Archive from April, 2009

All Aboard the MisGuided Bus at last!

17 Apr 2009: Well, the expensive potential white elephant which is the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway is running at least six months late (and with additional contractors being called in, that may be optimistic), so this week must have been a great relief to the Council. At last they were able to get a section open to demonstrate the system to overexcited councillors and then – today – a few busloads of members of the public. I was amongst those lucky competition winners, and here are some of the photos I took of the new buses, as well as a video shot from the back seat on the upper deck (as there was already one out of the front available on YouTube). The buses [...]

In The Loop – hilarious

15 Apr 2009: Just back from a preview screening of In The Loop, the movie extension to the fantastic The Thick Of It TV series, held at the Arts Picturehouse in Cambridge and with writer/director Armando Ianucci present for a Q+A with a sell-out audience. If the laugh-out-loud count is a measure of a good comedy, this one coasts past the line after about 10 minutes. I can’t remember laughing so much at a movie for years, and I doubt I’ve ever laughed so much at sheer sweariness. Armando Ianucci said he was inspired to use comedy to point out the problems in modern politics by classics such as The Great Dictator and Dr Strangelove, and he certainly gets over his central premise, [...]

Looking for the best sit-down Chinese restaurant in Cambridge?

10 Apr 2009: I haven’t done a restaurant review for ages, but I was blown away by our meal at The Peking in Cambridge tonight, so I’ve dusted off my reviewer’s hat (not seen since the days of AdHoc and RealCity magazines) and put this one on LocalSecrets and Tripadvisor… “In its old – rather downmarket – home in Burleigh Street, nobody seemed to believe that the Peking could be quite as good as it was claimed to be by fans. Now it’s moved to a new building opposite the new “Leisure Park”, and although it’s an unexpected choice of location, the new restaurant itself is a bright, modern affair which seems much more in keeping with the classy cooking. It’s only a [...]

Peter Alliss – probably fatter than Pavarotti

10 Apr 2009: I cannot stand Peter Alliss, the golf commentator, who should have retired years ago. Just as Tiger Woods is about to sink a putt to win a tournament, you think he’s going to chip in: “Now, at this point I really should take the opportunity to pay tribute to dear old Mrs Tweed, the ladies’ fixtures secretary at Royal Sandwich, for her sterling work over 50 years” or something similarly eccentric. But tonight he excelled himself. He joined the commentary box, and his colleague rather oddly welcomed him as “the Pavarotti of golf”, to which Alliss replied: “Well that’s very kind of you, although he’s not in too good a shape at the moment, and I’m slightly less avoir du [...]

The Boat That Rocked

10 Apr 2009: Radio Caroline meant a lot to me as a teenager. Few people seem to remember that just as the radio station brought pop to the masses in the sixties when no legal station was broadcasting it, in the seventies it was the only radio station broadcasting rock music. It might have been the decade of Pink Floyd, Yes and Genesis, but apart from Caroline, you wouldn’t have found any of their music on the air outside of two hours a week with Tommy Vance on Friday nights. Caroline was also stationed offshore just out from our house in Harwich. It was too small to see on the horizon from my bedroom window, but I probably imagined I could. And when [...]

ABC at the Royal Albert Hall review

8 Apr 2009: The orchestra arrive on stage before much of the audience! (Posted from my iPhone on the way home…) If you’re going to do nostalgia, do it properly. And with this gig, ABC (which is only Martin Fry really) certainly did it properly. The best pop album of the last 30 years – The Lexicon of Love – played straight through, with a complete orchestra …and in the Albert Hall. Could it be any better? Well yes, actually. Because this turned out to be a real reunion affair. David Palmer (nowadays Rod Stewart’s drummer) back for the first time since the album. Gary Langan on the sound desk. Tessa Niles out of retirement on backing vocals. Anne Dudley conducting the BBC [...]

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