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[[Category:Entertainment|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Entertainment]]__NOTOC__ <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->==Entertainment==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Graham McCannPatti Smith|title=Bounder!: The Biography Year of Terry-Thomasthe Monkey|rating=4.5
|genre=Biography
|summary=When I was in my early teensOn the coast of Santa Cruz, it sometimes seemed as if Terry-Thomas was one Patti Smith enters the lunar year of the stars of almost every other fivemonkey -star British comedy film around. He was certainly one of the most recognizable characters of all packed with his gap-toothed grinmischief, sorrow, cigarette holder and inimitable unexpected moments. In a stranger's words, 'Hel-lo!'Anything is possible: after all, it's the year of the monkey'Hard cheese!'. As Smith wanders the coast of Santa Cruz in solitude, she reflects on a year that brings huge shifts in her life - loss and best of allageing are faced head on, as it the angry, 'You're an absolute shower!'shifting political waters in America. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845134419</amazonuk>1526614758
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=Walton_Ask|title=Ask For Blues|author=John Peel Malcolm Walton|rating=3.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=Malcolm Walton's book is clearly a memoir about his introduction to the Trad Jazz scene of the late 1950s and early 1960s, but he has chosen to write it in the form of a novel, claiming in his prologue that this would give the book a different approach to the music memoir. His protagonist 'Martin' takes on Malcolm's mantle and begins with his first discovery of the Salvation Army band with his grandfather. This catapults him into a love of music, initially taking piano lessons, and Sheila Ravenscroftlater delving into his true love – the trumpet.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=Moore Bientot|title=Margrave of the MarshesA Bientot...|author=Roger Moore|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=John Peel was without doubt one The news of the most important disc jockeys death of all time. Born Sir Roger Moore in Merseyside in 1939, May 2017 came as a great shock: he began his career in mid-60s America before returning home to join Radio London and then become was one of the original Radio 1 team, where he stayed until his death 37 years laterthose people you knew would go on forever. I admired There was just one small glimmer of light in the man for his passion for playing sadness - the music nobody else would give the time news that a matter of day (even if I didn't always enjoy it myself) and days before his readiness to say exactly what death he thought, even if it was not what his employers at 'd delivered the BBC wanted to hear, and I always enjoyed reading his columns in the music weeklies and later Radio Times. Nevertheless I found much finished manuscript of his show unlistenable towards the endbook, recall some of his rather curmudgeonly remarks on air (guest slots on Radio 1's Round Table review programme come 'À bientôt…'', to mind), and thought his build-'em-up, knock-'em-down stance rather irritating after publishers. Just a few months later a while. So copy landed on my desk and I approached this book with an open mind didn't even bother to look as a fan, but not an uncritical onethough I could resist reading it straight away.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552551198</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jo BrandMaslanka Sherlock|title=Look Back in HungerSherlock: The Puzzle Book|author=Christopher Maslanka and Steve Tribe|rating=3.54
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Born in Hastings in May 1957, after leaving Brunel University with Who doesn't love a degree in social sciencesgood puzzle, Jo Brand unsuccessfully applied for a research job with Channel 4 on a series about racismespecially those really fiendish ones that get the brain working extra hard? There really is nothing to compare to that buzz we get from the Aha! moment, then worked for a time as a psychiatric nurse at when everything falls into place and the South London Bethlem and Maudsley Hospitalsolution reveals itself. But If puzzles are your thing then you may wish to put your grey cells to the lure of showbiz proved too strongtest with ''The Sherlock Puzzle Book'', and stardom in stand-up comedy soon beckonedbased on the popular TV series.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755355237</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeremy ClarksonCorcoran_Dylan|title=Driven to DistractionDo You Mr Jones?: Bob Dylan with the Poets and Professors|author=Neil Corcoran
