My Father Richard's Life Was Cut Short by Tobacco
Over a year ago - on 17 February 2013 - my wonderful father died from emphysema, a lung disease which had diminished him from a sprightly 74-year-old, who was still working, to a 79-year-old who...
View ArticleCuriosity Allows Us to Focus Our Attention
We're living in a society that encourages multi-tasking; all interruptions by phones, texts, emails or other 'luminous rectangles' are welcome and what's more make us feel warm and wanted. 'I'm busy,...
View ArticleI Came Here to Stay
I read skepticism in his eyes when he asks me about my record and the city. I'm not sure if he even heard it completely. Probably the fact Berlin was my inspiration turned this journalist off. Another...
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Film Review - Next Goal Wins and In Bloom
Icon Director: Mike Brett & Steve Jamison Cast: Thomas Rhongen, Jaiyah Saelua, Nicky Salapu Genre: Sport Documentary Language: English Country of Origin: UK 2014 97 mins. Rating: **** Shout to the...
View ArticleBear Grylls and the Search for the Modern Man
Poor old Bear Grylls. He's barely (no pun intended) announced his new five part reality series, The Island With Bear Grylls, before he's being accused of being a right old sexist rotter. Why? Well,...
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The 'Business' of a Regional Fringe Festival
[Credit: Red Bastard] As Brighton Fringe approaches, there is a huge fanfare of voices inviting audiences to attend their events. And attend they do, in their hundreds of thousands. It is a great...
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Free Comic Book Day 2014
This Saturday across Britain, America and other countries too, comic book shops will be flinging open their doors and celebrating Free Comic Book Day, offering customers old and new a chance to create...
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Scratch Academy!
Spending three weeks in NYC has inspired a lot of new ideas and most importantly given me the opportunity to learn a new skill that I have been very interested in for quite some time, DJing. I've...
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My Game Of Thrones Marathon Is Finally Over; But Now I Talk Weird and Smell...
WARNING: May contain spoilers. But then, may not. Who cares?! It seems you can't go anywhere these day without some mug invading your personal space and playing the whole "Have you seen..." game....
View ArticleDamon Albarn Joins East End Pub Singers, The Gents, for a Good Old Fashioned...
In one of my last blogs I talked about my experience with Jake Bugg - when I interviewed him last year Bugg told me that he had recorded samples of his number one selling album on an iPhone. This is...
View ArticleTonight's the Night! Defending My Title at the DMC UK DJ Final
Tonight I'm aiming to defend my crown for the third year running at the UK Final of the DMC DJ Championship in London. The DMCs have been going for 29 years now and as well as being the longest...
View ArticleA Fight For Gender Equality In India: 'The Spice Girls'
When I recently performed in Jodhpur in India we happened to visit a spice shop. The shop was called MV Spices and it sat in the shadows of the city's famous clock tower. The various guide books all...
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Nicola Roberts Is Calling the Shots
The music industry has been exposed as notoriously hard to crack if you're a woman trying to make it as a top executive. Fair play to Lily Allen who laid this bare more recently. So I meet one lady who...
View ArticleSomi Guha wants Jeremy Clarkson Sacked Over N-Word Scandal
"How many chances does this man get?" Somi Guha asks incredulously on the day that Clarkson "begs forgiveness" for apparently not trying hard enough to not say the word "nigger" despite doing...
View ArticlePlaying on the World's Stage
'Craft fairs - only 30 years ago, humble affairs held in fields with folding tables - have increasingly come to resemble contemporary art biennales,' writes Museum of Arts and Design director Glenn...
View ArticleSound and Vision
Our music video making journey with Dave Aspinall began in 2007. After having made a few well-budgeted videos for early singles from our debut Raise The Alarm, we were asked to produce a...
View ArticleMovement
On Saturday I was asked to to speak to a group of Dundee United supporters who had formed a group called Arabs for Independence. They were to meet in the '83 Club, named after the year we won our only...
View ArticleIn Defence of Jeremy Clarkson
I tried very hard, I really did, but I just haven't been able to escape conversations about Jeremy Clarkson's most recent 'controversy', if you can even call it that. A term often used by Spectator...
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Dreaming of Primavera Sound
It's 6am and I'm oot ma nut on a beach telling myself I'm climbing an invisible spider monkey. This is one of the hazier memories that springs to mind when I think about my first visit to the fair city...
View ArticleInvisible: Why We Need Diversity in Children's Books
In the books I read as a child, there was never anyone like me. There was no brown-skinned girl with dark brown hair and eyes. There was no brown-skinned girl who spoke to her relatives in another...
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