverpool v West Ham 3pm’.

I wish he had spent what were probably his last hours on earth near somewhere lovelier. The food is awful (I ask for a veggie burger and it doesn’t come because the kitchen is closed. I eat two sachets of ketchup and a napkin instead!) but the young women behind the bar are sweet with huge, wary teeth.

Alison is working her way through uni, where she is studying English. She comes from London and her parents are terrified that I am going to turn her into a clumsily obvious symbol to prove my point. The other drinkers are hostile, wary of outsiders. As I stand at the bar, they stare silently at me, ugly ‘pint glasses’ hovering mid-sip, in front of their wonky mouths.

Steven was murdered on April 22, 1993, but Alison says she doesn’t remember him. ‘I was only two years old,’ she says warily. ‘What’s on your face?’

Lyn, with white blonde hair, who was also barely sentient that night, says she is ‘definitely freaked out now. What are you doing?’

I leave the bar at 10pm after two more sachets of ketchup. My attempts to order a glass of ‘Sunday Liverpool’ fell on deaf ears, and after reapplying the boot polish to my face, I went to retrace Steven’s steps. Even though it is 10pm on a Friday night in a London suburb, the streets are mildly busy. A couple of black people walk past me. They hurriedly cross the road as they see me. I straighten my red, gold and green woolly hat against the night cold and turn off the main road.

I head down Rochester Avenue. It’s quieter now, and darker. Luckily, my lovely smile makes me visible to the passing drivers. A couple of them shout warnings to me that I ‘want to be fucking careful’ while gesticulating with their hands that gun crime may be a problem in this area. I am touched by their solidarity and feel somehow closer to Steven at this point in the pre-arranged narrative.

I find Budgens and go in. I almost buy that can of Panda Cola, but go for the more expensive, real Coke; the choice tells me that Steven wanted a lovely can of soft drink, something above the ordinary.

There is a police van on the green as I turn right towards the bus stop near where Steven was killed. An elderly gentleman is talking to the policeman; they are both white. The policeman has a kindly face, but as the old man talks and gestures in my direction the policeman looks at me just as I step under the cheap, unpleasant glow of a halogen streetlight. Seeing what I am, his face contorts in a grimace. I see the hatred that still bubbles under the surface here and make a run for it before I, too, become just another statistic.

I finally give the racist policeman the slip. Wiping the spilt Coke off my Africa-shaped pendant, I reach the point where Steven died. The ugliness of the lights in this area is an insult to his memory, to our people’s collective suffering. I take a Liberty’s paperweight from my pocket, and hurl it at the lamp. It fuses the bulb with a hiss and a shower of sparks, plunging the road into darkness. The paperweight lands with a smash and a thud.

A few lights click on and some ghastly Primark curtains twitch. I’d have expected people to run out – in a slow, respectful way – when I was being chased to my death by racist police minutes earlier. But no. Isn’t it interesting that you can almost snatch a young woman’s life away in the most violent, painful, frightening way possible, take away her future horses, her future features about spending Christmas on your own, take away everything she loves, and yet there are elaborate systems in place to ensure you do not smash in streetlights on aesthetic grounds?

I kneel down in the road, and notice a small plaque under the now (like me) respectfully darkened streetlight. ‘In loving memory of Stephen’ it reads. I look at the cheap, mass produced stone of the plaque and the tawdry serif font and think that I would have wanted something better. Fragments of my paperweight are scattered around it like beautiful celestial crystals. I hope these make up for the awful final injustices wreaked on Steven; the misspelling of his name, and the large crack which now runs down the middle of his memorial. Someone, in a moment of fear and hatred has dropped something heavy onto it from a very great height.

I kneel there, arranging the fragments of twinkling glass into an ‘L’ in front of his memorial, to remind our people of what we can never forget. Tears streak the colour from my cheeks and I blow my nose on a handkerchief from Biba. My fingers appear to be bleeding heavily.

Finally, a narrative construct in a taxi jumps out and runs to me brandishing a wildly mixed metaphor. ‘Not all us whiteys are morons!’ he says, grinning. Maybe not. But one moron is all it takes.

Festival Britannia in The Guardian Guide

2011-01-17T11:21:00.003Z

My piece on BBC4's superb Festival Britannia film ran in The Guardian Guide just before xmas. Information on it at the BBC site here, while you can read my piece here.

80 Blocks From Tiffany's in The Guardian

2010-11-27T18:26:00.004Z

My feature on Gary Weis' superb film 80 Blocks From Tiffany's is in today's Guardian. You can read the piece here and then by the DVD here

Camus in Comic Sans

2010-11-25T10:41:00.003Z

A brief experiment to see what would happen if some of the thoughts of the great Existentialist were refigured using Comic Sans MS, clip art, coloured ink and extraneous punctuation. I think it kind of peps them up a bit, no?

25 years of The Pet Shop Boys in The Guardian

2010-11-25T10:38:00.003Z

I wrote the Guardian Guide's music column last weekend, celebrating 25 years since West End Girls first came out and the new Pet Shop Boys compilation. You can read it here.

The Hard Sell: Marks & Spencer

2010-11-25T10:36:00.002Z

I took over the Guardian Guide's Hard Sell column a few weeks ago, looking at the latest round of M&S adverts with Caroline Quentin. You can read it here.

Guardian: Working Man's Soul vol 2

2010-09-27T14:44:00.003Z

I wrote the music column in this week's Guardian Guide, looking at Licorice Soul's superb compilation Working Man's Soul, Volume 2. You can read the whole piece here and check out a gallery of lost British funk gems from private pressings here. Buy the album direct from the lovely people at Licorice Soul here.

The Hard Sell: Strongbow

2010-09-27T14:42:00.003Z

I wrote last week's Hard Sell in The Guardian Guide, taking on the current Strongbow ad campaign. You can read it here.

The Evolution of Eddie

2010-08-06T14:55:00.002Z

My piece on the evolution of Iron Maiden's supreme mascot EDDIE is up on John Power's ever excellent Slutty Fringe. You can read it here.

Fathers Who Kill Their Children

2010-07-30T12:44:00.004Z

My piece on 'family annihalators' is in the current issue of Esquire, looking at what drives fathers to murder their children. It's only available in the print edition, but you can check Esquire's site here

HOUSE magazine 13...

2010-06-08T14:53:00.002Z

Rolling off the presses as we type...

House 13 from Mark Jubber on Vimeo.

Sex And The City

2010-05-21T14:51:00.004Z

In a departure from my normal subject matter, I was commissioned by Stylist to write an opinion piece on Miranda from Sex And The City. Cue Houellebecq quotes, references to American Psycho and a woman having her brain eaten by her own genitals.

