Siobhan O’Donnell on a pledge that sounds wonderful until you realise punk rockers inherit only […]
Dear Diary: Menace Are Playing the 100 Club for Their 50th, and I Have Ironed My Safety Pins
Siobhan O’Donnell on the original 1970s line-up reuniting on Oxford Street, the basement where punk […]
Dear Diary: The Government Has Guaranteed Free Healthcare, and Patients Have Been Guaranteed Something to Do While Waiting
Siobhan O’Donnell on the NHS waiting list, a pensioner’s knee and the long, long queue […]
Rehearsal in a Railway Arch, With Trains
We wrote a song out of the week’s headlines, argued about a comma and lost […]
Three Chords and a Photocopier
A shift at the record shop, a box of old fanzines and why running a […]
Tuesday Night in the Basement on Oxford Street
Four bands, one working amp and the discovery that a good headline and a good […]
Camden on a Sunday, With My Nan
Mohicans at a fiver a photograph, a pint in the pub where it all happened, […]
The Clock That Runs Backwards on the King’s Road
A pilgrimage to number 430, a wasted afternoon in Chelsea and a bus ride with […]
Eleven T-Shirts, Nine of Them Medium, and a Shirt Sponsor Named After Its Owner
We had the merchandise meeting, such as it was, and I learned something about branding […]
How to Leave a Venue When the Promoter Has Gone Quiet
A story about a gang that got away by releasing a sheep in lipstick reminded […]
A Robot Wrote a Punk Song and It Was Polite
The drummer played us something a machine made, and it had every part of a […]
The Van, the Ferry and the Price of Sitting Next to Your Own Guitarist
We priced up a weekend of gigs in Ireland and learned what airlines think a […]
The People Have Spoken, Said the Bass Player, and Then We Voted Again
A band is a democracy until it is not, and a headline about referendums landed […]
Someone Must Pay, Said the Pensioner, Meaning Someone Else
We played a benefit at my nan’s day centre on Saturday, and a headline about […]
The Lifeboat Tin on the Merch Table
We are about to cross the Irish Sea in a plasterer’s van, a headline about […]
Two Minutes in Primark and Forty in a Rehearsal Room With No Heating
A week of broken strings, a drummer with opinions and the discovery that a high […]
Locally Sourced, Artisanal Teenage Bullying
They want to keep under-sixteens off social media, and I have a fifteen-year-old fan, a […]
Two Pounds a Litre and the Van Does Thirty to the Gallon on a Good Day
I did the fuel sums for Ireland on the back of a set list, and […]
Three Chords and a Traitor in a Hackney Rehearsal Room
Rehearsal went sideways the moment the drummer read out a royal headline, and by midnight […]
Saturday in a Camden Basement: Forty People, One Dog and a Song About an Uncle
First live outing for our royal traitor song in a sweaty Camden basement, and the […]
Digging Through Vinyl and Royal Grudges in a Soho Record Shop
A rainy afternoon flipping through punk records turned into a small history lesson about bands, […]
Ringing Mum About the Royal Row and Accidentally Talking About My Brother
A phone call home to talk about the news ended up being about our own […]
Busking the South Bank and Plotting a Bonfire Night Gig
An afternoon playing acoustic punk to tourists by the river led to a plan for […]
Train Station Delay Announcement Voice Reportedly Becomes Unlikely Minor Local Celebrity
Commuters say the specific voice’s calm tone has developed a genuine devoted following LEEDS, England, […]
Village Fete Cake Competition Scandal Reportedly Divides Community for Weeks Afterward
Entrants say the judging controversy has genuinely outlasted the actual event itself DORSET, England, UK […]
A Journey That Circles Back on Itself: The Quest for Real London and the Satire of Authenticity Tourism
The search for something more genuine than the obvious tourist spots reliably concludes at another […]
A Rivalry Fought Entirely in Aisle Layout: Sainsbury’s Local vs Tesco Express and the Satire of Retail Tribalism
Two nearly identical convenience formats have somehow become genuine markers of neighbourhood identity and personal […]
A Format Built From an Empty Chair: Have I Got News For You and the Satire of the Genre That Outlasted Its Own Crisis
A single missing host produced one of British television’s most enduring comedy formats, almost by […]
A Genre as Old as the Institution Itself: UK Marriage Jokes and the Satire of Affectionate Complaint
Comedy about marriage has survived every social change the institution itself has undergone, which says […]
The Diagnosis That Serves the Diagnostician: Broken Britain and the Satire of Strategic Alarm
Declaring the patient critically ill positions the doctor offering the cure rather nicely, regardless of […]
The Funniest British Politicians Ever, and Why None of Them Meant to Be
How Boris Johnson’s live-action sitcom career and Jacob Rees-Mogg’s time-machine presentation prove that accidental comedy […]
Feedback Successfully Received: Germany’s CDU Defeat and the Satire of the Ignored Customer Survey
An electorate delivers its harshest verdict in decades, and the response reads like a corporate […]