Hot 100

Australia day (Jan 26th) is the day for announcing the previous year's hottest 100 tunes on Triple J. This year was yet another example that as I age I drift further from the coal face of new music, which is quite a weird feeling when I used to be a bit of a miner back in the day, bopping around London town interviewing the latest hip cats and checking out their groovy vibes live.

Mumford And Sons were number one, with Little Lion Man. I've heard the song, but (get this...) only because I read about them as 'ones to watch' in Q Magazine! Q are always about three months late with that sort of caper and in my previous life as the digital teenage girls' Everett True I used to snort with derision at these old farts with their paper and printing.

The full list is here and once I'd gone through the top twenty and realised I only knew six of them I decided to stop there to save myself further pain.

I'm going with the 'Aussie music is generally shit' defence, which on the evidence of Adelaide's aweful, ageing hip hop rap singers the Hilltop Hoods at number three, is a defence that's not without legs.

But I have to admit I'm not totally without blame - as is brought into stark relief when you're being told by your mates twelve thousand miles away to check out a swinging bunch of new dudes who are from the country you live in (The Temper Trap).

It's probably not something that would have happened when I was the internet's answer to a late-70s Tony Parsons: getting pally with McFly, chummy with Busted, and once almost being offered out by Cheryl Cole. Good times.

A substitute for God

See this story? - Robbie Fowler refuses to start on the bench, gets dropped and reveals that his missus isn't settling into the fast-paced, cosmopolitan style of life in tropical far-north Queensland.

With the population of Townsville roughly three quarters of that of Medway, and only a jaunty 800 miles from nearest major city Brisbane (another one of the southern hemisphere's most exciting metropolises), you can only assume that time has mellowed the former party boy and moving back into such excitement has made him and his family realise that living la vida loca is no longer for them.

Frankly I'm stunned. Who could have seen this coming?

It's the fans I feel sorry for.

Especially all those, whether they were Townsville fans, neutrals, or fans of the opposition, who turned up to games in Liverpool shirts, often outnumbering the Townsville fans and giving the (obviously wrong) impression that they didn't give a shit about who was playing, as long as they could gather together near the front row of the stand and scream at their idol, begging him to come over and sign their shirt like mid-30s women at a Take That concert.

Extreme weather chaos

(Phew what a scorcha part 26)

If it snows you can stick a scarf on, and you might even get a day off work, so whilst you throw snowballs in your winter wonderland, spare a thought for us poor souls, baking in the heat over here...

I'm not sick, but I'm not well...

You see the odd Aussie celeb round here, a couple of weeks ago Lara Bingle was getting in to her rather flash Aston Martin outside the local shops (she's the bird who was in the "Where the bloody hell are you?" advert and who's now engaged to Michael Clarke, the Aussie cricket vice-captain). I was checking out her motor before I recognised it was her getting into it.

However, I couldn't say I wasn't surprised to walk past Super Hans yesterday morning! I'd just left the house on the way to work and as I got to the station he was there with a little girl of about three of four. I might not have thought it was him if Anna hadn't told me the night before that he was filming a new Aussie series with Claudia Karvan, the bird from Secret Life Of Us and Love My Way. It's by the same production company, and she plays a dentist who forms a friendship with the ghost of a dead 80s rock star, played by Super Hans, or Matt King as he's apparently known. The show's called Spirited and starts here in August, and no doubt some channel in the UK will take a punt on it eventually, seeing as there's a million channels pumping out shite. According to a bio of his he's writing a show called 'Whites', based on his time working in a Michelin-starred kitchen before he turned his hand to acting and stand up comedy. I hadn't known that he beat Russell brand to the role of Super Hans either, with Brand auditioning for it before he decided to become an Ealing Comedy version of Jack Sparrow and take over the world.

I haven't seen the sixth or seventh series of Peep Show, and after thinking about getting six on amazon I then discovered that it's all on youtube, which is a touch, even if it ain't as good as watching it on a big telly.

New Year's Eve madness

I was in Melbourne for new year's eve (as some of you will know from the odd drunken text I sent - apologies for that). Anna's client was paid to sing a few tunes at at 1950s rock 'n' roll themed party at Crown Casino, who put on a gratis party every year for their 'high rollers', to thank them for all the money they've pissed away over the year, and no doubt also to get them back in for a big spend on a big night.

I sorted myself out with an outfit - varsity jacket, white tshirt, white converse and slicked backed hair - as it was either that or 'dinner wear' for the evening. Needless to say I was one of the only blokes in 'fancy dress' and most of the others had just worn a normal suit, or a shirt and strides (I don't suppose they enforce the rules very tightly on big spenders, at one point I went to the dunny and there was a Chinese lad in their smoking a huge stogie). I didn't know that many people and Anna was mainly working until midnight when the lass she looks after had finished her duties. As the lass was previously in Neighbours for years (as Izzy), and one of her storylines involved Karl Kennedy leaving Susan for her, she's big mates with him and he was on our table with his missus, who wasn't bowled over when I started blethering away to her: she asked what I did and I told her I worked for the ABC, then I asked what she did, as I didn't have a clue who she was - she's apparently a newsreader for the ABC...



Big first impression having been made, I played it pretty cool until after the bells, when we legged it from the party (filled mainly with rich pikeys, shifty gangster types, and loads of shifty gangster-type Asians, some smoking big cigars in the toilet whilst shouting on their mobiles) up to the top-floor suite that they'd laid on as part of the deal. I was quite merry by then and once Nyron popped in for a chat there was no chance I wasn't going to give Alan (or Fletch, as he's known to his close showbiz pals) a bit of an ear-bend - I'd been introduced to him earlier, then made a solid impression on his wife (who'd then done the off to another party at about half ten) so then we chatted about his band and being on Jo Whiley when he's in the UK. He was quite upset that his good mate Jo had been goonered in favour of Ferne Cotton, and he told me about getting her a cameo on the show when she was in Melbourne, and he blethered about his two kids for a bit but I was fairly gone by that point so I can't remember very much. I'd be very surprised if I didn't give as good as I got on the bletheing front but fortunately we were both slightly worse for wear by that point, as you can see in the picture. Which is very unflattering, but worry not, I haven't cut my hair (it was slicked back) nor put on a load of beef (weird angle? That double chin's come out of nowhere).

He regularly appears at the Neighbours pub nights with his band Waiting Room, punting out stuff like I Predict A Riot and a load of other modern classics for the discerning backpacker audience. He also told me that the story about Toady getting barred for getting stuck into the female fans wasn't true, a terrible fabrication, but then I doubt he's going to start spilling all the good stuff to some gattered oddball in Happy Days fancy dress.