The Secret Life of IEDs

2010-05-21T14:43:00.004Z

My piece on the use of Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq and Afghanistan is out now in the new Esquire.

LEADERSHIP DEBATE part 25

2010-05-06T10:52:00.000Z

The final curtain…

LEADERSHIP DEBATE part 24

2010-05-05T15:57:00.000Z

LEADERSHIP DEBATE part 23

2010-05-04T09:23:00.004Z

Niall O'Brien/Good Rats talk

2010-05-02T10:55:00.004Z

I chaired an interview with Niall O'Brien at Bistroteque in Hackney to tie in with his ongoing Superheroes project and Good Rats exhibition. The video of it is here.

LEADERSHIP DEBATE part 22

2010-04-29T21:03:00.002Z

LEADERSHIP DEBATE part 21

2010-04-28T17:32:00.003Z

LEADERSHIP DEBATE part 20

2010-04-27T11:15:00.004Z

LEADERSHIP DEBATE part 18

2010-04-23T11:11:00.001Z

LEADERSHIP DEBATE part 17

2010-04-22T13:25:00.002Z

Today's contribution was specially done by Josh Woodfin.

LEADERSHIP DEBATE part 16

2010-04-21T07:02:00.003Z

LEADERSHIP DEBATE part 15

2010-04-20T10:57:00.005Z

LEADERSHIP DEBATE part 14

2010-04-19T10:31:00.000Z

Today's helping of political discourse...

LEADERSHIP DEBATE part 13

2010-04-18T10:07:00.003Z

LEADERSHIP DEBATE part 12

2010-04-17T10:49:00.003Z

Round one's out of the way and the candidates are preparing for the next installment...

Mail JDQ1@mac.com if you want LEADERSHIP DEBATE sending directly to you…

LEADERSHIP DEBATE PART 11

2010-04-16T09:15:00.002Z

Round one's out of the way and the candidates are preparing for the next installment...

Mail JDQ1@mac.com if you want LEADERSHIP DEBATE sending directly to you…

LEADERSHIP DEBATE, PARTS 6-10

2010-04-14T00:41:00.002Z

I'll be putting more of these up between now and the big day. Keep checking back to get the real story on what Gord and Dave are saying to each other, or mail me on JDQ1@mac.com if you want LEADERSHIP DEBATE mailing to you directly.

LEADERSHIP DEBATE PARTS 1-5

2010-04-12T10:11:00.007Z

The Guardian Hard Sell: Windows 7

2010-04-05T14:42:00.002Z

I wrote this week's Hard Sell column in the Guardian Guide. The latest target of my mildly sarcastic wrath was the current series of Windows 7 ads. You can read the piece here.

Until The Light Takes Us: Norwegian Black Metal

2010-03-28T11:17:00.006Z

My piece on the superb new Black Metal documentary UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US is in this week's Guardian Guide. The film focusses on Burzum, Darkthrone and Mayhem and is a superb analysis of where the scene came from and what went wrong with it. You can read the piece here. I also wrote a longer piece on the scene for FHM back in 2009, which you can read here.

Iron Maiden for the 2012 Olympics

2010-03-28T11:12:00.002Z

My piece backing the Facebook campaign to have Iron Maiden opening the London Olympics is on Guardian Music. If you like the idea of thunderous heavy metal, giant zombies and triple-guitar assaults restoring a bit of national pride, read the piece here and then join the Facebook campaign here. 'Scream for me, London!' etc.

HOUSE, issue # 12

2010-03-24T15:08:00.004Z

The latest issue of HOUSE is out now, including articles on School Boxing, Girlcore, Warhammer, Kieron Gillen, Women & Boybands, The Selby, Beekeeping, Folk Culture and Jessica Craig Martin. Contributors include the ever-excellent Polly Vernon, James Donaghy, Jude Rogers, Steve Beale and Matt Hill.

Pick up the lovely full colour version in the Houses, or read it online here

Heavy Metal Britannia

2010-03-01T14:31:00.003Z

My piece on BBC4's superb Heavy Metal Britannia film is in this week's Guardian Guide. You can read it here. The excellent accompanying illustration is by Rose Stallard.

HOUSE magazine

2010-02-23T12:48:00.003Z

Just on last stages of producing HOUSE 12. Couple of shots from last production run, and a gallery of our work so far...

New FHM...

2009-11-14T12:47:00.003Z

December's FHM is on shelves now, featuring cover star Joanne 'Gavin & Stacey' Page, a splendid piece by Josh Woodfin going out of his mind on Salvia and Grub Smith's account of attending an autopsy. Less gruesomely, it also features my round up of life's Great Unintentional Comedians. Including Match of The Day's Mark Lawrenson:

"The possibility of him announcing that he is, in fact, a depressed middle aged lesbian increases with every season…"

The Hard Sell in The Guardian Guide

2009-11-14T12:40:00.002Z

I step up to page 3 of today's Guardian Guide to take charge of their regular Hard Sell column. This week it's the latest Febreze monsrosity which gets a going over. The company seems to have a track record of particularly ghastly, poorly-dubbed, trans-national advertising. And it's not getting any better.

You can read the full piece here.

Viz takes over the Guardian Guide

2009-11-07T09:23:00.003Z

My story on the 30th anniversary of Viz is on the front of today's Guardian Guide. They've also commissioned some exclusive new Guardian-based Viz strips. You can read the entire thing here.

New HOUSE arrives...

2009-10-08T12:27:00.003Z

The latest issue of my magazine HOUSE is now back from the printers. If you're a member of any of the Soho House clubs it should be on your doorstep this week, otherwise pick one up at the club. Issue 10 includes Anthony Beevor, New Orleans, citizen astronomy, Nova Dando and Polly Vernon and photo stories by Ryan McGinley and the Smithsonian's NASA archive.

The Rolling Stones and the Maysles Brothers

2009-10-08T12:22:00.002Z

My piece on the reissue of the Maysles Brothers Altamont documentary Gimme Shelter ran in last week's Guardian. You can read it here.

Norwegian Black Metal

2009-10-08T12:15:00.004Z

I recently travelled to Bergen to meet with Immortal and King Ov Hell and to find out what happened to Norway's Black Metal scene after they all started killing and eating each other ten years ago. The feature ran in the last edition of FHM (UK) and is currently rolling out across their foreign editions. You can read it below…

Mark Leckey's Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore

2009-08-03T22:42:00.002Z

My piece on Mark Leckey's superb video homage to British Nightlife, FIORUCCI MADE ME HARDCORE is in today's Guardian. You can read it here.