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Jeremy ClarksonBob Dylan's middle name ought to be ''Marmiteaward of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016 'for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition'proved highly controversial. You really do either love him or hate him. I am It inevitably led some people in the first camp. I think he is brilliantly funny. He is. He makes me laugh. Out loud. And like many women who watch Top Gear, (well, those that don't watch it because they are strangely – ''bizarrely'' - attracted to James May – I am '''not''' - or because they want literary world to mother The Hamster – I do '''not''') I find Jeremy Clarkson hilarious. And I don't think you have to like cars to see the appeal either! I mean, the columns within ''Driven To Distraction'' occasionally start ''off'' talking about cars, but not always take stock and they quickly move on to the things that get look at his dander up before tailing neatly back to the cars againwork and reputation with a fresh eye. Or not. And what is This volume of essays was first published in between 2002, and is pure gold dustnow reissued with a new foreword by Will Self.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718155548</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Keith FloydKyncl_Stream|title=Stirred But Not Shaken: The AutobiographyStream Punks|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summaryauthor=I grew up with television cookery programmes Robert Kyncl and still have some recipes in my childish handwriting, which begin ''4oz SR fl 2oz marg 2oz C sug…'' as I battled to copy what was on the screen before we retuned to the presenter. Programmes stagnated as the cook spoke to camera and lectured the viewer on how to make sponge cake or a fish dish. Then we were shocked awake. There was a man, quite good-looking in a raffish, slightly dangerous sort of way, who cooked on the deck of a trawler or wherever the whim took him, always glass in hand and who was quite capable of berating the cameraman about how he was doing his job. Like him, or hate him – you could not help but know that he was Keith Floyd, or Floydy to millions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0283071052</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Peter Hook |title=The Hacienda: How Not To Run A ClubMaany Peyvan|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=In the beginning there was Tony Wilson, I watch quite a Granada TV presenter who came to prominence as compere lot of the YouTube. I play music show ''So It Goes'videos when I want to listen to a particular song I don't already have in my collection. Then there was Factory RecordsI use it to find out how to do things, with the Manchester-based alternative record label he helped instruction videos they seem to foundhave for pretty much anything. At the gym, and their main actI'll stick it on on my phone, prop it up on the postcross-punk band Joy Divisiontrainer and watch some behind the scenes interviews with the cast of my favourite shows. After their vocalist Ian Curtis killed himself in 1980 the band recruited another member and continued And sometimes I'll treat it as New Order. Between them and their manager Rob Grettonif it is Netflix, they decided to found and run their own clubwatch series with new episodes releasing every few days, the Haciendaexclusively on YouTube. Peter Hook was not only New Order's bassist but also seems Having a new smart TV adds an extra, easy way to watch without having to have had the highest profile plug in hands-on management of the establishmentmy laptop or squint at a small phone screen. So yes, I like YouTube and despite I use YouTube. But I didn't know a generous intake of various substances is well placed to chronicle whole lot about the sometimes comic, sometimes sad storysite it until I read this book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847371353</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rick WakemanJVDK_Swing|title=Grumpy Old Rock StarWe Can Swing Together: The Story of Lindisfarne|author=John Van der Kiste
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Over my time at university I've sat on It all began with a few scriptwriting modulesgroup of youngsters in North Shields. I Rod Clements, Simon 'm currently working on a couple of projects with my scriptwriting partnerSi' Cowe, with whom IRay 'Jacka've already completed a pilot TV show. So it was nice to be asked to review this book Jackson and get some more insight into this field of writing. IRay Laidlaw formed ''ve probably read most every book on Creative Writing that youThe Downtown Faction've ever heard of and a lot that you're probably not aware of. When it comes to scriptwriting, there really is only one book that's worth comparing anything else in soon changing the field with: Robert McKeename to 's 'Brethren'Story'when they were joined by singer-songwriter Alan Hull. As a US-based group had a similar name they opted to change the name again - and '. It's so heavily touted that ILindisfarne''ve seen it recommended by experts (with the name taken from an island off the Northumberland coast) was born. More than forty years on and with numerous changes of personnel the band is still very much around. They might not be touring or producing much in novel writing – a quite different craftthe way of new material, but they still perform, with Rod Clements, one of the original members on his fourth stint with the group.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845283074</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Barney HoskynsJVDK_ELO|title=Lowside of the RoadElectric Light Orchestra: A Life of Tom WaitsSong by Song|author=John Van der Kiste
|rating=4.5
