We built this city (Bath) on rock and roll....

As regular readers of this blog will know, I am, to put it mildly, something of a fan of modern music.

For much of my tender 46 years I’ve loved listening to music and attending live concerts and in many ways my love of rock music (in most of its shades) has been one of the most consistent, grounding facts of my life.

And that is why I was particularly thrilled this week to see the formation of a new group – Bath Music Plus – whose intention is to try to put the city on the rock map once again by bringing a number of high-profile concerts to The Forum and beyond.

The first announcement – that Queen guitarist Brian May is to appear at the venue and also that the much-loved Bootleg Beatles are to play an open air free concert on the day of the Royal Wedding – are an intriguing first course for what we hope will be a sumptuous banquet of music that will put Bath back in the minds of those who promote major rock and pop events.

As the organisers have said, this is the city that has already hosted bands such as The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Who and Led Zeppelin and so why shouldn’t we once again start thinking big in terms of which acts we can bring to the city in the future?

That is not to say however that since those early ’70s halcyon days at The Pavilion that we haven’t had some great shows in the city, and if you doubt that then can I suggest you head to the website of our precious Moles to see who they have put on in recent years.

Massive indie rock groups such as Radiohead, The Cure, The Smiths, The Killers, James and Snow Patrol have all successfully trod the boards at Moles and probably the biggest commercial band of the ’90s, Oasis, also did one of their formative gigs there (receiving the princely sum of £150 for doing so I am led to believe).

And, for those who saw The Brits on Tuesday and wondered who this band were called Mumford & Sons who won the best album of the year award, well, you could have caught them at Moles not too long ago when they were first developing their now famous set.

With The Pavilion still putting on interesting concerts and Komedia also being able to stage decent size rock/jazz bands, all that we’ve really been missing locally is that slightly bigger venue for those who are probably beyond the audience base that Moles can handle but are not yet up to O2 status. And The Forum is a perfect venue to bridge this gap.

It is a lovely central venue where you can watch music in comfortable surroundings and is close enough to the bus and train links to ensure it can attract those from outside the city as well as music-hungry locals.

Therefore I really wish Bath Music Plus every success in attracting the sort of acts who can remind the wider rock and pop scene that Bath is a place that can cope with everything from Mozart to Motorhead.Bath is a great city of music. This is an opportunity to show the world it is open to all possible genres.

Rock on Bath.

Up the Brits! Up the English! Up the EU?

This appeared in the Bath Chronicle on Thursday, February 10

Last week as I got ready to watch the annual war we call “The England versus Wales rugby fixture” I had another attack of my national identity crisis.

As I watched the build-up and saw the Welsh team and fans steadily getting themselves into a frenzy about facing the “old enemy”, I suddenly asked myself “hey, aren’t; these my fellow compatriots?”

For no, I am not Welsh – but I am British and yet here were my fellow Brits choking back the tears at the thought of trying to batter us, their fellow Britons. For yes, we are forced at events like this to ask ourselves once again – are we British or are we nglish/Scottish/Welsh/Northern Irish? And the answer appears to be – whatever suits us at the time.

As a rather naughty example, I am afraid I have a terrible problem with “our” tennis hero Andy Murray. Try as I might I just can’t find anything about the guy that inspires me to, err, like him. I don’t know what it is – perhaps it’s his charmless arrogance, the way that in the final of the Australian Open he looked as though he had thrown on his scruffy five-a-side football kit instead of a decent tennis outfit, or the fact that when he smiles it looks like an ironic gesture – but he just seems as warm and loveable as six-day-old Ready Brek. And yet he is a “Brit” so I should support him, yes? Well , up to a very simple point. As my colleagues have heard all too often (my sports editor even had a ‘sweep’ about how long it would take me to mention it when he lost the last final) when Andy Murray wins he is “Britain’s Andy Murray”. And when he loses he is “Scotland’s Andy Murray”. Silly, I know but I can’t help it. I mean, would it kill him to smile?

My national identity confusion isn’t helped by the fact that at times “our” team wears the red and white flag and at others it’s the Union Jack. Thus my English pride is very strong in sports such as football, rugby and cricket where “my” team is called England and comes all wrapped up with motifs of bulldogs, roses and lions. (Incidentally, all that “three lions on a shirt” stuff – why on earth does an African lion represent the land of my (English) fathers? Does the Tanzania footy team have a grey squirrel on its tops? I think not).

