Newest Entertainment Reviews

Mr Manchester, as Tony Wilson came to be known, could have been the next John Humphrys. Instead he ended up becoming the next Malcolm McLaren – or, perhaps, a far less successful version of Richard Branson. After graduating from Cambridge University with a degree in English he became a trainee news reporter for ITN, and for much of his life he worked as an anchorman for regional evening news programmes. Yet he is less remembered for this than for his championship of alternative music and punk rock, founding of Factory Records and involvement with the Hacienda Club. Although he loved the Beatles and folk music in general, he disliked much of the contemporary music scene until he saw the Sex Pistols live in the summer of 1976. Full review...

Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater by Larry Stempel

Stempel is an associate professor of music at an American university so I would imagine that this book is primarily a labour of love. In the Preface Stempel bemoans the loss of important research material over the years, whether it be musical scores, playbills or similar. It happens. It is a fact of life. Simply thrown away or discarded as being considered not important. It's only a musical, after all. A bit light and frothy. Stempel thinks otherwise - and takes his time telling us exactly why. Full review...

You Never Give Me Your Money: The Battle for the Soul of the Beatles by Peter Doggett

When four young Liverpudlians got together to make music in the early 1960s, they can have had no idea of their future impact on the world around them. Likewise they would surely not have had an inkling of the extraordinary business minefield which their existence as a group would create, and which would leave the scars long after they had gone their separate ways, even after two of them had died. As at least one of them ruefully commented, they must have provided several lawyers' children with a very expensive education. Full review...

Teenage Revolution: Growing Up in the 80s by Alan Davies

Born in 1966, Alan Davies grew up in Essex, the son of a staunchly Conservative-voting father and a mother who died of cancer when he was only six. It was a childhood dominated at first by 'Citizen Smith' and the other TV sitcoms, 'Starsky and Hutch', 'Grease', Barry Sheene, the Barron Knights, and Debbie Harry. The book begins at 1978, the year I started venturing out more, and finishes at 1988, when he graduated from Kent University to find that stand-up comedy could be an alternative to finding a job where he would have to do what he was told. Full review...

Still on the Road: Songs of Bob Dylan, 1974-2008 by Clinton Heylin

Heylin is also obviously a fan, a very knowledgeable and obsessive one to boot. He has never met or directly interviewed his subject (who is known to guard his privacy quite fiercely most of the time), but his research materials include official recording sessionographies and interviews conducted by others. All this is naturally invaluable information for his analysis and history of all the 600-plus songs the man is known to have written or co-written from 1974 to almost the present day. In terms of his discography, that spans the albums from ‘Blood on the Tracks’, released in 1975 and commonly regarded as probably his best post-1960s set, to ‘Together Through Life’, which appeared in 2009. Full review...

Celebrity: How Entertainers Took Over The World and Why We Need an Exit Strategy by Marina Hyde

I have what is perhaps a regular-sized interest in A and B-list celebrities. I can name the off-spring of many an actress, tell you who the spokespeople for certain brands are, write a list of celebs with publicly declared devotions to certain religions, even win the odd pub quiz thanks to knowing the birth names of various performers. I know all sorts of things about this rather small subset of society, but I know the what more than the why, and that's exactly the problem, according to this book. After all, if more of us sat down to wonder about what it actually is that the likes of Geri Halliwell and Nicole Kidman bring to the UN, we might seriously question how and why they ever got involved in the first place. Full review...

Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head by Rob Chapman

Roger Barrett, who later acquired the moniker 'Syd' (let's make him Syd from now on) was born in Cambridge in 1946. The fourth of five children, he was the only one to inherit any lasting artistic talent, which came from his father Max. The latter was a senior pathologist, member of the local Philharmonic Society, gifted singer, pianist and watercolour painter. Full review...

Matt Monro: The Singer's Singer by Michele Monro

In terms of British chart statistics and record sales, Matt Monro never quite fulfilled his full potential. When measured against the achievements of contemporary ballad singers like Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck, he fell some way short. Yet the former Terry Parsons was a regular fixture on the light entertainment circuit, and overseas, particularly in Latin America and the Philippines, he was undoubtedly one of Britain's most successful exports ever, and at one point he was the biggest selling artist in Spain. His idol Frank Sinatra, to whom he was often compared, often said that Matt was the only British singer he ever really listened to. Full review...