Taking on the online perverts

2009-06-17T23:25:00.003Z

This month's FHM contains my feature on CEOP, the government body with the highly unpleasant task of tracking down the world's online child abusers. You can visit the FHM site here, or read the article by clicking on the images. If you want to read more about what a truly saintly group of people do day in and day out, you can visit CEOP's site here.

Peter Andre & Jordan: the bitter end

2009-05-23T20:02:00.003Z

My piece on Peter Andre, Jordan, divorce and pop music is in today's Guardian. You can read it here. Having previously written about them here back in 2006, I feel like I've been with them every step of the way. It's been a hell of a journey.

World Record Store Day in The Guardian

2009-04-28T19:47:00.003Z

I'm a little late posting this up thanks to my new position at the helm of HOUSE magazine. More of that later. Anyway, my music column on the semi-celebratory World Record Store Day ran a couple of weeks ago in The Guardian Guide. You can read it here.

"Before we all descend into some sub-Nick Hornby reverie, it's worth remembering what an unwieldy process this kind of music shopping was (like buying clothes without having seen them). As often as not, you purchased the "wrong" album by a band, or had just been completely misled by some drunk reviewer's florid outpourings in Melody Maker. I spent six weeks waiting for Hüsker Dü's Metal Circus to arrive from the States, expecting pop-punk genius, and got the sound of nails scraping down a blackboard. I eagerly legged it home with Patti Smith's Horses having been led to believe that some twat doing Van Morrison covers was a "seminal" punk record."

Red Riding in today's Guardian

2009-02-28T13:30:00.004Z

My piece on David Peace and the Channel 4 adaptation of The Red Riding Quartet is in today's Guardian Guide (and on the cover). You can read it here.

Wearside Jack

2009-02-23T12:55:00.004Z

Next Saturday my piece on Channel 4's Red Riding films will be The Guardian Guide's cover story. All this talk of Ripper-related writing seems like a good reason to dig out a feature I wrote for the Independent on Sunday back in 2002 about the (then ongoing) hunt for Wearside Jack, the notorious hoaxer who derailed the inquiry. It includes interviews with David Peace, who at the time was midway through his Red Riding quartet. You can link to it here, or read the full text pasted in below.

YOU DON'T KNOW JACK from The Independent on Sunday Magazine, June 30, 2002

A voice echoed around Yorkshire from 1979 until 1981. It was a flat, expressionless Sunderland accent claiming credit for a string of brutal murders that had kept two police forces occupied since 1975. Throughout that period, the voice seemed to be everywhere you went in the county - drifting over the Tannoy at Elland Road (usually drowned out by the Leeds crowd's derisive chants of "There's only one Yorkshire Ripper"); interspersed with the jukebox records in pubs and clubs; in the working men's clubs, being played to each table in turn by a detective.

Most Wednesday nights, a policeman brandishing a Uher cassette player would walk into the Victoria Hall in Saltaire and interrupt the records played by Julius K Scragg at his disco for under-15s - "a pop-and-crisps type of thing", according to Peter Levy, who as a young local radio personality brought a touch of celebrity to the event. The fluorescent lights would blink on, and the dancing children - many of whom had been told little about the case by protective parents - would shuffle to a halt, Abba's "Does Your Mother Know?" replaced by the voice: "I'm Jack..."

The voice, it later transpired, was part of the most dangerous hoax in British criminal history. At the height of the Yorkshire Ripper enquiry three false letters and a taped message from a man dubbed "Wearside Jack" (thanks to his accent) sent the police on a wild-goose chase that allowed Peter Sutcliffe to evade capture for another two years and murder at least three more women. The tape became international news and obsessed people all over the region.

Even now, it is violently evocative of a particular time and place in a way that the current vogue for false nostalgia never can be. For a whole generation of people in Yorkshire and Wearside, thoughts of 1979 will forever conjure up "I'm Jack" - not Spangles, Space- hoppers and Seaside Special. "People talk about the 1970s with nostalgia, but it was pretty bloody bleak," says writer Stuart Turnbull, who was a teenager in Yorkshire at the time. "I used to do a paper round, and it seemed like every day you were delivering more news on the Ripper. Bad Photofits and pictures of girls. For ages that was it."

The Ripper was, of course, captured. But Wearside Jack, owner of the chilling voice on that tape, was never identified; he's still out there. And for many, the campaign to see him convicted is ongoing.

By the end of 1979, the tape was being broadcast almost continuously across West Yorkshire. When it was first made public, 10 women, most of them prostitutes, had been murdered in similar circumstances all over the county. With few leads to go on, the police were in a beleaguered state - 250 officers working full-time on the case had produced few leads, despite questioning over 5,000 men. Even local celebrities were not immune, as Peter Levy - still a well-known radio presenter in Leeds today - found out. "I can remember driving home from the studio after my show one night and I got as far as Shipley and I got stopped," he says. "It was routine I suppose: single guy, in a car, 11 at night. The car was turned inside out. I remember it was a green Ford Capri, all the single lads had them at the time. And in the boot I had a big spade, so I could dig myself out when it snowed..."

As well as the usual difficulties faced by a murder inquiry, the Ripper investigation was hampered by several other factors - the unwillingness of many innocent men to come forward and eliminate themselves due to their involvement with prostitutes; the slow, pre- computerised processing of information; primitive forensic techniques; maintaining the focus of an inquiry that was sprawling across several cities, with as much as 13 months elapsing between each attack; overcoming the ambivalence of a public who tacitly saw the women ("brasses") as victims of an occupational hazard. As is the case in every high-profile criminal investigation, the police also had to contend with hundreds of hoax letters, arriving every month. Two such letters, both signed "Jack The Ripper", had been sent to assistant constable George Oldfield (who had been made overall head of the inquiry in 1977) and the Daily Mirror in March 1978, shortly before the ninth murder. At the time they were checked by the police but had been discounted as the work of a crank.

On Tuesday 20 June at 2pm, Oldfield walked into the lecture theatre at the Metropolitan Police Academy in Wakefield. Without saying a word to the assembled reporters, he sat down and pressed play on the portable tape recorder on the desk in front of him. The blank tape hissed for a few seconds before a voice filled the room:

I'm Jack. I see you are having no luck catching me. I have the greatest respect for you, George, but Lord, you are no nearer catching me now than four years ago when I started. I reckon your boys are lettin' you down, George. They can't be much good, can they? The only time they came near catching me was a few months back in Chapeltown, when I was disturbed. Even then it was a uniformed copper, not a detective. I warned you in March that I'd strike again. Sorry it wasn't Bradford. I did promise you that, but I couldn't get there.

I'm not quite sure when I'll strike again, but it will definitely be some time this year, maybe Sep-tember, October or even sooner if I get the chance. I'm not sure where, maybe Manchester; I like it there, there's plenty of them knocking about. They never learn, do they George? I bet you've warned them. But they never listen.