|genre=BiographyEntertainment|summary=Born My memories of pop music in the early sixties revolve around guitars and raised in Los Angelesdrums, Tom Waits probably enjoys a status comparable to sometimes the UKpiano with only occasional excursions into strings and brass. Pop music rarely stands still and it wasn's Richard Thompson. He has never sold out to a mass pop audiencet long before the basic instruments were seen as constraints and The Beatles, preferring instead The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys began to sustain an engagingly low-key career for over 30 yearsexperiment, feted by critics, fellow artists and a cult with other groups following while only achieving modest record saleswhere they led. While his 80s albums 'Swordfishtrombones' Amongst these groups was The Move and their lead guitarist and 'Rain Dogs' are regarded as among the finest of the decadesongwriter, most of his royalties have come through cover versions of his songsRoy Wood. Two, 'Downtown TrainWood wanted to develop the group' s sound by adding more instruments but was prevented from achieving what he wanted by cost limitations and 'Tom Traubert's Blues', have been Top 10 hits for Rod Stewart, who once said that they paid for because the rest of the swimming pool in Tomgroup didn's garden, while in t really share his early days the Eagles gave him a boost by recording 'Ol' 55' on their third albumenthusiasm.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571235522</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David PritchardWatkins_Lets|title=Shooting the Cook|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=David Pritchard would have you believe that he was a bumbling TV producer and that he, almost by accident, discovered two men who would go on to become celebrity chefs. The first, Keith Floyd, was a revelation to viewers as he slurped a glass (or two) of wine, said exactly what you thought he shouldnLet't have said and cooked amazing food in one exotic location after another. After the stultifying programmes made by the likes Fanny Craddock he was a breath s Make Lots of fresh air and like or loathe him there was no way that you could be ambivalent. The second man, Rick Stein, was an entirely different, er, kettle of fish. Quiet, thoughtful and decidedly more erudite – it was difficult to imagine two more diverse personalities, but he brought out Money: My Life as the best of both and made programmes which stay Biggest Man in the mind years later.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007278306</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewPop|author=Simon Reynolds|title=Totally Wired: Post-punk Interviews and Overviews Tom Watkins
|rating=4
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Reynolds established himself as one of Who on earth would be a manager in the leading chroniclers larger than life, here today gone tomorrow world of pop? Anybody with an ego, a ruthless streak, an opportunity to embrace the British early 1980s music scene with his ''Rip It Up chances and Start Again'accept that it's not going to last, evidently. In a sense, this book Tom Watkins is basically a companion just one of several to that volumehave walked the fine line and, for part of the time, though it can be read independentlyquite successfully. As his memoirs suggest, without having first tried part of the other – as this present reviewer has donetime was achievement enough.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571235492</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Richard Hammond Kendrick_Scrappy|title=As You Do|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Whilst he had already gained some attention by hosting Sky One's ''Brainiac: Science Abuse'' and BBC 2's Top Gear, what really brought Richard Hammond to the public's attention was a serious crash when driving a jet propelled car whilst filming the latter back in 2006. The outpouring of public support, both emotional and financial surprised even him and the [[On The Edge by Richard Hammond|book]] he and his wife Mindy wrote about the accident and his recovery was the best selling non-fiction book of 2007. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297855204</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewScrappy Little Nobody|author=Wayne Brittenden|title=Celluloid Circus: the Heyday of the New Zealand Picture TheatreAnna Kendrick|rating=43.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Going to Celebrity autobiographies. It's a genre long tainted by the movies examples of people who clearly didn't used deserve to be just about watching a filmcelebrity, let alone have a ghost-writer create their book, and by those who did so little but managed to churn out five memoirs before they were even thirty. But more recently it's become a way of staking a claim to importance for female comics. Through meticulous researchThey've not all written autobiographies, interviews and photographsas Bridget Christie proved, Brittenden captures but enough have to provide for a rapidly-filling shelf at the spirit bookstore. 2016 we had Amy Schumer winning a GoodReads award, Lena Dunham's been at it, and we've also got Anna Kendrick. Now she's not a strict comic – not all of cinema in its heyday: the magnificent architecture, the fascinating charactersher films are designed to make you laugh, and some of them that are just don't – but this has to be in the audiences who became thoroughly involved in voicing their emotions and opinionssame bracket.