Glom of Nit #39: Let's all meet up in the year 2025

Britpop, touring, and tinsel

In this email you’ll find

• The usual monthly musings on whatnot

• Upcoming tour dates

• Links to articles ands reviews I’ve written this month

• An excerpt from my work-in-progress book Tinsel & Fire

• Books, Music, film and TV recommendations.

BUT BEFORE THAT … Have you bought my new biography of NIRVANA yet? Postage in the UK is FREE for a limited time.

Also PLEASE DO drop me a line by replying to this email, or the post on Substack or finding me on social media. Unless it’s to point out a typo. Don’t do that. No-one likes it when you do that.

Hello there.

I’m writing this from a Premier Inn on The Isle of Wight, because my life is an unceasing parade of glamorous travel.

Actually that’s a little unfair — I love the Isle of Wight. My maternal grandmother came from here (“Nanny-on-the-Isleawhite as she was known to me when I was a sprog), although my memories of her are very foggy, since she left us in the late eighties when I was just a nipper. We used to come here all the time when I was little. I’ve got lovely memories of dinosaurs in Blackgang Chine, and watching the hovercraft come in on Ryde seafront, dousing us with Seaspray as it roared up the beach. It was the eighties. There wasn’t much else to do.

My parents met on the island. I have it on good authority (though I don’t like to dwell on it) that I was conceived here. In a tent, apparently. My band played our first festival here, when we appeared at the much-missed Bestival in 2012. My girlfriend (now fiancé. NEWSFLASH.) gave me a guided tour of Queen’s Victoria’s summer pad at Osbourne House here last year, because going out with a historian is brilliant! (incidentally, you can pre-order her new book here. I designed the cover, I’m rather proud of it). It’s also the place where I once got to see Fleetwood Mac and Blur in the same weekend, and that’s always going to make somewhere special. So I apologise for the snarky joke back at the top of the paragraph.

I’m here because touring duties have resumed for The Magic of Terry Pratchett, which I’ll be performing on and off for the rest of the year, including shows at the Adelaide Fringe (!), a HUGE gig in London to celebrate Sir Terry’s birthday in April, a couple of festivals and conventions and a final run around the country for a clutch of theatre and art centre dates in the Autumn. There’s more to be announced. It all kicked off this weekend with a pair of back-to-back sold out shows at the brilliant Quay Arts Centre, here in Newport (the one on the island, not the one in Wales. Or New York.)

I thought a lot about accepting these gigs, because I really was ready to leave TMOTP (which is what the cool people call it, although when I see those letters my middle dyslexic topsy-turvy brain instinctively think it’s a reference to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) in 2024. This show has meant a lot to me, it’s opened doors, had incredible reviews, taken me all over the country. I’ve performed it to over 12,000 people, and counting. We did 66 shows last year alone. The first work-in-progress performance was in April 2023… by the end the next run of gigs I’ll have been performing The Magic of Terry Pratchett for two and a half years. The book upon which it’s based is now five years old. That’s … a lot. I never expected it to do this well. Of course I underestimated the pulling power of Sir Terry, something you should never do. And doing this show is a privilege, and not one I take lightly. If people want to see it, then who am I to say no? So … one more trip around the sun we go. The Turtle Moves. I do think it’ll need resting after that though. If you’ve not been yet, see it this year.

The success does come with a … weirdness, I guess is the best way to put it. I am now “The Terry Pratchett guy”. That’s what I do. Which, of course, isn’t the case. I’ve written four biographies and three of them are about music and bands. I’ve done five one-man comedy shows, and only one of them has been based around a beloved author. I can do other things. On the other hand, TMOTP is comfortably the most successful thing I’ve done. I’m now in the position of needing to follow it up. To prove I can pull off the trick again. I’m going back to the Edinburgh Fringe this August, and it just can’t be to talk about Sir Terry again. It just can’t.

So instead I’m going to talk about Britpop. My next show will be called The Britpop Hour with Marc Burrows, premiering (after some previews) at the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe, and then going on tour this time next year. It’s locked in. It’s happening. This is terrifying because:

a) I have set the bar very high for myself. People loved TMOTP. It had a built-in audience. People came into the room with affection for Terry already. I can’t replicate that. No matter what I do. I fundamentally have no idea if anyone will want to see this. And we have a big room to fill.

b) I haven’t written it yet.