At the rate I'm goin' I should be in the book of records. I think it's 11 up to now, isn't it? Well, I'll keep on going for a while yet. I can't see myself being nicked just yet. Even if you do get near, I'll probably top myself first.

Well, it's been nice chatting to you, George.

Yours, Jack the Ripper.

No good looking for fingerprints, you should know by now it's as clean as a whistle. See you soon. 'Bye. Hope you like the catchy tune at the end. Ha-ha.

The stilted monologue had lasted three minutes and 16 seconds. Several more seconds of blank tape hissed by, before a 22- second snatch of "Thank You For Being A Friend" - a cloying ballad by Andrew Gold - ended the tape.

Three months before the tape had been sent to Oldfield, he had received a third letter signed "Jack the Ripper". While the previous two had contained little to distinguish them from the hundreds of other hoax letters arriving, the third was taken seriously. The writer had referred to a medical detail about Vera Millward, the Ripper's ninth victim, which was not believed to be public knowledge (a subsequent review of all press coverage revealed that the detail had, in fact, been published in the Daily Mail). The letter before this had also warned that "most are young lassies, next time try older one I hope"; at 42, Millward was the Ripper's oldest victim. Saliva tests on the third envelope further revealed that the author was of the rare blood type-B secretor - as was the unidentified killer of Joan Harrison in Preston in 1975.

Harrison, a chronic alcoholic and morphine addict whose mutilated body was found in a lock-up, was not considered as a possible Ripper killing until 1978. This was largely because she had been sexually assaulted, which was not the case with the other victims. But one line in the first letter - "up to number eight now but you say seven remember Preston '75" - made police think again.

Further analysis of the envelopes showed traces of a mineral oil used in engineering works - a substance found on the body of building- society clerk Josephine Whitaker, who was murdered in Halifax 13 days after the final letter was received.

As soon as the Home Office Forensic Science Laboratory had confirmed that the handwriting on all four envelopes and letters was the same, the implication to the police was clear: the Yorkshire Ripper, the letter writer and the man taunting them on the tape were one and the same. If they could catch the author, they would catch the killer.

While there were privately expressed doubts about its authenticity - at a hastily convened meeting of senior detectives on 20 June, Lancashire officers were still sceptical about a link to Joan Harrison - the prevailing view was summed up by one detective present: "If he kills again and in a year's time the public find out we've been sitting on this tape, all hell will break loose." Three days later, news of the tape was leaked to the press. The "North East connection" had been made, and the legend of Wearside Jack was born.

In preparation for the public's response to the tape, incident rooms in Sunderland and Yorkshire were expanded, with 100 officers on standby to deal with calls. Within 48 hours the police - already struggling to deal with the information they had collected thus far - received 50,000 calls (1,000 in Sunder- land alone). Chief constable Ronald Gregory also announced a "pounds 1m publicity campaign" (it would actually cost pounds 20,000) to "flush out" the Ripper. Four hundred billboards screamed, "THE RIPPER WANTS YOU TO IGNORE THIS" above a sample of the handwriting and a telephone number the public could call to hear the voice. A special "Ripper Newspaper" was delivered to every home in West Yorkshire, Lancashire and the North East reminding people of the facts to date and the pounds 30,000 reward. Anywhere the public gathered, the tape was played repeatedly, while a Portakabin in Dewsbury Bus Station had tape players set up for passers-by who wanted to hear the voice again. "My most vivid memory is of going into that Portakabin every night on my way home from school and listening again and again to that voice, sure that I would be able to catch him," recalls the crime writer David Peace, whose novels recall Yorkshire during this time.

By August 1979, Stanley Ellis, a dialect expert from Leeds University, had pinpointed Castletown, a small mining village outside Sunderland, as the hometown of the speaker on the tape. The police spent 10 days speaking to every household in the area, with Ellis confident that they would speak to the voice's owner within days. When this proved not to be the case, Ellis and his assistant Jack Windsor-Lewis began to voice their misgivings. "We knew that we would speak to the maker of the tape very quickly, and if the police could not isolate him because he had firm alibis for the days of the killings, then there could only be one possible explanation," said Windsor-Lewis. "The maker of the tape was not the Yorkshire Ripper."

But the ad campaign continued, and West Yorkshire Police continued to stress to the media that the man behind the tape was the murderer. The voice became a ghost, haunting the public wherever they went. "People were petrified by it," recalls Peace. "And the massive publicity campaign meant that it was impossible to avoid or forget."

This was especially true for Stuart Turn-bull, whose parents had moved from the North East to Yorkshire. "I was 13 in 1979," he says, "and as soon as the tape was out, people just started saying, `Your dad's the Ripper'. There used to be fights at school - it was kids larking around at first, but then my dad's mate got took in and questioned."

There's no doubt that the voice of Wear-side Jack was - still is - frightening. Its flat, stilted monotone was the antithesis of what you would expect from a ghoulish prankster, thus making it sound more authentic (Ellis, the dialect expert, attributed this quality to the speech being read from a prepared script, with a conscious attempt by the reader to disguise his natural speaking voice).

In a time and a region under immense fear-induced stress (and, in the case of Wearside, suspicion), people needed something tangible. The voice on the tape became the focus of people's fear and interest. Even after Sutcliffe's capture, his trial did little to reveal his motivations beyond paranoid schizophrenia and a "divine mission" from God to kill prostitutes, and Wearside Jack remained in some ways a more frightening, tangible figure than the real Yorkshire Ripper.

As many experts have noted, our tendency to fixate on an almost cartoonish idea of evil diverts us from the fact that its roots grow far closer to home. Ironically, the one time that Sutcliffe did contact the papers - in Septem-ber 1979 - nobody suspected that he was the real murderer. A terrible poem written in rhyming couplets in neat handwriting simply didn't fit in with what people wanted to hear from a mass murderer. Despite Oldfield's famous quote that the Ripper was "somebody's husband, somebody's son", the note just seemed too... ordinary.

The tone of Wearside Jack's correspondence - in turns deferential ("a man I respect") and mocking - had, consciously or otherwise, turned the case into a personal grudge for George Oldfield. Originally bellicose in his interviews - "This has become something of a feud - I won't pack it in until he's caught" - Oldfield later became more conciliatory. "The voice is almost sad, a man fed-up with what he has done, fed-up with himself. I would like to talk to this man. And I feel he wants to talk to me."