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1869621468</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alistair Duncan and Steve Emecz (Editor)Ropek_Tragic|title=Eliminate the ImpossibleTragic Magic: An Examination The Life of the World of Sherlock Holmes on Page and ScreenTraffic's Chris Wood|author=Dan Ropek|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=''Eliminate the Impossible'' is rather Chris Wood was a curious book in many waysmember of Traffic, as while it goes into considerable detail about inconsistencies and errors in the Sherlock Holmes stories written group formed by Sir Arthur Conan DoyleSteve Winwood in 1967 after he left The Spencer Davis Group. A gifted musician best known for his flute and saxophone work, it only gives a cursory glance at their literary merit – it won't be a Sparknotes-style primer for a student taking a reading shortcut. Insteadhe also played keyboards, it's more like bass guitar and contributed backing vocals as well as having a case history hand in writing several of the various Holmes stories, providing many interesting details, why mistakes might have been made, speculation about songs and one or two instrumentals. This biography takes its title from the stories, and so onname of one of his compositions for their fifth album.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904312314</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jules HollandDolby_Sound|title=Barefaced Lies and Boogie-Woogie BoastsThe Speed of Sound|author=Thomas Dolby
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Jools Holland has always come acrossFrom struggling post-punk musician to pop star, particularly on televisionfrom Silicon Valley innovator to university professor, as Thomas Dolby has had a thoroughly likeable, down-to-earth chap next doorremarkable if not unique career, often reinventing himself on the kind of person you could chat to over the garden fenceway. This memoir of is based on his life, from childhood in a flat in Pimlico to leader of a band invited to play in front of the leaders of the G8 nations at a summit meeting, comes across in very similar fashionextensive notes and journals.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141026774</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ted GioiaMorris_Legion|title=Delta BluesThe Legion of Regrettable Supervillains: Oddball Criminals from Comic Book History|author=Jon Morris
|rating=5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Without Elvis PresleyAs much as I like comics – and I do, Chuck Berry whether superhero ones or not – I have to admit one thing, namely that the villains in them are a bit pants. What is The Penguin but the Beatlesworld's worst Mafioso, rockwith a hobby of waddling along like his pet birds? Where else do you win an Oscar of all things by playing a two-bit killer who just fell in a vat of random chemicals and changed colour, and got mardier as a result (although recently he'ns become a nanotech genius – but let'roll and s not go there)? And what is it with the gimp in the see-through plant pot because he is the embodiment of cold? And that's just some of the better-known enemies of ''Batman'', one of the music industry as we know it today might never have existedbetter goodies. But without You can imagine how awful the Delta bluesmen who were recording from baddies related to the 1920s onwardsbad goodies can be. And if you can't, there would probably have been no Elvis (or else he would have spent this is the rest of his life driving trucks as he did in his teens)perfect primer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393062589</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dawn FrenchFletcher_Midnight|title=Dear FattyIn the Midnight Hour: The Life & Soul of Wilson Pickett|author=Tony Fletcher|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Showbiz memoirs are often difficult to writeTamla Motown groups and singers apart, at least without a collaborator in the mid-sixties there were three major names in the soul music field who can help the writer to keep a reasonable sense of perspectivemattered above all. (For a good example James Brown was something of a readable actor's own life storycult name who rarely bothered about or troubled the singles charts, try Dennis Waterman's ReMinder). Dawn French has opted for a completely different approach, by telling her tale in and Otis Redding was on the form verge of lettersshooting into the stratosphere when he died in an aeroplane crash. The first is to you and Iother was the man from Alabama, 'the reader, while others are to family, including her mother, brother Gary, her father (who took his own life when she was aged 19), her husband Lenny Henry, old schoolfriends, and other showbiz iconswicked Pickett'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846053447</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ben Crystal Paling_Reading|title=Shakespeare on ToastReading Allowed: True Stories and Curious Incidents from a Provincial Library|author=Chris Paling
|rating=4.5
