Entertainment For Lively Minds
A Penny for your thoughts
After 17 years on the GMTV couch Penny Smith is leaving. As ghastly as GMTV is - and it really is truly and unremittingly awful, like a Butlin's Holiday camp run by The Daily Mail - I've had a soft-ish spot for Penny for many years and her naughty school-girl schtick. She's always struck me as a bit of a throw-back to a more innocent TV era when Esther Rantzen laughed with the great unwashed on the high street and Bob Wellings loomed ominously but unemotionally over a pensioner's shopping basket in search of unpatriotic cheese purchases.
But Penny has rekindled my admiration from afar with her CD collection. Look! She's got John Martyn's One World right at the top of the pile and admits that she likes to "do yoga to Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Eels, John Martyn, Lamb, Kate Bush, Lambchop or Bonnie 'Prince' Billy" and also has a thing for dear old laughing Leonard Cohen by positing the question "How else could you make a miserable day worse?"
Despite the answer to that question being "By having to interview Van Morrison" I'm tickled umpteen shades of pink at her Word-friendly taste.
I propose that Word start an Honorary Membership for Mainstream Celebs What Like Good And Proper Music starting with Ms. Smith. I further propose that rather than waste time with formalities by inviting her to accept this Honorary status that they just cut to the chase and thrust it upon her with unrelenting insistence until she caves in and agrees to join in a podcast and tell us more about her days when she "used to play and sing in folk clubs and go to folk festivals, wearing maxi dresses and love beads!"
Oh to have had the finest sinewy beard and wastrel hair of all the young bucks in those days and to have caught her twinkling eye....
Any other mainstream celebs nurturing Word-friendly music tastes?
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I do...
Pile Ates to Slayer.
I would
hazzad a guess that one could get Piles from listening to Slayer
Man goes into a shop..
"I've got piles.. Have you got any arse-cream?"
"What would sir prefer? Strawberry or vanilla?"
June Brown
aka Dot Cotton. I'm sure I've read before that she's really into her music and goes to festivals pretty often. I also think Pete Doherty went to a particular rehab centre in Thailand at her recommendation
Oh yes
I saw June Brown at a Jane Siberry concert at the Union Chapel, maybe about a decade ago. You wouldn't have caught Dot Cotton there.
June runs a Chai Teepee
at Glasters. Great flapjacks too.
Dont you mean
a Thai Chippy?
The bloke who does Springwatch with her with the hair.
Kate Humble.
Chris Packham. That's him. Tries to shoehorn Smith's songs and CD covers into the links.
The "William it was really nothing" one to Bill Oddie was contrived genius.
Packham take a bow......
That really is very good indeed.
The Sage of Accrington
Sky Sports cricket commentator David "Bumble" Lloyd frequently baffles the likes of Botham and Gower with little asides related to bands they've never heard of, generally with a north-west bias. The Fall and HMHB are particular favourites (particularly appropriate, of course, that he should give a nod to the "Hedley Verityesque" hitmakers, without whom a whole generation would never have heard the name of Fred Titmus).
Ditto Derek Pringle
Surely the only Telegraph Journalist to have elected the Soft Boys as his choice for a Rough Trade compilation.
Let's not forget
Robert George Dylan Willis
I think he's a Van fan as well, isn't he ?
Celebrity Soundtrack Fans
Well I know the following are big fans of The Soundtrack of Our Lives - Jack Black, Kate Hudson and Little Steven.
John Cusack & Matt Dillon are big Clash fans, De Niro and Scorcese too.
John Simm has good taste - he loves Shack.
Jeremy Vine is a Smiths, Joy Division fan.
Ex Footballer and current 5live pundit Pat Nevin...
... has impeccable musical taste and knowledge.
He has even djed at an Edinburgh pre-club thingy called Born To Be Wide. He might be the single most Word friendly sports figure in existence. Post punk and indie is a speciality.
Indeed he is......
He was a big fan of the Go-Betweens (amongst others).
He (like myself) posted a message on Grant McLennan obituary board:-
http://go-betweens.org.uk/cgi-bin/chatroom/discus.cgi
His posting can be read at 10.37 7 May 2006.
I read the other day
that Johnny Depp plays guitar on Babybird's new album and has even threatened to appear live with them.
Indeed
He has also played on records by Oasis and the Butthole Surfers.
And shared a TOTP's stage with Shane MacGowan...
Can I just mention that
"Bob Wellings loomed ominously but unemotionally over a pensioner's shopping basket in search of unpatriotic cheese purchases ..." made me snort out loud.
As you were.
Unpatriotic Cheese Purchases...
... would make a great LP title.
Half Man Half Biscuit - are you listening?
He Wanted Cornish Brie
But She Only Had French Cheddar.
Second track, side one of the next album.
Hmm
...sounds a bit more like a Gong track to me.
It would seem that
Zack Braff of Scrubs has a predilection for The Shins and Tarantino would be a no brainer.
Festivals
Couldn't but put me in mind of the scornful Sally Knyvette to her teenage children in the Ariel Ultra ad --- "in my day, we didn't wear clothes". Funny how that lingers in the mind ...
Love beads
I think I must have entirely the wrong image in my head. Are we saying they're worn round the neck?
I'm with you there
Good Captain.....I know these festivals can be pretty racy but I never realised they took free love that far.
Lloyd Grossman
I remember being surprised but impressed when this daytime-TV-permanent-feature (at the time anyway, this was a few years ago) popped up on a music programme to say how Led Zep II was the best album ever and Whole Lotte Love was the most "stellar opening" of any album.
Loyd Grossman has form
He was in NY 70s punk/powerpop band Jet Bronx & The Forbidden. Here's the reformed version:
Penny Smith; conflicting reports.
Thinks Led Zeppelin are noisy but sports a beard at the weekend. I was trying to find a video clip of her singing with Curtis Stigers from the TV show Just The Two Of Us. Was she any good?
The late Clement Freud
Was once spotted at a Sonic Youth gig.
And, of course, is on the cover of Band on the Run.
Stephen Fry
I saw him at a My Bloody Valentine gig in the early 90s. He was quite evangelical about them at the time, as I recall.