In reality, though, the pressure was taking a heavy toll on Oldfield. As a 20-year-old, Peter Levy interviewed Oldfield for Radio Pennine shortly after the tape's release. "At the time he was the person you wanted to get," says Levy. "I was only young at the time and I was well nervous about this. But while I was talking to him he was shaking - he was under so much pressure. He looked like a very, very ill man. After we played the tape suddenly he said, `Right I'm going to have to stop there', wrapped up the interview and walked out really quickly. I thought it must be because he was behind schedule, or perhaps I'd done something. But he went straight to the toilet - he'd shit himself." By the end of July, 1979, Oldfield had been removed from the Ripper inquiry after suffering three heart attacks in quick succession.

A grim fascination with Wearside Jack has never really left the area. Many different theories have been advanced as to his identity. During Sutcliffe's 1981 trial - where it was quickly established that Sutcliffe was of a different blood group to the hoaxer - Mr Justice Boreham expressed the hope that "one day he may be exposed". But inquiries were continued on a shoestring for less than six months and wound up completely before the end of 1981.

Just two days after Sutcliffe's conviction, the Sunday Times was already asking, "Did The Ripper Have An Accomplice?", suggesting that Sutcliffe killed Joan Harrison with the accomplice, who later produced the letters and tape. While apparently supported by some senior detectives, this theory was swiftly debunked by the New Statesman, which showed the "evidence" to be circumstantial at best and tenuous at worst. Nonetheless, it did concede that the links between Harrison and Wearside Jack should be investigated further - a point reiterated in chief constable Ronald Gregory's 1983 memoirs. "To my anger the man has still not been found, although 40,000 people have been interviewed," he rued.

In January 1987, the most enduring legend associated with Wearside Jack was born. A former Leeds CID officer named Ron Smith was quoted in the press claiming that the tape had been recorded by a police officer and sent to Oldfield as some sort of bizarre "protest" at his handling of the case. West Yorkshire Police swiftly denied this, and an inquiry found no evidence to support the theory (not that this stopped it being repeated in autobiographies by Robert Ressler and John Douglas, former FBI agents who had been fleetingly involved in the case).

Other enduring campaigners have attempted to expose Wearside Jack. Keith Brannen runs and edits the most exhaustive Ripper archive on the Web, refreshingly free of the tawdry edge from which most of these ventures suffer. "I can only speculate, but none of the recent or past suspects seem to have anything other than `finger-pointing' in their direction to back up much of the speculation," he tells me. "There are possibilities and suspicions - and unless Wearside Jack was also the killer of Joan Harrison, then those are very slim leads to pursue. But," he adds, "any search for the individual responsible is better than no search at all."

Brannen is an active debunker of the more outlandish conspiracy theories around the case, believing that Wearside Jack and Harrison's killer "are two separate individuals, neither connected in any way to Peter Sutcliffe". But he's not too optimistic about a resolution. "Unfortunately, I have the feeling that neither the hoaxer nor the murderer of Joan Harrison will be brought to justice."

Sheilagh Matheson disagrees: "I wouldn't ever say that," she says. A journalist and the producer of two documentaries about Wearside Jack, Matheson's involvement stretches back 20 years. "I was a reporter at Tyne Tees when the Ripper was first about, so I remember the day when George Oldfield announced the hoax. And unfortunately I can remember being really thrilled because the story had been totally based in Yorkshire up until then and suddenly it was all in our patch," she says with a guilty laugh. "Because at that time it was clear - whoever made the tapes was the Ripper."

Matheson originally intended to make a one-off programme to mark the hoax's 20-year anniversary, but found the level of interest in the case gave her enough material for more. "People had become very resentful about the way that the area was depicted," she recalls. "When we started our research there was a huge amount of interest. It wasn't a case of, `Who can I find?' We'd literally just knock on any door [in the North East] or go into any shop and everyone had a story.

"Every man, just because of their accent, would have been questioned. It was very intrusive questioning - what size shoes do you wear, taking saliva swabs. And there was the implication to wives and partners that the man could be going with prostitutes, could be a murderer." Both films generated a huge number of new leads, and there is the possibility of another programme as new information arises.

Matheson has worked extensively with Patrick Lavelle, a journalist with the Sunderland Echo who has been the most tireless campaigner to bring Wearside Jack to justice. In 1999 he passed the names of eight suspects (including three policemen) to West Yorkshire Police. But after two months, they made the following announcement: "After much consideration it has been decided that there will be no further action." A lack of evidence was cited.

Later that year a former Ripper Squad officer wrote in the Echo: "I have always believed that the hoaxer was a police officer." News- papers in both Lancashire and Wearside complained about police stonewalling their inquiries. Lavelle presented covertly obtained forensic evidence to the Preston Police regarding suspects for the Harrison murder, but Detective Superintendent Graham Gooch effectively stuck to the original line of all involved police forces: "One journalist has given us five names; they can't all be right. No one has given us any evidence."

Lavelle continued undeterred, reporting that the prime suspect for the hoax was a former soldier now living in the south of England, while Harrison's killer was suspected to be a 59-year-old living in an east London homeless hostel. Matheson's second film, broadcast on ITV last summer, reiterated the popular suspicion that the police may be covering up for one of their own. "If he was caught it would reveal something that the police don't want the public to know," Lavelle said. "What is it they are hiding?" He also complained that police responses to his investigation have "ranged from the mundane and monosyllabic to the hostile".

The idea that a disgruntled policeman was responsible for the hoax is certainly seductive. Last year, former Ripper Squad detective Dick Holland finally admitted that the West Yorkshire Police had conducted a secret investigation into their own officers during the inquiry. And while many factors suggest otherwise - the clumsy forensic trail left on the letters seems an unlikely mistake for any officer to make, while a solicitor close to several of the Ripper Squad officers told me, "I think any conspiracies would have been well and truly aired by now. Coppers just can't keep quiet about that sort of thing" - the rumour continues to bob to the surface.

"I don't think there's a cover-up," says Matheson. "They don't want to know because it was an embarrassment, a dreadful cock-up. Policemen's careers were sidelined because of it, it was a public humiliation and I don't think anybody wants to be reminded of it."

In all likelihood, the unwillingness of the police to reinvestigate is rooted in pragmatism - even if Wearside Jack was identified and prosecuted (assuming he is not Harrison's murderer), the maximum prison sentence he'd get is six months. Morally, he could be responsible for the deaths of the final three victims; legally, he could only be charged with wasting police time.

Confronted with the police's unwillingness to reinvestigate, the public have looked to a string of murky coincidences that seem to point to a general rot within the force at that time: Oldfield's role in the wrongful conviction of Judith Ward for the M62 coach bombing; Dick Holland's involvement in the framing of Stefan Kizko for the murder of Lesley Moleseed in 1976; the fact that Sutcliffe's solicitor Kerry MacGill also represented Ripper Squad detective John Boyle when he was later charged with selling information from the police national computer.

