Music

There are only 600 or so days to go until Scotland has its referendum on independence. The excitement is almost palpable. Fortunately The Smiths back catalogue is all you need peruse to have a keen grip on the defining stramash de nos jours. Morrissey has always fancied himself, I think, as a kind of prophet. Johnny Marr wrote the tunes. Astonishing as it may seem, all sides in this rammy are, essentially, taking their cues from The Smiths. A Scottish independence playlist-dialogue might run something like this: Nationalist: Is It Really So Strange? Unionist: Barbarism Begins At Home. Nationalist:  London. Unionist:  Paint A Vulgar Picture. Nationalist: I Know It’s Over.

In what Bono described to me as ‘the best of the smaller ones’, the stars of Team GB stole the show at last night’s GQ Men of the Year awards. Presented with a special team award by Lord Coe, the A-list crowd were on their feet at the Royal Opera House for the Olympic contingent. Though seemingly dry, high-jump star Greg Rutherford and pommel-horser Louis Smith were amongst the last men standing at the after-party. Cyclist Bradley Wiggins is becoming something of fashion icon, though he might need to work on his people skills. Asked if he would like to meet Liam Gallagher, the cyclist said ‘Nah, I know him

I do not necessarily wish to imply I have the gift of prophecy. But this is either uncanny or part of some cosmic plan to aggravate me. Three years ago on an edition of Question Time, alongside the then Olympics minister Tessa Jowell, the panel was asked whether we regretted bidding for the Olympics (since a recession had come along afterwards). I said that I had never been terribly in favour of getting the Olympics, not because of the expense or because our athletes wouldn’t do our nation proud (as they more than have) but because of how bad we in Britain had become at selling ourselves as a culture.

There is plenty of nostalgia around in this Jubilee Weekend. Any look back on 60 years brings temptation to think that the past was better than the present. This is what Woody Allen calls ‘golden age’ fallacy, which is defined (in his Midnight in Paris) as an age-old and ‘erroneous notion that a previous time period is better than the one one’s living in.’ This disorder was on show during BBC 2’s Review Show last night, where guests were bemoaning the death of protest music.   The panel (dominated by Kirsty Wark and music critic Paul Morley) were discussing BBC 4’s 3 part documentary, Punk Britannia. The first part of

There are calls for Britain to pull out of the Eurovision Song Contest, after Engelbert Humperdinck finished second-last on Saturday, with Norway bottom. The Mayor of Leicester has today denounced Eurovision, saying: ‘The politics of Europe — which countries are friendly with which others — has a lot more to do with it than the quality of the songs.’ I agree: politics are involved and it is outrageous. Had George Osborne not given Ireland that £3.2 billion loan we would not have had its four points and Britain would be where it deserved: at the very bottom. We were dismal, and in the eyes of half a billion people. But