And yet, come the Olympic Games, my English flag goes back in the drawer and out comes the Union Jack. In that event, I don’t care if the athlete is from Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff or Clyde – I love them all equally. For they are Brits representing Britain. And I am Brit cheering on Britain – England no longer matters.

But of course it doesn’t end there. Every two years even the most fierce UKIP-ite can suddenly becomes pro-European when our continent takes on the USA at the Ryder Cup. The Union Jack goes out of the window and it is bonjour to the blue European one. Our allegiance is changed again.

Ah well, let us just hope one day we can discover intelligent life on another planet and we can all join forces to support a World Team.

I’d still probably back an alien against Andy Murray though.

Stat's the way...I don't like it

This may sound a little bit weird coming from someone in the communication business but I really am suffering from information overload at the moment.

There is just so much stuff out there to deal with and the difficult job seems to be deciding what you do need to know about – and what you don’t.

Take this week. As you will have seen in every newspaper we have become a nation of crime-spotters this week. For, on Tuesday, the police launched a website where you can see exactly how many crimes have occurred in your street, estate, village or town. The idea provoked such interest that the website received 75,000 hits a minute and the computers nearly blew up as a result. It was like the Take That tour all over again.

But, I don’t really understand why we need to know all this stuff. Sure, in the newspapers I work for we like to report on trends and it’s important to know, roughly speaking, if you live in a benign area or Beruit. But to take it down to the detail of how many crimes are actually on your street without any real context as to their seriousness will just leave us all convinced that the crime situation is far, far worse than it really is.

I checked the post code for example for my very pleasant area and discovered that in December there were no robberies (hoorah!) but quite a lot of examples of anti-social behaviour. I haven’t seen any, hadn’t heard about any but now I am worried that I’ve accidentally moved to The Bronx. So what was the point of all that palaver then?

It’s the same with school league tables. Yes we report them in our titles because some parents do like to study the figures but the fact that ‘School A’ does better at maths than ‘School B’ doesn’t mean that School B is a worse place to send your child. The ‘A-C passes’ say nothing about the friendliness of the teachers, the standard of the school meals or the levels of bullying and yet in the era where ‘info is king’ the stats are all what some people really care about.

And nowadays as well as finding stats about local crime and local school tables, you can, with just a few clicks of the mouse, find out whether you live in an area where people drink a lot, whether your neighbours exercise enough, how old you might be when you die if you stay there etc. etc. etc ad nauseaum. Why? And why should we care?

Oh and, it’s also worth noting that as you trawl the internet to find out the answers to these and other questions, that there are lies, damned lies and internet statistics. For instance I just ‘self-Googled’ and was delighted to see that the phrase ‘Sam Holliday’ yielded 935,000 results. I suddenly thought I was far more important and well known than I could ever have dreamed of – until I saw the third entry which referred to the fact that ‘I’ was apparently a former director of Stability Studies at the US Army War College.

Ah well I at least got the top two spots in 'my' list – but something tells me I won’t have got the 900,000th . . .

Cleese, Python, Marmite - and Selwyn Froggitt

The news that one of Bath’s newest residents – John Cleese – is to have a five-night stint at the Theatre Royal as part of his 'Alimony Tour' is a real joy for all those local fans of this remarkable and enduring character.

For many people, John Cleese will be remembered mainly as the amazing Basil Fawlty but for still more – and I suspect mainly male people of a certain age – he will be forever truly immortalised because he was one of the leading lights of the fantastic Monty Python team.

Monty Python as an entity is something which truly divides people in the way so often ascribed to Marmite – ie, you either love it or hate it. The Pythons were alternative comedy before alternative comedy actually existed and, like 'alt-com' it had the had the ability to have one person in convulsions of laughter as they sat next to another whose face looked like granite.

Put simply with Python, you either got it or you didn’t. But if you got it, you usually really did get it. Indeed, it was once almost regarded for example as the 11th Commandment that: “It is written that where several sixth form boys are gathered together, at some point one of the number will beginneth the Four Yorkshiremen or Dead Parrot sketches and behold the others wouldst duly complete it.”

I certainly fitted into that bill and it is ironic that as a teenager I saw the Python team as being a real “kick in the establishment’s wotsits”, when in reality most of the team’s back- grounds actually made them the establishment.

Tally ho to the revolution!