Heaven And Hell: My Life in the Eagles, 1974 - 2001 by Don Felder

In terms of record sales and income from live tours, hardly anyone matched the Eagles' rate of success during the 1970s. Yet the constant search to better themselves with each record, the in-fighting, the drugs and egos, soon got the better of them. They say it is tough at the top, and nobody is better equipped to tell the often painful story than their former guitarist Don Felder. Full review...

Ian Dury: The Definitive Biography by Will Birch

Ian Dury was always one of the most individual, even contrary characters in the musical world. In a branch of showbiz where people often relied on good looks as a short cut to stardom, he was no oil painting. During the pub rock era, he and his group, the Blockheads, ploughed a lonely furrow which owed more to jazz-funk than rock'n'roll, and his songs extolled the virtues of characters from Billericay or Plaistow rather than those from Memphis or California. Alongside the young punk rock upstarts with whom he competed for inches in the rock press, he was comparatively middle-aged. As if that was not enough, in his own words childhood illness had left him a permanent 'raspberry ripple'. Full review...

Alastair Sim: The Star of Scrooge and the Belles of St Trinian's by Mark Simpson

The mere mention of Alastair Sim conjures up visions of pictures made during the 1950s when a more gentle humour was the order of the day. Yet the man hated and did his best to avoid publicity, claiming that the person the public saw on screen revealed all that anybody needed to know about him. How he would have fared twenty years later in the age of a more intrusive press, one cannot but wonder. Full review...

The Richard Beckinsale Story by David Clayton

A generation probably knows Richard Beckinsale only from repeats on the UK Gold TV channels, and from occasional mentions in the context of 'how great he would have been if only…' In 1978 The Sunday Times Magazine tipped the 30-year-old sitcom favourite as a rising major star of the 80s who would blossom into one of the great all-round stage actors. One year later, he was dead. Full review...

My Story, My Life: Val Doonican - The Complete Autobiography by Val Doonican

In the 1960s, if Harold Wilson was the personification of politics and the Beatles the collective icon of youth culture, Val Doonican was similarly at the very apex of light entertainment. He may no longer have such a high profile – but he's outlasted them both. Over four decades he has refused to bow to passing fads and fashions, remained true to himself, and in the process he has never really put a foot wrong. As he says towards the end, 'When you find out what it is you do best, and what the public wants from you, then stick with it, and do it as well as you can.' With the possible exception of his contemporary and long-time professional and personal friend Rolf Harris, it's difficult to think of another person in showbiz who comes across as more genuinely likeable, and more a genuine case of 'what you see is what you get'. Full review...

The Ultimate DVD Easter Egg Guide: How to Access the Hidden Extras on Your DVD by Jo Berry

Consider the Easter Egg - at least in the way DVD collectors mean. Sometimes a pointless hidden add-on, that is there for no reason. Sometimes they can be a priceless bonus, seemingly gifted by the disc producers to those in the know, costing - at least in the case of some animated instances - many thousands of pounds. Some oik on set with a camcorder, they are not. I've been guilty several times of clicking away in directions the menus don't seem to encourage on the off-chance I find something (or, on a PC, just sweeping the PC mouse over any and every title card in case it highlights something previously invisible). Forcing several titles and chapters by going straight to them in case they're something secret is not a hobby I like to admit to. Full review...

Jazz by Gary Giddins and Scott Deveaux

At first glance this 700-page volume might look a little daunting. Do not be daunted. If you want a small pocket book which merely scratches at the surface and can probably be digested in a sitting or two, look elsewhere. On the other hand, if you want an extremely readable and comprehensive book on jazz which can not only be read cover to cover, but also retained as a work of reference to use again and again, I doubt if this can be bettered. Full review...

An Education: The Screenplay by Nick Hornby

Adroit marketing? Well, yes. An Education has been published, of course, to coincide with the film's general release in the UK. Hardly surprising since our national appetite for nosiness seems insatiable and cosy background details prop up every telly series and film these days. As well as the screenplay, Nick Hornby has provided an introduction and diary of the film's successful premiere at the Sundance Festival in Utah. Beyond trivia, I think this fascinating little book presents an excellent 'how to' guide for wannabes from one of Britain's most respected screen and novel writers. Full review...

Turned Out Nice Again: The Story of British Light Entertainment by Louis Barfe

Light entertainment is often looked down upon, as if it's a bit naff, tepid and ignorable. What's often forgotten is that it's hugely popular, enjoyable and much of it is of the highest quality. Louis Barfe's Turned Out Nice Again tells the complete story of British light entertainment. Full review...