Other, increasingly random, tangents and coincidences further muddy the waters. For example, the more demented theorists have spent years pondering the significance of the following: on the same day in 1979 that Barbara Leach was killed by a hammer blow from the Ripper, the wife of Oldfield's deputy was also rushed to hospital with a fractured skull after falling down the stairs at their home.

In the absence of truth and finality, this stuff fills the void. "This is what worries me most," says Peace. "Just as the original tape itself mislead the police and the public, this growing obsession with the hoax is in danger of obscuring the tragedy and brutality of the actual crimes."

Wearside Jack and the Yorkshire Ripper are now entwined; the police's failure to identify the hoaxer means that, for many people, a part of the Ripper is still at large. Peace puts it more bluntly: "The tape and the Joan Harrison murder deny closure - for the victims, the families and the communities. The police have an obligation to resolve this."

Byron Crawford in The Guardian Guide

2009-01-25T10:39:00.002Z

My piece on supreme rap blogger Byron Crawford ran in this week's Guardian Guide. You can read it here or click on the PDF above.

Pete Doherty on Guardian music

2009-01-25T10:34:00.002Z

My piece on MTV's Pete Doherty documentary is on the Guardian music site. Check the comments for the dispiriting spectacle of a bunch of Libertines fans weighing in with comments three times longer than the original piece. You can read the article here.

Charles Darwin in The Guardian

2009-01-21T10:05:00.004Z

What with it's 150th anniversary, I took the opportunity to finally crack open Origin of The Species, read it, and assess how well it works as a piece of literature for The Guardian. You can read about it here.

David Peace in The Guardian Guide

2008-12-29T08:25:00.004Z

This week's Guardian Guide contains their Pop Culture Guide to 2009, including my short piece on David Peace. March sees both the cinema version of his novel The Damned United, and Channel 4's promising-looking adaptation of his Yorkshire Ripper novels. You can read my take on it here

How To Fight An Orc

2008-11-11T16:42:00.003Z

The current FHM is out now, including my epic tale of being beaten senseless by a pack of orcs in a forest at 2AM. Or, to put it another way, what happened to me when I hooked up with Heroquest, the UK's oldest Live Action Role Playing society. The superb photos are by Peter Kindersley.

They're compensating for the world around them – one which just doesn’t offer men the excitement and challenges that it used to. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that so many LARPers are IT guys who came of age at a time when boundless futurism promised that come this millennium, we’d be living in an evolved world of circuit boards and video wrist-watches. The escapism, excitement and utopian future that they hoped technology would deliver never quite arrived. But every two weeks it actually exists in an old youth camp on the Welsh border.

The Most Corrupt Man In Music?

2008-11-11T16:32:00.004Z

The new edition of Q is out now. As well as a nice looking cover shot of the goon from Razorlight, it features my lengthy feature on the rise, fall and criminal lunacy of Backstreet Boys manager Lou Pearlman.

Anvil in Arena

2008-11-04T14:35:00.003Z

The current edition of Arena is out this week and includes my lengthy article on Anvil! The Story of Anvil, Sacha Gervasi's superb documentary about the early Eighties Canadian heavy metal legends. Ultimately, the film - and the article – are a celebration of the little man.

"Watching these two men, bound together by nothing more than a childhood pact to always rock together you realise that failure doesn’t have to be – and wasn’t always – something to be mocked or despised. Historically there was always a tension between creative and commercial success in the arts. It’s only relatively recently that the market has become so dominant that even self-style ‘indie’ bands will happily sell out to any commercial enterprise going and art only has a worth if it can be measured in sterling. Watching This Is Anvil you see that failure, when realised so completely and when still allied to an unshakeable belief in the righteousness of your own cause, can be truly noble."

Here they are proving my point at the Tokyo Rock Festival in 1984:

New Q

2008-10-15T18:56:00.004Z

Current issue of the new, redesigned Q is out now. As well as a cover story on Angus Young (yes), there's my massive feature on The Sun's Gordon Smart and other showbiz columnists, and my review of the enormous Toumani Diabate show in Zaragoza.

What's wrong with book publishing?

2008-06-28T10:33:00.003Z

I made my debut on the Guardian books blog yesterday with a piece about Daniel Davies' excellent debut novel The Isle of Dogs. The article looked at how such a great piece of work has managed to get so little coverage and compared the problems publishing is going through now with what magazines went through seven or eight years ago. You can read it here.

Iron Maiden's Going To Get You

2008-06-22T23:19:00.004Z

My account of Iron Maiden's North American tour ran in yesterday's Guardian Guide as the cover story. Pictured are two absolute legends who were at the Seattle gig and still had the banner they made when they saw the band 20 years ago. Pretty neat handiwork.

Read the piece here

Why puppets are funnier than humans

2008-05-05T12:23:00.004Z

MTV's new series FUR TV revives the idea of the puppet sitcom. My piece in this week's Guardian Guide looks at why felt animals being stupid works so well, taking in everything from Zig & Zag and the Muppet Show to Dustin The Turkey and Triumph The Insult Comic Dog. You can read it here.

Kenneth Williams RIP

2008-04-09T15:55:00.004Z

20 years after his 'possibly a suicide' death, my piece commemorating Kenneth Williams is on the Guardian arts blog. You can read it here

Scott King in The Guardian

2008-04-01T11:35:00.003Z

My piece on graphic design legend Scott King was in yesterday's Guardian, promoting his semi-retrospective MARXIST DISCO (cancelled) show in Munich. You can read the piece here.

Help the blind

2008-03-26T16:18:00.003Z

I'm sure when I was a kid there were different variations on these - Twickenham High Street used to have one collecting for polio, complete with callipers. With hindsight, the fact that polio had been nigh-on eradicated in the first world by 1980 makes me a bit suspicious as to where the money was going.

Still, as this photo shows - there is a corner of Marylebone where the residents don't give a fuck about mocking the tiny blind. Personally, I'd have given him a labrador and really gone for the 'cute sympathy' vote.

When Daley hit the Lucozade

2008-02-19T21:16:00.002Z

Finally showing up on YouTube is the seminal Daley Thompson/Lucozade/Phantom of The Opera advert.

Word to Thompson, the original GOAT. Young cats like that cheating scum Dwayne Chambers need to recognise what you could do with only Lucozade, Iron Maiden and a pair of Adidas. Peace out, Daley!

Welcome to Syria…

2008-02-15T11:50:00.005Z

With Imad Mughniyeh's assasination, Syria suddenly looks like a more exciting/dangerous place again… Clerk and Teller's excellent travel blog has just been there. It's got coffee, revolving restaurants, proper biblical architecture, and more military hardware on display than you can imagine. What else do you need?

