Bend To My Will Video

Here’s the new video for Bend To My Will. I was asked to star but declined for two reasons: I can’t act and I can hardly swim. I nearly drowned shooting the Great War sleeve and that was in the bath. I’m basically a coward and a creep and was quite content to have the poor actor here flounder on my behalf for what amounted to bus fare and half a cheese sandwich. I am grateful for his undying commitment to his, wait for it, craft. That’s today’s pun dispensed with. Feast your eyes on this odyssey of oafishness. All is lost!

http://youtu.be/HR6syoZbZpg—More Motion-sickness

—Berkley Square, minus nightingale.

London, 11th July 2013

I’m sitting in Berkley Square completely surrounded by the inexorably circling feeding frenzy of London traffic. The stately Georgian townhouses seem to glare down upon my classlessness. Behind me in the Bentley shop window, big glinting automobiles squat like hounds panting gently on the lord of the manor’s drawing room carpet. The noise around me is vast and unnameable and lulls me into a pleasant stupor. The odd horn blast declares itself above the din but it is this huge congregation of machines that predominates. London is alive with the dread sound of engines burning oil and spewing every kind of particulate into the warm evening air. Business types flit by on their borrowed Boris Bikes; a sprinkler, muted by the cacophony, flicks fake rain about the place which the lurid grass drinks enthusiastically. I regard a pair of red telephone boxes set beside an old-fashioned…—More Tales

—A hot Scotsman, yesterday

Hyde Park BST this Friday

My show at Hyde Park this Friday is now free due to Elton John having to pull out of the headline slot through illness. If you have a valid ticket you’ll get a refund and if you don’t you can go here:

http://barclaycardbritishsummertime.frontgatetickets.com/choose.php?c=1&lid=82105&eid=92487&prepasscode=bst

and get a FREE ticket.

You get Ray Davies, Elvis Costello and the wonderful Nick Lowe for nothing in a lovely park in central London in great weather so if you’re not doing anything come on down. I’m on around three on a side stage. Call me Sideshow Bob. Call me cheap, desperate, call me what you will. It’s free. —More Rants/Slates

Raised and Confused

There seems to have been a lot of confusion and bad blood stirred up by the strange sight of Alex Salmond attempting to raise the Scottish saltire behind David Cameron’s beetroot little head in the posh seats of Centre Court after Andy Murray’s victory in the men’s final at Wimbledon (I’ll never tire of saying that).
When I mentioned that I thought it was “cheeky” I was immediately lambasted by nationalists (presumably) who asserted that there is nothing mischievous about a national leader holding the national flag in celebration of one of the nation’s sons’ successes. I understand their point but I feel the need to explore this a little further.
Was Salmond’s act akin to, say, the South African premier waving a national flag after seeing a fellow countrywoman winning an Olympic gold medal? Or Angela Merkel holding a little German flag on a stick after her country’s football team…—More Rants/Slates

Bend To My Will (album version)

http://youtu.be/KEu8-YyhBIA—More Tales