"Whup! Jamboree" - a sea shanty and four singing sweaters

The composer Vaughan Williams said that on first hearing the folk song, “Dives and Lazarus”, he felt as if he had known it all his life. 

Kenneth Branagh makes a useless Swedish detective

In 2002 Kenneth Branagh gave possibly the finest ever TV performance by a British actor, as SS General Reinhard Heydrich in Conspiracy.  Centring on the meeting at a villa on the outskirts of Berlin at which The Final Solution was agreed, the drama gave a sense of reality to the stuff of nightmare.

God! I wish the Archbishop of Canterbury would stick to God

Does Dr Rowan Williams actually know that he is the Archbishop of Canterbury? If so, does this self-described “hairy leftie” have the least inkling of what the role entails?

Judging by his latest New Year message, the answer on both counts would appear to be “No”.

What's the weather like up there? A tall story

I stand 6 ft 4 ½ in barefoot. Back in the 1970s that made me practically a giant. The first time I fully realized this was standing in a carriage on the Paris Metro when I was 19 and a friend whispered, “They’re all staring at you”. Surreptitiously checking my flies weren’t open, I looked around and they weren’t so much staring as gawping. For the first time in my life, I didn’t just feel taller than average – I felt like a freak.

Farewell to popular culture on TV - I've really had enough

One of the nice things about getting older is that you no longer have to pay any attention whatsoever to popular culture. Over the years I have probably caught no more than an hour in total of Pop Idol, The X-Factor, Big Brother, I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here andBritain’s Got Talent. I haven’t watched a single episode of any soap opera in over twenty (glorious) years. I’m not proud of this – just relieved. 

What, every Monday? The adolescent behaviour of unions

When I was about fifteen, just when the liberal revolution had really got underway in this country, I began militating for Religious Instruction lessons in our school to include the study of religions other than Christianity. Not exactly manning the barricades with Molotov cocktails, I grant you, but nevertheless it gave me a thrill to belong – if only briefly – to the massed ranks of smug provocateurs questioning traditional authority in all its forms. I had absolutely no desire to study other religions, you understand – I couldn’t have cared less what Buddhists or Muslims got up to. Like most teenagers, I just wanted to assert myself.  

Producer screws up Steve Coogan celebration by being too bloody clever

Watching Steve Coogan: The Inside Story last night on BBC 2, I was reminded of a wonderful outtake of a rehearsal for BBC TV’s opening coverage of the Mexico Olympics. 

My life as a revolutionary protester

I’ve never been much of an active protester, but I did once join a political march. It was during my first year at Cambridge, in the early 1970s.

Who really invented Rock 'n' Roll?

Who invented Rock ‘n’ Roll? For decades the standard answer was “Elvis Presley”. But it isn’t true. Elvis invented the salient characteristics of the Rock ‘n’ Roll attitude – swagger, sex, sideburns and youth. But Rock ‘n’ Roll predated his first Sun recording sessions in 1954 by a number of years. 

Why the emphasis on Freud, when Jung was incomparably greater?

When it comes to the Psychology/Psychiatry shelves of our bookshops and libraries, the space devoted to Freud compared with Jung’s paltry showing has always baffled me.