Bounder!: The Biography of Terry-Thomas by Graham McCann

When I was in my early teens, it sometimes seemed as if Terry-Thomas was one of the stars of almost every other five-star British comedy film around. He was certainly one of the most recognizable characters of all with his gap-toothed grin, cigarette holder and inimitable 'Hel-lo!', 'Hard cheese!', and best of all, the angry, 'You're an absolute shower!' Full review...

Margrave of the Marshes by John Peel and Sheila Ravenscroft

John Peel was without doubt one of the most important disc jockeys of all time. Born in Merseyside in 1939, he began his career in mid-60s America before returning home to join Radio London and then become one of the original Radio 1 team, where he stayed until his death 37 years later. I admired the man for his passion for playing the music nobody else would give the time of day (even if I didn't always enjoy it myself) and his readiness to say exactly what he thought, even if it was not what his employers at the BBC wanted to hear, and I always enjoyed reading his columns in the music weeklies and later Radio Times. Nevertheless I found much of his show unlistenable towards the end, recall some of his rather curmudgeonly remarks on air (guest slots on Radio 1's Round Table review programme come to mind), and thought his build-'em-up, knock-'em-down stance rather irritating after a while. So I approached this book with an open mind as a fan, but not an uncritical one. Full review...

Look Back in Hunger by Jo Brand

Born in Hastings in May 1957, after leaving Brunel University with a degree in social sciences, Jo Brand unsuccessfully applied for a research job with Channel 4 on a series about racism, then worked for a time as a psychiatric nurse at the South London Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital. But the lure of showbiz proved too strong, and stardom in stand-up comedy soon beckoned. Full review...

Driven to Distraction by Jeremy Clarkson

Jeremy Clarkson's middle name ought to be Marmite. You really do either love him or hate him. I am 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 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 and they quickly move on to the things that get his dander up before tailing neatly back to the cars again. Or not. And what is in between is pure gold dust. Full review...

Stirred But Not Shaken: The Autobiography by Keith Floyd

I grew up with television cookery programmes 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. Full review...

The Hacienda: How Not To Run A Club by Peter Hook

In the beginning there was Tony Wilson, a Granada TV presenter who came to prominence as compere of the music show So It Goes. Then there was Factory Records, the Manchester-based alternative record label he helped to found, and their main act, the post-punk band Joy Division. After their vocalist Ian Curtis killed himself in 1980 the band recruited another member and continued as New Order. Between them and their manager Rob Gretton, they decided to found and run their own club, the Hacienda. Peter Hook was not only New Order's bassist but also seems to have had the highest profile in hands-on management of the establishment, and despite a generous intake of various substances is well placed to chronicle the sometimes comic, sometimes sad story. Full review...

Grumpy Old Rock Star by Rick Wakeman

Rick Wakeman wrote and published a more conventional autobiography, Say Yes! in 1985, and it has so far never been updated. This, written with the aid of ghost-writer Martin Roach, takes a totally different approach, being a selection of episodes from his sixty years in more or less random order. In theory it might seem rather disjointed, but in practice it works brilliantly. Full review...

Karlology by Karl Pilkington

Humour

The Radio Five film critic Mark Kermode has a rule when reviewing comedies. If he laughs more than five times then the film deserves its billing as a comedy. If that rule was applied to Karl Pilkington's new book Karlology then it would easily fit into the category for there are laugh aplenty in this strange, amusing and charming little book. Full review...

How to Write Great Screenplays: And Get Them into Production by Linda M James

Over my time at university I've sat on a few scriptwriting modules. I'm currently working on a couple of projects with my scriptwriting partner, with whom I've already completed a pilot TV show. So it was nice to be asked to review this book and get some more insight into this field of writing.

I've probably read most every book on Creative Writing that you'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 the field with: Robert McKee's Story. It's so heavily touted that I've seen it recommended by experts in novel writing – a quite different craft. Full review...

Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits by Barney Hoskyns

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Tom Waits probably enjoys a status comparable to the UK's Richard Thompson. He has never sold out to a mass pop audience, preferring instead to sustain an engagingly low-key career for over 30 years, feted by critics, fellow artists and a cult following while only achieving modest record sales. While his 80s albums 'Swordfishtrombones' and 'Rain Dogs' are regarded as among the finest of the decade, most of his royalties have come through cover versions of his songs. Two, 'Downtown Train' and 'Tom Traubert's Blues', have been Top 10 hits for Rod Stewart, who once said that they paid for the swimming pool in Tom's garden, while in his early days the Eagles gave him a boost by recording 'Ol' 55' on their third album. Full review...