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=Simon Napier-Bell is probably as qualified as anyone to write what is I once made a comical faux pas in a library when I was younger, but it certainly didn't put me off returning. I once declared in effect a history self-important way that I would start at the beginning of the British pop books for young children and rock industry not stop til the end, then do the same for those for the older children – ''and then do it all over again with them'', I said, pointing at the last halflarge-centuryprint shelves. In ''I hope not'', was the 1960s he managed the Yardbirds response – but little me was only aware of a need for large font for my fellow whippersnappers, and co-wrote Dusty Springfieldnot for any other reason. Since then I's only Nove needed libraries, and going to them has been second nature. 1 hit, in On the dole I made sure I could use the 1970s he looked after punk band Londonfree Internet they provided to pay me back for my council tax; later I was intent on finding out if a Senior Library Assistant girl was worthy of her title, and in the 1980s did the same of course, it saved a fortune on books for art-electro group Japan study and Wham! fun. In I'm not alone in sharing the process he's travelled most warmth of both their heating system and the world and talked very thing they were born to many provide – books, but there was still a huge step up between my level of the major players, use and seems knowledge of them to know almost everything there actually working in one. Which is about drugs despite having touched remarkably few of themwhere Chris Paling comes in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091880920</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Angus Cargill (Editor)Springsteen_Born|title=Hang the DJ: An Alternative Book of Music Lists |rating=4|genre=Trivia|summary=Ah, the music list... balm to pop obsessives (see Nick Hornby's ''High Fidelity''), makeweight of copy-starved magazine editors, and staple of self-indulgent writers (see ''31 Songs'', also by Nick Hornby). The contributors to this volume fall mainly into the latter category. No fewer than thirty five of them supply their musical top tens, ranging from the fanatical Born to the frivolous, via the frankly frightening.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571241727</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewRun|author=Michael Bracewell|title=Roxy: The Band That Invented an EraBruce Springsteen|rating=45
|genre=Entertainment
|summary=FirstNo, I feel you haven't stumbled into a music review from the title is rather misleading. 1970s, I came to this book expecting a fully-fledged account of Roxy Music'm talking about The Boss's history, imagining it would tell us about their career at least over the first four years of hits, namely 1972-76,to say nothing of their second coming from 1979 onwardsautobiography. What I got was a lengthy account Lots of the art worldbooks have been written about Springsteen by folk who knew him, cultural influences and student bonhomie which brought Bryan Ferry worked with him and by others who have only read the main group members together in the early 1970scuttings. The story starts logically enough with Ferry's birth and upbringing in post-war TynesideOver the last seven years he has been going about – not putting the record straight, exactly – but comes to a full stop with the release of their self-titled first album in June 1972telling it from his own perspective.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571229867</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jim Holt|title=Stop Me If You As he puts it: 've Heard This|rating=4|genre=Humour|summary=As far as I can remember, my first time in print was when I submitted some jokes to 'Writing about yourself is a charityfunny business''s themed joke collection. Before thenBy his own admission, some of my first actions as a child might have been laughingit isn't the whole truth, and what is cuter discretion holds him back but ''in a baby than that? But why was that infant laughing – he didnproject like this, the writer has made one promise, to show the reader his mind.'' ''t have a joke he could getIn these pages, surely?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668109X</amazonuk>I've tried to do this.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bill OddieJVDK_Beatles|title=One Flew Into The Cuckoo's Egg|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Bill Oddie doesn't want to write his autobiography. He is not near the end of his life, and he doesn't have anything to sign off on, as it were. Nor can he write it – if these days are anything to go by, you have to be thirty or less and have had a couple of years in the limelight A Beatles Miscellany: Everything You Always Wanted to qualify for one, and not Know About the career-spanning decades of fame Bill has under his substantial belt. Still, our heroic narrator has managed to produce this book, which is to all intents and purposes an autobiography, Beatles but not as you know it, Jim.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340951923</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David N Meyer|title=Twenty Thousand Roads: The Ballad of Gram Parsons and His Cosmic American Music|rating=3.5|genre=Biography|summary=Gram Parsons was in effect rock music's James Dean. He died too young to have achieved much, but in going Were Afraid to an early grave he seems to have achieved this iconic status of one of the 20th century's legendary might-have-been-greats if only he had lived longer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0747565775</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewAsk|author=Ben Macintyre |title=For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond John Van der Kiste
|rating=5
|genre=Entertainment
}}
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