Looking at it all again, you can see that some of the Python’s early TV work was, shall we say, “patchy” and is now a bit dated but when they were good, boy oh boy, were they good. In some ways you could argue that their best work was confined to the big screen – the films The Holy Grail and Life of Brian are quite simply two of the funniest ever made – but even their sometimes confused and confusing TV series produced dozens of classic moments which, as aforementioned, livened up many a dreary sixth form or office.

And still, I can vouch, they still do now - only last week I re-acquainted colleagues to Arthur Two Sheds Jackson and Eddie Baby. Both are very silly - but both are beautifully so.

And to be fair, although some of their comedy is a tad dated, the vast majority has lasted the test of time well – and not everything can claim to be the same. In the 1970s you may have laughed hysterically at On The Buses, Mind Your Language or Man About The House, but try watching them now on the ‘UK-Any-Old- Hoary-Programme-You Can Find’ station and I suspect you will laugh far more at the fashion and the moustaches than any of the “jokes”. And, if you are unlucky enough to come across Oh No, It’s Selwyn Froggitt, that is what you should shout when you see it in the schedule rather than watch it.

So, as Mr Cleese, who we’re all very proud to have as a citizen of this city, steps on to the boards in the spring, it will be a good way for us all to learn more about the man behind some of the best comedy creations of the last 40-odd years.

You don’t have to ask what have the Pythons ever done for us because it’s all there in glorious colours on the DVD racks and so I hope the Theatre Royal is packed to salute the knight who says 'ni'. Oh, and don’t mention the war.

The end of a six year love affair

Thursday, January 20, 2011, will be something of a sad one for me as I end a friendship that has served me well for around six years.

My loyal friend has been with me through thick and thin and through rain and shine during all that time and has hardly ever let me down.

He (or is it a she, I’ve never quite worked out) has literally been with me on my travels north, south, east and west and together we’ve made great discoveries, met lovely people and seen some wonderful sights.

It seems somewhat cruel therefore to end this beautiful relationship – but the time is right. And that’s because I have my eye on a new and even more attractive model.

For, yes, on Thursday my beloved car and I are to part. And, as it drives off into the sunset, I will have to make acquaintances with a new ‘stranger’ whose affections initially will be based purely on looks.

We all, I suspect, have a relationship of sorts with our cars and in many ways I guess it is entirely understandable. My car for instance has done just shy of 127,000 miles which, if I was to say I did an average of 40 miles an hour means I’ve spent some 3,175 hours in its company. Yes, I have spent fully 133 days behind that wheel. And that, I suspect, means I’ve spent more time with my four wheeled friend as with all of my two-legged ones.

To be honest, I shouldn’t get too sentimental because I am about as far away from being a typical ‘petrol head’ as most men are allowed to be. The choice of my new model saw me agonising more about the colour than the size of the engine and when asked about possible extras, I didn’t think of anything useful that might make the drive more smooth – I just asked about a DAB radio. Oh and a multi CD changer.

However, despite being the sort of car ignoramus that Jeremy Clarkson would look on with distaste (although to be fair I’m not alone – Mr C dislikes about the half the nation for different reasons it seems), when I get a car I’m very loyal to it. And even though I may not treat my ‘motor’ as well as I should, I do always have great affection for it.

Of course my ‘auto-love’ hardly compares with that of other people’s. Some folk treat their cars as almost extra members of the family – feeding them well with the best possible fuel, cleaning them so they always look their Sunday best and even popping them into what I call the junk room (but other people call ‘a garage’) so they don’t get cold at night. Touching really.

So as this new relationship begins I will try to be a bit more like that this time. I will aim to keep my new friend clean inside and out (if so, can someone explain why I chose white as the exterior colour?) and I will treat it with the respect it undoubtedly deserves. Indeed, I might even go as far as doing what some people do and actually give my new friend a name. Of course I really will have to work out its ‘sex’ first. Are cars male or female?

Answers on a postcard .. .

Every 'boss's fear - am I David Brent?

When Ricky Gervais first leapt out of our unsuspecting TV screens and unveiled himself as the boss from hell – David Brent – I, like many others, began a comedy journey that has never ended.

I loved The Office from day one and to my own surprise maybe, just maybe, I now enjoy the witty and intelligent American version even more. It is quite simply a brilliant show – whichever side of the Atlantic you are watching it on.

And yet . . .

The issue for anyone who is a 'boss' at any level is that as you watch David Brent, while other people are howling with laughter, you are thinking “oh my Lord, I’ve said/done that myself”. The problem is, you see, I think that there is bit of Brent in everyone. And a lot of Brent in nearly every boss.