Fatties are in danger

2008-02-09T15:44:00.000Z

My piece on the heart attacks, strokes and other obesity-related dangers facing rappers is in today's Guardian Guide. You can read it here.

If you're out tonight, pour some on the ground for Big Pun. Couldn't nobody maul the Statue of Liberty's tits like he could.

The Balearic Revival in today's Guardian

2008-02-08T15:30:00.000Z

My lengthy piece on 'The Balearic Revival' is in today's Guardian. The piece includes interviews with Balearic Mike, the Balearic Brothers, Mo Morris from Mountain Of One and Boy's Own affiliate Cymon Eckel (pictured above right, showing the new jacks how it was done, way back when at a Boy's Own party in 1989). You can read it here.

The Hard Sell in The Guardian

2008-01-22T15:02:00.000Z

I took over the Guardian Guide's Hard Sell column last week, reviewing the Christmas adverts generally and in particular The Mastercard ad which I found surprisingly moving. Must be getting soft in my old age…

You can read it here

Our Balearic game was strong

2008-01-21T22:59:00.001Z

Last Friday's inaugural The Beach was an unqualified success. We packed out Life on Old St, the crowd dressed in everything from white jeans and pastel cashmere to powder blue all-in-one ski suits, and the DJs absolutely tore the fucking roof off the place. Especially me. The free Cornettos were a good move as well.

The only down sides were accidentally breaking my copy of Steve Miller's 'Macho City' in half and that creepy Italian fuck who was caught masturbating in an alcove towards the other night. Honestly, these people.

There are photos here (of the party, not the creepy Italian).

2008-01-17T10:34:00.001Z

Nuclear wasteland photography

2007-12-09T22:48:00.000Z

Drifting slightly off the English vibe for once, but highly recommend this photographic study of the ruins of Chernobyl, and the nearby town, Pripyat. Incredible shots, courtesy of high-end terrace menswear dons Clerk & Teller. Particularly feeling this one (above) of the ruined fairground.

Q. Why shouldn't you wear Russian underpants?
A. Because Chernobyl fall out.

That one doesn't really work written down.

The ITV Comedy Awards

2007-12-09T22:40:00.000Z

I was there on Wednesday night. Here are some thoughts...

1. Being in ITV Centre really is like being in an episode of Filthy, Rich & Catflap. All the framed photos of the c-listers really brings out one's inner 'desperate out of work actor'.
2. The food was fucking awful, consisting solely of crudites, houmous that had been out for so long it had a crust, and crisps. Oh, and some Bombay Mix. I know times are hard and everyone in the media's screwed, but it was a v. poor show.
3. Chris Langham jokes are not well received by the light entertainment industry.
4. Jonathan Ross died on his arse. Which is strange, given how much of this stuff he does.
5. Fern Britton cracked one of the few good jokes of the night, when she referred to Mark Wallinger's bear as 'Muhammad'.
6. JK Rowling and Simon Pegg were both very polite to us.
7. That bloke who now hosts Soccer AM - and is like a 'broken biscuits' Tim Lovejoy – has a very loud, attention-seeking voice when you're stuck in a lift with him.

Little Harvey is not to be mocked

2007-12-09T22:28:00.000Z

Much hand-wringing in the world of gossip magazines, after Heat gave away a sticker poking fun at Jordan's son, Little Harv The Legend last week. Word of their callous behaviour spread around the internets in seconds - mainly thanks to the women at mumsweb and their ilk - and Heat were fucked.

All of which talk of the little fella reminds me of a piece I wrote in The Guardian last year, where I managed to crack a joke about Harv playing the kettle drums and compare his vile mother to keen amateur pilot/repressed homosexual Mohammad Atta and didn't get any complaints. Which just goes to show that if you use a few long words, you can basically get away with anything.

Still, I stand by what I've always said about Harv - that whatever his disabilities, on the family's TV show he seems to function as a particularly harsh Greek chorus to his idiot parents' lives. Whether putting his fingers in his ears while being paraded up the red carpet at some crappy premiere, or telling Peter to 'fuck off' when he's going into some pompous tirade, Harv's the only one to emerge from the programme with a shred of dignity. Fair play to him.

Cheap pop promos

2007-11-01T18:46:00.000Z

In a band? Skint? Need a video making?

If so, then contact Mrs EFTE via this site. She's a veritable one-woman filming-&-editing machine, and here's the video she made for Canadian madwoman Dandi Wind last time she was in East London. Hell of a mover.

The Young Ones: 25 years on

2007-10-22T18:58:00.001Z

So, the 25th anniversary of The Young Ones is upon us. Was it actually any good with hindsight? And did it 'change comedy forever' as is sometimes claimed? 'Kind of' and 'no' are the short answers. For the longer answers, check my article in last Saturday's Guardian…

The best cafe in London?

2007-10-16T16:43:00.000Z

First in a semi-regular series of updates addressing the important subject of 'places you can get some peace and quiet, read the paper and wolf down a sandwich'. Setting the bar particularly high is Paul Rothe & Son at 34 Marylebone Lane, W1. This original 1940s cafe/grocer has been pretty much untouched since it first opened and scores particularly highly for the following: Sixties fold-down padded vinyl seats; tea in proper Wedgewood china; shelves packed with a vast selection of chutney, marmalade etc; staff in proper old-school white coats; general buttoned-down austerity vibe; brie and cranberry sauce sandwiches.
Overall, highly recommended.

Once a tone-deaf yuppie prick, always a tone-deaf yuppie prick

2007-10-05T17:29:00.000Z

Just seen this month's GQ magazine, which is even more conformist and self-congratulatory than usual. For some reason there's a piece on Duran Duran who almost look as bad as they sound these days. Anyway, all this hatred of Simon Le Bon reminded me of a piece I wrote for the Guardian a few years back reassessing the original Live Aid.

Scott King destroys Vogue

2007-10-01T09:08:00.001Z

Furious online debate over at the Creative Review's blog where they are showcasing Scott King's recent series of spoof 'covers' from his 'How I'd Sink American Vogue' series. His defenders seem to be leading the detractors by about 2:1 at the time of writing, but it's not over yet…

Acid House expose

2007-09-26T13:09:00.000Z

Cutting edge journalism from the good old days when a load of munted teenagers were the biggest threat to Britain's wellbeing. This vintage clip is from 'A Trip Round Acid House', a Thames TV episode of World In Action from 1988 and was from one of the few weeks when the show wasn't doing the IRA, the Birmingham Pub Bombings or the BNP. Top performances from the back-combed rave girls; "It's different when you walk in… it isn't straight."

