i thought it was ace (although I was 9 years old and as of today, had no interest in football)

I like Dougie on Fighting talk and to find out he's a member of the Massive just confirms that he is a top bloke. The Steve Lamacq/Backwards 7 britpop piece is up there with the Danny Baker podcast. My cap is Doffed to all concerned.

(I am old and it was 34 years ago) but I seem to recall that AC/DC's first UK single, 'Jailbreak' from 1976, had a B side called 'Fling Thing' that featured the bagpipes.

Ellen and Hepworth, stop ganging up on the guests, this isn't the Moral Maze you know. 'Your witness...'
Fraser will have to send you both for a runaround in the park just before the next podcast.

The best football record of all time, bar none.

Seriously. I love this. Rod appears to have distanced himself from it over the years and as far as I know it's not available on any of his albums (even the box sets). But as an Englishman I think it's great.

The lyrics are comedy gold (not to mention wonderfully jingoistic) and it's even got a snippet of the legendary Archie Macpherson's timeless commentary.

but bringing in someone to defend Belle & Sebastian in the same week the mighty Glaswegians release a new record sounds right up my street.

In fact, I've been thinking about this, and I'm notoriously slow at reading the signs, but I have to ask: The Word, are you trying to chat me up?

Don't think I didn't notice what you sent me in the mail this week with its accompanying letter. We seem to share a lot of the same interests, like the same bands and have similar opinions and outlooks on life. I really think this could go somewhere...

Gentlemen, the song 'Funny Little Frog' by B&S, as mentioned disparagingly in the podcast as evidence of their tweeness, isn't literally an ode to an amusing amphibian.

"Funny little frog" is in fact a quote from Nic Roeg and Donald Cammel's 'Performance' - it's how Turner/Jagger refers to Michelle Breton's character. Because she's odd. And small. And French.

Also, that song features one of Stuart Murdoch's most brazen rhymes, namely "poet", "court" and "throat". And it works! Amost. In any case, it's up there with his rhyming of "Tokyo" with "Thin Lizzy-O" in 'I'm a Cuckoo' (which isn't a song about a man who thinks he's a cuckoo).

As you were.

And the astonishing revelation that "The Stones were only good with Mick Taylor" is getting a bit old. Otherwise fairly enjoyable and I liked Mark's mugging story.

I thought I'd lost interest in B&S until I listened to "Fold your Arms Child, You Walk Like a Peasant" for the first time in ages last weekend. It's great! I'm back on board.

Oh, and Dougie's right - 'We Have a Dream' by the Scotland World Cup Squad FEAT John Gordon Sinclair (or was he Gordon John Sinclair in those days) is one of THE best World Cup singles ever. Written by BA Robertson, of course, as everything was at the time.

...especially his comment about not being able to hum or recall a single tune of theirs. I wrote this a while back about The Boy With The Arab Strap (before Latitude, obv) and it sums up my views of the album (and the band) quite well, I think...

Headlining Latitude this year (somehow!) and therefore quite topical at the moment. Now I'm as fond of a bit of fey Northern/Scottish indie as the next man, and I love the likes of Orange Juice, Aztec Camera, Prefab Sprout - even pre-electro Everything but the Girl - but even I have to draw the line at Belle & Sebastian. I have tried - really tried - to get into this album, but whenever I play it, I get to the end of the album with the realisation - again - that not a single note of the album has managed to imprint itself on my brain. I've owned this album for the best part of ten years, I think, and even now I couldn't name a single track or hum a single tune. I know people love them to death, but they are as insubstantial as a fine mist.

is still available for viewing by any die-hard Pastels fans. Yes he ran the record concession stand in the bookshop in Byres Road (now a Starbucks, of course). But now he runs Monorail, the best record shop in the city IMHO, and also the venue for the first Glasgow Word Massive Meet.

Dougie's flipping well right about the beauty of that Pictish Trail song I Don't Know Where To Begin. Spookily enough I'd been playing it all week and then it gets mentioned on the podcast. Seek it out - it's gorgeous.

about who the first 25 most eligible men in Scotland were... Dougie, you were robbed. Should have been an honourable second place to the lovely James McAvoy.

views on Primal Screams Euro 96 record.
Which was controversial when things like that happened.

What a brilliant podcast this week - it's like getting a phone call from your best mate.

On the 'cast this week - mugging; similar thing happened to me in Glasgow last year, so the Scottish accent was null and void.

Belle & Sebastian - I have to agree with Messrs. Ellen & Hepworth on this one; they're the kind of band people like if they want to look cool, even though deep down they know the music is a bit inoffensive and bland. It gets by the 'shite' radar because they're all a bit 'art school' and never crossed over into major commercial (i.e. lots of money) territory.

Also - the best World Cup song for Scotland by a country mile:

Justin Currie - one of the finest songwriters Scotland has ever produced. He could write B&S under the table.

AC/DC - It's a long way to the top if you want to rock & roll, on a flatbed truck, in Melbourne

Excellent podcast!

Dougie get's onto the subs bench for my fantasy dinner party (Scottish version: People who aren't dead yet).

Just catching up on a couple of podcasts so bit late to respond to the Dougie episode but how refreshing to have a prejudice confirmed. I've got a couple of B&S CD's and have had them on in the car, on the plane (as in iPod rather than asking my pilot to put them on the PA), in bed, over dinner and once after midnight in complete darkness without any distraction to see if I was missing something. Now I like bedwetter music with the best of them but 'simpering, smug smartarses' is spot on. So it was nice to be able to drop them into the charity shop this morning with a clear conscience knowing that I wasn't giving up anything special. Their rounding on whoever that nice chap was who introduced them at Latitude was the final straw - although it was a wnderful irony after Hepworth and Ellen so wonderfully sod him the whole concept and how you can't go wrong if he followed their simple rules. Without wishing to sound like a Steve Wright listener - keep up the work - podcast unmissable, magazine wonderful, Mossman laterday version of Joan Bakewell.

Belle & Sebastian have deteriorated with every release. Their last three albums are nowhere near as good as their first three albums - for me and, I suspect, very many others. Tigermilk and ...Sinister are both flawless.

I suspect ME & DH think about the ironic 70s sitcom theme tune styles of recent singles and are judging them on that.

How anyone who likes British guitar music can dislike The Boy With The Arab Strap and I Don't Love Anyone and Judy and the Dream of Horses is beyond me.