Personally, for example, I work in a tough industry but I believe it’s still possible to be quite a positive soul. And, in my experience, when you smile at the people you work with, you get far more out of them than when you scowl.

The trouble is that’s exactly what David Brent believes as well –- and the great joke is that he is totally self-deluded. So, you do worry.

This all came back to mind afresh this week because we were filmed by a group of students on a creative media studies course at Bath Spa University. They wanted to do a fly-on-the-wall documentary about how the Bath Chronicle is put together and we were delighted to help.

The problem is that it was a mock fly-on-the-wall documentary that was the basis for The Office too and in it Mr Brent and his excellent supporting cast of characters vied to look as good as possible as the cameras whirled. Therefore, as I sat being interviewed by my charming interrogator Ed, all the time I kept thinking “just don’t sound like David Brent”.

I thought I did OK (ish) until I noticed that I had a number of self-congratulatory awards that the paper has won on my wall and I kept thinking of the way in The Office DB kept highlighting some terrible award he’d won years before. It was just one example of how The Office was so brilliantly realised – it exposed all our clichés in a frighteningly well-realised way.

The whole Office phenomenon, however, has at least created a plethora of wonderful “Brent-isms” which can be easily found on the internet. The irony is that he never said most of them in the show but they all sound good enough that he should have done.

So, may I leave you with four Brent-esque slices of officespeak which will be worth dropping into conversation with colleagues today.

• There may be no I in team but there’s a ‘ME’ if you look hard enough.


• If you can keep your head when all around you have lost theirs, then you probably haven’t understood the seriousness of the situation.


• Never do today that which will become someone else’s responsibility tomorrow.


• A problem shared is a problem halved so is your problem really yours or just half of someone else’s?

Anyone fancy a Brent-like dance?

Miserable? Nah, I'm just suffering from jet lag!

How are you feeling today? A bit fluey perhaps? A bit down? Or perhaps just totally out of sorts?

If the answer to any (or all) of those questions is “yes” then fear not.

For welcome to the life of the average January-hating Briton who has returned to work, school or college this week after what seemed like a gloriously long break.

Before “back-to-work-Tuesday” many people had probably spent the best part of two weeks waking up (probably later than normal) and immediately asking themselves two key questions: “what day is it?” and “am I at work today?”

For many in the caring professions or in retail the answer to the latter is just as likely to be “yes” as “no” but for millions of other people, the reality that holidays don’t go on forever hit really hard on Tuesday morning when their vile alarm clock sprung back into life. And even those of us who love our job or have, indeed, been in at times over the holidays, will have looked at that alarm with contempt.

So I’m delighted to say that I now have a scientific term to deal with the fact that dragging myself out of bed on Tuesday was as difficult as looking enthusiastic about four-day-old turkey. Apparently those of us who had to go back to work this week and have found it harder than normal are suffering from something called “social jet lag”. This term has been coined to describe the impact on our bodies of having to readjust after spending a couple of weeks going to bed later, getting up later, drinking more, eating more and often wallowing in the pleasure of doing very little.

Social jet lag, which would have hit most people by about 3pm on day one of the big return, apparently can have the effect of leaving people with indigestion, headache, clumsiness, fatigue and irritability. If that sounds like you then rejoice: you’re not a miserable old goat, you’ve just got jet lag. Hoorah!

Of course, not everyone was able to enjoy the “back-to-work-Tuesday- social-jet-lag-phenomenon”. For it seems that nearly two million people on the day never got out of bed at all due to the cold/flu/man flu (see previous blog!!!!!) which has struck so many people this year. For all of them, the social jet lag joy is still to come and just to make them feel even better there is a rumour of more snow. Yes, back-to-work-next-week-types, even if you can finally get out the bed, you might not be able to get out of the drive.

So, in the interests of trying to cheer people up as they face this short but still rather tricky week, I found by literally minutes of research that among the cures for the January blues, back-to-work- Tuesday feelings and social jet lag are to remember that most people feel the same, many have spent too much in the sales, plenty have hidden the scales and nearly all are already wistfully counting the days until their next holiday.

The only thing that did depress me a little from my extensive research into cheering everyone up was a quote from someone who said “the reality is, come February, most people are back in the swing of things”.

February? That seems an awful long way away. It kind of makes you want to go right back to bed.