The suburbs are out of control: Part II

2007-09-25T13:41:00.000Z

After the previous post on racist pub decor, more horror from the suburbs. Farmers feeding cows their own balls has finally had the predictable outcome, and even the deer of Bushy Park are no longer safe. Nice early Eighties vibe to this sign, though.

Pub decor, suburban style…

2007-09-25T09:10:00.001Z

Just back from a short holiday, and was pleased to note on my travels that there is a corner of a high street in Surrey where comedy models of 'laughing minstrel guitarists' are still considered suitable pub decor. Jesus christ - the suburbs are just out of control.

Hardcore British folk

2007-09-10T17:58:00.001Z

Following on from the earlier post about John Martyn, I've been exploring more from the golden age of psychedelic British folk. Best so far has been this beautiful performance of A Heart Needs A Home, by Richard & Linda Thompson on The Old Grey Whistle Test in '75. This version is better than either of the two cuts of it that are on the remastered Hokey Pokey album, mainly as Linda's voice sounds a bit freer on this recording. A beautiful song, made all the more poignant by the fact that, from what I understand, they split a few years later after an American tour which must have been an absolute barrel of laughs for all concerned…

I particularly like the way that even though they're indoors, Richard's all muffled up against the cold. Were the electric workers on strike again that month or something?

Golden age of avant-rock comes to Camden

2007-09-03T18:00:00.000Z

Saw Sonic Youth on Friday night at The Roundhouse, playing Daydream Nation in its entirety as part of the Don't Look Back series of shows. Pretty great stuff,and a reminder of when indie was all about experimentation, noise, the avant garde and rejecting the mainstream.

Dropped into the Hawley Arms afterwards to be swiftly reminded that indie's now almost entirely about shittily-dressed sub-Alex Zane types, dismal guitar pop and Top Shop women on the hunt for famous people.

My article about the gig, and the general idea of putting alt legends on the nostalgia circuit is in today's Guardian

Declaring war on ugly marketing

2007-09-03T17:39:00.000Z

This Thursday night Neil Boorman will be appearing at the ICA to talk about the ethics of advertising, alongside documentary genius Adam Curtis (The Trap, The Power of Nightmares etc) and some guy from the Mother creative agency. It's all in aid of Boorman's new book Bonfire of The Brands, which sees him burn a load of designer goods, and then live without them.

Believe me, this was no mean feat for him; I've known Neil a long time, and he was mad as a devil for anything with a label. Peace to the Westwood perforated leather jacket and Nikes with all flames up the side, a'ight?

Smooth 80s soul jam of the day

2007-08-29T11:24:00.000Z

Princess' Say I'm Your Number 1 got to number seven in the UK charts in 1985. Bit of lightweight pop from EFTE's childhood which, with hindsight, sounds like a note-perfect electrosoul jam that Joyce Sims would have been proud of. Great video with Princess (aka Desiree Heslop) throwing down with her bra out around The British Museum, Hyde Park, an open-top bus and the BMX-infested Westway. Love him or hate him, Peter Waterman was on top of his game for this one.

Essex: Where they do things a little differently

2007-08-28T17:34:00.000Z

Spent last weekend down in Mersea Island (above), a partially connected island off the Thames Estuary, about ten miles from Colchester. Beautiful, rugged coast, plus some weird geological condition where everything seems to grow to insane heights very quickly. My friend's vegetable gardening was giving up four-foot high rhubarb, more spinach than you could handle and the world's shiniest onions. Seriously, it's like Dig For Victory crossed with Day of The effin' Triffids down there. The place seems to have some kind of microclimate, and sustains a large vineyard; it also plays host to a large scooter/skinhead rally every autumn.

Here's me and Mrs EFTE enjoying the bleak English seaside with our friend's son. Knackered old boats, grey skies and some strange vegetation; does it get any more traditional?

Dogs win prizes

2007-08-28T17:31:00.001Z

A nice bit of found photography from Mrs EFTE. All we know is that the dog was called Lady Jane, she's looking in a celebratory mood after claiming the cup, and that she's sitting on some properly nasty 1970s carpet.

CRACKIN' SKULLZ THIS SATURDAY NIGHT

2007-08-24T09:43:00.000Z

London's finest hip-hop, 80s soul and ignorant bass night takes over The Legion on Old St tomorrow. 8pm-2am, free.

The God-like genius of Andrew Neil

2007-08-20T18:19:00.000Z

Like right-wing media types with fuzzy hair and a taste for the good life? Then check my piece for The Guardian on modern day legend Andrew Neil. He's on his summer break from The Week at the moment – somewhere vulgar like Monaco I like to imagine – but the show returns in September.Judging by the 'comments' below the article I'm not the only one with a sneaking soft spot for Brillo…

Power electronics v Psychedelic folk

2007-08-14T17:10:00.000Z

Excellent new issue of Wire featuring a lengthy interview with creepy old industrialists Whitehouse (pictured above, onstage, looking really happy to be deafening a load of angry men), and a superb primer on British psychedelic folk featuring everyone from Steeleye Span to Comus. The Whitehouse piece is by David Keenan, whose book England's Hidden Reverse is considered a nigh-on indispensable guide to the whole Death In June/Current 93/magick scene. Whitehouse are definitely one of those bands who are a lot more interesting to read about than listen to: I saw them play at The Garage in 1996 at Live Action 69, and I can honestly say I've never seen such a pack of repressed homos in one room in my life.

The Folk article also includes John Martyn. Here he is tearing The Old Grey Whistle Test a new one with just his acoustic guitar and a massive Echoplex unit.

A bad end to a bad night, 1985

2007-08-09T11:34:00.000Z

Interesting community seems to be building up on YouTube with people posting various recordings of the old 'closedown' segments from regional British TV (before the days of all night telly). This very subdued one is from Granada TV the night of the Heysel Stadium disaster. To his credit, the host segues pretty seamlessly from "A backstage look at the famous Moulin Rouge nightspot in Paris" to giving out the emergency numbers for people who didn't know whether their relatives were dead or alive. Wisely, they close down without the usual Granada jingle at the end.

Why British pop music needs to get off the past's nuts

2007-08-08T17:33:00.000Z

Following on from the previous Luke Haines-related post, he pops up again in this article of mine from The Guardian. It's generally bemoaning what a narrow view bands take when they're referencing the past (when there's so much interesting, gruesome stuff to draw on). It originally ran in 2005, so some of the Libertines* references might seem a bit out of date.

* For younger readers, The Libertines were a particularly shitty band that a load of morons thought were the new Clash for about six months.

Luke Haines strips it down

2007-08-06T12:13:00.000Z

An acoustic studio version of '1967' by national treasure Luke Haines from around the time of 'How I Learned To Love The Bootboys'. Great cello work, and Haines sports a fine pair of headphones, apparently liberated from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the late Seventies.