A little timewasting fun.

Choose an act that don't have a "Best Of" compilation (or even one that just doesn't have a GOOD "Best Of") and make one up for them.

Let's say a ten track limit to keep it simple. It's got to be unashamedly populist and has to really sell the act in question. Remember and think about the running order: chronological or hits up front? etc

Anyway, here's mine...

Best Of The White Stripes:
1 - Seven Nation Army
2 - Jimmy The Exploder
3 - You're Pretty Good Looking (For A Girl)
4 - My Doorbell
5 - Hotel Yorba
6 - Fell In Love With A Girl
7 - The Hardest Button To Button
8 - Icky Thump
9 - Blue Orchid
10 - We're Going To Be Friends

That's right, my epiphany today has been that 1987 was the high tide of pop music. Here is just one forgotten classic from that year...

(Robbie Nevil - C'est La Vie)

And there's plenty more where that came from...

I'm late to the party here, but I've only just begun to get into the vast Desert Island Discs archive available to download. It's possibly the most perfect radio format ever conceived.

But I think I have come up with what might possibly be the most naive question about the show: do the guests get paid to go on it? I would love to imagine they do it for the love of the format and for sharing a little bit of their musical passion... but I suspect I am wrong...

There are lots of albums I really love. But if I was honest I would have to admit that a lot of 'great' albums have the occasional weak spot on them. For example: Abbey Road has Octopus' Garden. I actually like the song, but it just sticks out like a sore thumb and ruins Side One.

Some albums, though, are 'perfect' albums. Maybe not every track is a masterpiece, but something in the overall flow and cohesion of the tracks, from the overall concept to the cover to the sleevenotes, combine to make it 'perfect'.

These are few and far between.

Five that spring to mind to join the canon are:

1 - The Beatles - Revolver
2 - Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
3 - The Blue Nile - Hats
4 - Stevie Wonder - Innervisions
5 - DJ Shadow - Endtroducing

The above five, I posit, all demonstrate a special quality that makes them so deliciously 'perfect' you wouldn't want to change a thing. I wouldn't even take Dead Flowers off Sticky Fingers, it just works so well in the context of the rest of the tracks.

To demonstrate the high standards required, I would say David Bowie has never made a 'perfect' album. It's not good enough just to have a collection of great songs (which Mr Bowie is more than capable of): it has to have (excuse me) a certain 'x factor' making it special.

Any more for the canon?

I'm sitting here browsing the Word website and being unreasonably distracted by a Lenny Henry sketch show on TV. Whatever slim talent he once had has been stretched beyond belief now. Seriously unfunny. The canned laughter even sounds embarrassed. And unbelievably even Delbert Wilkins (not enough funny twenty years ago) is making a reappearance.

This time last year (or was it two years ago??) the big trendy Christmas present was the Kindle. Well, we resisted the trend because I wasn't convinced it was anything more than a novelty, but now my wife thinks it might be a good idea after all.

So, for all the people who DID get one last year: how is it working out for you? Changed your life? Any unforeseen benefits or drawbacks? Worth getting one?

I live in Scotland, and I consider myself fairly intelligent. But even I don't understand if independence is a good thing or a bad thing. Both sides of the argument seem to be in direct contradiction with each other. Are we rich or poor? Is the UK subsidising us or is it the other way around? How much oil is there and who actually owns it? Is there a hidden xenophobic agenda?

Since I'll need to be voting on it within the next few years, can someone put me right? In layman's terms and without party political bias?

Just heard David Bedford died of cancer a couple of days ago.

Sad news. He was a real talent and seemed a genuinely nice guy.

If you've heard of him, it's probably been through his collaborations with Mike Oldfield. "The Rio Grande" from "The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner" album (and also included on Mike Oldfield's "Boxed" anthology) is what originally sent me searching for more when I first heard it at the age of 17...

Best:
Got to be John Lennon talking to Jan Wenner of Rolling Stone in 1970. If you haven't heard the recording of this yet, I highly recommend it. It's available as a podcast.
John is on fine form: complete unfiltered bile about the Beatles and the 60s and everything. And enough soundbites to fill a lifetime of biographies.

Worst:
I don't know when it was exactly, but sometime in the mid 90s Brett Anderson did an interview with the NME I think, where he went on about a magical beast called the Jacaranda or something. Not a good time for him. Classic rock star drug-induced wibble.

