Sam The Sham

Alright, I’m in.

Don’t give me ideas!

There was a TOTS show in Brighton where all 4 of us plus our driver William had to share a room afterwards. I awoke in the night to hear 4 different snorers going in and out of phase, it was positively Reichian.

Love this album. This track and Spinning Away absolute classics.

#accidentalbrasseye

For years I hoped The Cure would record an album called Keith Jarrett in response to this.

We used to sell this in a sheet music shop I worked in, leading to one extremely irate ‘proper’ classical music customer to brandish it at me and shout the words “You’re selling Bullshit. STOP SELLING BULLSHIT!”

I can safely say that not one player or supporter of either team wanted that VAR intervention at the end there. I generally try and steer clear of being a VAR bore but that was mean-spirited nonsense that leaves both teams worse off.

Say no to Palantir in the NHS NHS England is rolling out software to run our health records from Palantir - fight back

As ever, no idea how effective this will be but takes 30 seconds and can’t do any harm. notopalantir.goodlawproject.org/email-to-tar...

Great little record fair in The Piper St Leonards today, only a couple of stalls but some great stuff, could easily have spent hundreds but had to limit myself to these 3.

‘I saw kids being shot, women, old people’: how a massacre unfolded in one Iranian city The Guardian has constructed a timeline for the terrible events of one night of protests in Rasht, based on first-hand accounts, video and photographs

Absolutely sickening but essential read. Thousands reported massacred in one night. It’s a bit nuts how little coverage this has had. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Fair do’s, I would far rather you be correct than me on this one!

Depressing thing though is that whilst this policy would be disastrous and lead to loads of additional deaths & injury, it would also be very popular with the British public.

I may go 10 years before my time but my scrambled eggs will live long in legend.

In the intro to Kitchen Confidential Bourdain says that the trick is to always use 4 times as much butter as you think it needs and always use shallots instead of onions (that’s if memory serves me right, it was 25 years ago when I read it!). Advice I’ve stuck by ever since.

YouTube video by Running Scared "Running Scared (1986) - Part 1 of 18 - CBBC Drama [alt. MUSIC Edit)

Tangential but did you ever see the hard hitting 80s kids tv drama Running Scared (based on the book by Bernard Ashley) which had Running Up That Hill as the theme? I loved it. Just looked it up on YouTube - sadly they’ve removed the music for copyright reasons! youtu.be/vR3_0QQONik?...

Is ‘Inject into my veins’ still a thing? If so, that. But I still want more.

Flats that overlook stadiums & the optimum time for Sky Sports News: The listeners' loves & hates Podcast Episode · Football Cliches · 29/01/2026 · 1h

Amazing to hear an extensive and earnest discussion of an Aaron Dilloway track on today’s ep of the Football Cliches podcast. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/f...

Am I the only person in the UK claiming a pair of illuminated maracas as a legitimate business expense in the last tax year? I think I might be you know.

See also, increasingly, “post-punk”.

Can of Focus Kombucha “with benefits”

Mildly perturbed by the quotation marks here.

Tired meme but y’know.

What show was this John? You would have joined an illustrious list of TOTS’ stage-invaders (my favourite of which is probably the guy in head to toe high-vis who got on stage with us at Rockaway beach festival during our 2am set and danced like no one was watching, because no one was).

Have you ever played Hastings/St Leonards? I’d love to see you on at The Piper.

Fuckin ell, when you see them all together. Visages to haunt your nightmares.

Proper LOL here

Post a pic of the venue where you saw your first concert and the band or artist.

Also, “You Want It Darker” was a more rigorous political analysis of how we got here than 99.9% of the op-eds and Democratic & Labour Party post-mortems that have occurred in the intervening 9 years.