Free gifts

It being the time of year that it is, I thought I should make out like other bloggers do and give you stuff — links etc, that is. I briefly — very briefly — considered a whole advent calendar of goodies but settled — realistically — on just putting a few in here.

I've already gifted some people Bessie Banks' studio tapes and Jerry Lee Lewis as Iago. (If both of those two things don't quicken your pulse just reading about them, you wouldn't have been interested in them anyway.)

Here, though, I offer, for this ninth day of Advent, a few little things. (Also, I get to display my eventual and tardy mastering of embedding YouTube postings.)



First Many of you might already have seen the Taiwanese TV news recreation of the Tiger Woods event. But it's surely worth another look. If you haven't seen it, think Grand Theft Auto. Wouldn't it be great if all TV news was like this? Who wouldn't want to watch a recreation of the Brown-Blair Granita dinner? Or what went on that night at OJ Simpson's?


Second In another part of my life, I write about legendary photographers for Professional Photographer magazine. This month, the editor got me to put my index figure where my words are and arranged a spot for me in the photographers' pit catwalk show in London Fashion Week. See how I dealt with it. (It's where the image above was taken.)

Third The Word magazine published a piece of mine about my book, Filthy English, and invited me in to talk dirty with them on their monthly podcast. Which four of us did, for an hour. It's got a parental advisory on it. The comments on it (which are many) contain excerpts from the Troggs tapes ('why don't you just fucking do what you fucking started doing?') and performances of some of the songs I write about in my book.

Fourth My word for the day: callipygian. You'll find it on the second page of this New York Times review of the Knee High production of Brief Encounter — which, being much impressed by other Knee High shows, I meant to see in London but, being somewhat busy with my course and book etc, never did get round to doing.

Next up Freud: if it's not one thing, it's his mother