Shooting the Cook by David Pritchard

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 shouldn'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 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 the best of both and made programmes which stay in the mind years later. Full review...

Totally Wired: Post-punk Interviews and Overviews by Simon Reynolds

Reynolds established himself as one of the leading chroniclers of the British early 1980s music scene with his Rip It Up and Start Again. In a sense, this book is basically a companion to that volume, though it can be read independently, without having first tried the other – as this present reviewer has done. Full review...

As You Do by Richard Hammond

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 book he and his wife Mindy wrote about the accident and his recovery was the best selling non-fiction book of 2007. Full review...

Celluloid Circus: the Heyday of the New Zealand Picture Theatre by Wayne Brittenden

Going to the movies didn't used to be just about watching a film. Through meticulous research, interviews and photographs, Brittenden captures the spirit of cinema in its heyday: the magnificent architecture, the fascinating characters, and the audiences who became thoroughly involved in voicing their emotions and opinions. Full review...

Eliminate the Impossible: An Examination of the World of Sherlock Holmes on Page and Screen by Alistair Duncan and Steve Emecz (Editor)

Eliminate the Impossible is rather a curious book in many ways, as while it goes into considerable detail about inconsistencies and errors in the Sherlock Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 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. Instead, it's more like a case history of the various Holmes stories, providing many interesting details, why mistakes might have been made, speculation about the stories, and so on. Full review...

Barefaced Lies and Boogie-Woogie Boasts by Jules Holland

Jools Holland has always come across, particularly on television, as a thoroughly likeable, down-to-earth chap next door, the kind of person you could chat to over the garden fence. This memoir of 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 fashion. Full review...

Delta Blues by Ted Gioia

Without Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry or the Beatles, rock'n'roll and the music industry as we know it today might never have existed. But without the Delta bluesmen who were recording from the 1920s onwards, there would probably have been no Elvis (or else he would have spent the rest of his life driving trucks as he did in his teens). Full review...

Dear Fatty by Dawn French

Showbiz memoirs are often difficult to write, at least without a collaborator who can help the writer to keep a reasonable sense of perspective. (For a good example of a readable actor's own life story, try Dennis Waterman's ReMinder). Dawn French has opted for a completely different approach, by telling her tale in the form of letters. The first is to you and I, 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 icons. Full review...

Shakespeare on Toast by Ben Crystal

Home and Family

Shakespeare on Toast claims to be for virtually everyone: those that are reading Shakespeare for the first time, occasionally finding him troublesome, think they know him backwards or have never set foot near one of his plays but have always wanted to. Full review...

Black Vinyl, White Powder by Simon Napier-Bell

Simon Napier-Bell is probably as qualified as anyone to write what is in effect a history of the British pop and rock industry over the last half-century. In the 1960s he managed the Yardbirds and co-wrote Dusty Springfield's only No. 1 hit, in the 1970s he looked after punk band London, and in the 1980s did the same for art-electro group Japan and Wham! In the process he's travelled most of the world and talked to many of the major players, and seems to know almost everything there is about drugs despite having touched remarkably few of them. Full review...

Hang the DJ: An Alternative Book of Music Lists by Angus Cargill (Editor)

Trivia

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 to the frivolous, via the frankly frightening. Full review...

Roxy: The Band That Invented an Era by Michael Bracewell

First, I feel the title is rather misleading. I came to this book expecting a fully-fledged account of Roxy Music'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 onwards. What I got was a lengthy account of the art world, cultural influences and student bonhomie which brought Bryan Ferry and the main group members together in the early 1970s. The story starts logically enough with Ferry's birth and upbringing in post-war Tyneside, but comes to a full stop with the release of their self-titled first album in June 1972. Full review...

Stop Me If You've Heard This by Jim Holt

Humour

As far as I can remember, my first time in print was when I submitted some jokes to a charity's themed joke collection. Before then, some of my first actions as a child might have been laughing, and what is cuter in a baby than that? But why was that infant laughing – he didn't have a joke he could get, surely? Full review...

One Flew Into The Cuckoo's Egg by Bill Oddie

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 to qualify for one, and not 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, but not as you know it, Jim. Full review...

Twenty Thousand Roads: The Ballad of Gram Parsons and His Cosmic American Music by David N Meyer

Gram Parsons was in effect rock music's James Dean. He died too young to have achieved much, but in going 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. Full review...

For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond by Ben Macintyre