One of my favourite podcasts is Philosophy Bites. They offer bite-size primers on key philosophical trains of thought, and interview a lot of the big movers and shakers in the philosophical world.

Anyway, this week's podcast has officially blown my mind. I had never heard of this guy before, but Nick Bostrom has used elegant logic to pretty much convince me that we are all actually simulated people living in a computer program.

Sounds far-fetched and a bit like The Matrix? Well, his website http://www.simulation-argument.com is very convincing. Basically, if we accept that it is theoretically POSSIBLE to create a computer simulated reality so complex it even convinces its simulated inhabitants they are real, then we have to accept the very strong statistical likelihood that we ourselves are simulated people living in such a simulated reality.

Woooah...

* SPOILERS *

(Sometimes I feel all I ever come on here for is to talk about movies... but here we go again...)

Anyone seen Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes yet?

It's getting so much word of mouth hype that I was expecting a masterpiece. I thought it was good but not great.

The CGI chimp is impressive, I suppose. But no more impressive than King Kong was five years ago, and at the end of the day a CGI chimp still looks like a CGI chimp.

Pacing was good and jaunty. It moved along at a fair old speed: though this caused some clumsy condensing of events and left a lot of the characters a bit under-developed.

The money shot was the chimp speaking for the first time. And there was a genuine buzz of shock and excitement through the cinema when that happened. It was just so unexpected, and yet made perfect sense. So well done to the film-makers for that bit.

But overall it felt far too short and covered far too little ground. The whole thing felt like a pre-credit title sequence for a much longer film. It doesn't leave me so much in rabid expectation of the sequels as groaning at the birth of another inevitable "franchise" of diminishing returns.

Just watched the latest 1976 Top Of The Pops (anyone else still following this? Pretty grim) and I just realised that in that pretty well known clip of Elton John and Kiki Dee singing Don't Go Breaking My Heart, Elton is the absolute spitting image of.... Robbie Williams. Just the look on his face, the dancing, the comedy mugging, etc. Even the voice, come to that.

Looks like Robbie has studied this clip quite closely over the years.

Anyone else seen The Tree Of Life yet?

It's magnificently bonkers. A kind of dreamy sinister nostalgia for a 50s childhood, all soft-focus magic-hour tableaux. But with scenes set in space... And with dinosaurs...

But what's truly remarkable about it is that it is a truly big "head" movie, of the type that hasn't been in fashion since 2001 A Space Odyssey. If this was 1968 there would be hippies getting out of their faces to trip out on this in the matinees.

And if you think the interplanetary special effects look a bit familiar, then it might be because a certain Mr Trumbull has come out of retirement. Yes, that's right: CGI be damned, as Douglas gets out his smoke and coloured inks and slow motion camera, and blows the competition away again. Truly, the special effects are magnificent. That kind of slow moving grace that hasn't been fashionable since Blade Runner.

I've never been to Glastonbury. But I recently had an epiphany that I need to go before I turn 40 (too late for this year, alas).

So I'm very interested in all the personal experiences and pithy anecdotes from you experienced Glastonbury-goers.

Go on, tell me your Glastonbury tales and convince me I've made the right decision.

I just want to have a bit of a "shout out" for The Blue Nile. There must be other big fans among the massive here? (I've done a search, and discussion of them seems to be scarce)

I'm currently in the throes of a personal Blue Nile revival. They are one of those bands who, for the duration of the moment that you are listening to them, sound like the greatest band you ever heard. I'm not usually into smooth-sounding 80s synthy washy stuff, but something about them just works really well.

I think it must be Paul Buchanan's vocals that are the secret ingredient. You can hear the Bowie influence (which was standard for Scottish wailing white soulboy vocalists of the 80s) but he really makes it something special. When you see live footage of them (try the Jools Holland appearance of 1996) you realise how good he really is. One of the greats, in fact. Whenever he sings "I am in love" (which he does, a lot) he conjures up the full magic and mystery and misery of human experience and wraps it right round your gut. There are few sadder sounds.

So all hail the laziest band in history! Four albums in thirty years!

Current favourite song: Stay
Shameful confession: I'm actually a fair-weather fan, as I only have the first two albums (I dipped into the third one, but it didn't appeal to me).