To some that last point is going to sound extremely unwise. Possibly suicidal. But that’s how these things go. It takes a long time to write an hour of stand up, it’s a long process of honing and tweaking. But it takes even longer to get the wheels in motion for the shows — demand at the Fringe is high, and you need to lock in you slot early. That means you need to deliver the title and synopsis and some pictures often before you have anything else. Then you hope what you write fits the brief.

Ultimately it’s not that much of an unknown quantity. People who’ve followed my career for a while will know that Britpop is not new territory for me. My friend Laura and I, AKA the brilliant one-woman force of nature that is Penfriend did a show themed around Britpop in 2014, though it was more a collection of stories about our lives and influences rather than a deconstruction of the genre itself, which is what I’m aiming for here. Still, this is a subject I know. I was 14 in 1995. Blur are, give or take, my favourite band. Ot top three anyway. I’ve touched on it in my comedy many times, in my shows The 90s In Half An Hour, An Indie Boy’s Guide To Sex and Girls and The Ten Best Songs of All Time. The latter even included a “Jarvis Cocker Dance Lesson”, which I might bring back. My first published writing in The Guardian was a staunch defence of Blur’s ‘Country House’. I know this topic. I have things to say. I’ve got the jokes in mind. I know how it’ll start. I can visualise the poster. I’ve bought a guitar especially.

I’m looking forward to getting stuck in. Once the small matter of two-and-a-half-weeks in Australia and finishing my next book Tinsel & Fire – The Rise and Fall of the Christmas Number One are out of the way. Tiny matters. Trifling.

Anyway. 2025 is here. A new show. A new book. New ideas. New challenges. Thanks for coming on the journey with me so far … I hope you’ll stick around to see what mess I make of the next leg.

Tour update

The Magic of Terry Pratchett 2024 Tour

14 FEB The Stables MILTON KEYNES TICKETS
21 FEB – 04 MARCH - ADELAIDE FRINGE, AUSTRALIA TICKETS
15 MARCH The Attic SOUTHAMPTON TICKETS 26 APRIL
28 APRIL Duchess Theatre LONDON TICKETS
30 MAY UK Games Expo BIRMINGHAM TICKETS*
01 JUNE UK Games Expo BIRMINGHAM TICKETS*
04 SEPT The Y Theatre LEICESTER TICKETS
05 SEPT The Civic STOURPORT TICKETS
21 SEPT Theatre Severn SHREWSBURY TICKETS
27 SEPT Komedia BRIGHTON TICKETS
04 OCT The Point EASTLEIGH TICKETS
19 OCT Phoenix EXETER TICKETS
31 OCT Little Theatre CHORLEY TICKETS

*Require event ticket

Many more dates to be announced

Stuff I’ve written this month

Star Trek: Section 31 REVIEW (HeyUGuys)

Welcome to Elon Musk’s world, where politicians are paid to be divisive (Independent)

Zuckerberg’s ‘free speech’ pivot is nothing but a cynical power play (Independent)

Recommendations

Music

There’s a new Manic Street Preachers album out in two weeks. My review should have been up by now, but since the release got pushed back so has the review. I really love it though. It’s the best record they’ve made since [insert the last one you liked]. Honestly, it’s a cracker.

Taster here:

The new album by Ex-Vöid is indie pop gold:

Your friend and mine Laura 'PENDFRIEND’ Kidd has a new single out. It’s gorgeous alt fuzz angst. I love her stuff.

Books

Cursed Under London by Gabby Hutchinson Crouch

Wonderfully funny, sweet, queer fantasy romance set in an alternative Elizabethan London with characters you would DIE for. One of the most instantly likeable and totally realised fantasy worlds I’ve read in years. I’m desperate for the sequel.

1984: The Year Pop Went Queer by Ian Wade

I love a pop music book, and this one is a corker. A run through the gay and gay-adjacent classics of one of pop’s landmark years, written with wit, panache and real passion. Trivia packed, yes, but also committed and angry and joyous in turns. I loved it. Weirdly the bibliography contains almost all of the books I’ve been using to research Tinsel & Fire.

Work in progress book excerpt

This in an excerpt from the book I’m working on right now, due out this time next year. Please don’t share it, and remember this is a work in progress and could change hugely before publication.

TINSEL & FIRE: The Rise & Fall of the Christmas Number One

Chapter Eight: Let’s Go Round Again

There’s a theory that says pop music works in decade-long cycles; so 1960 was dull, and so was 1970, 1980 and 1990. 1956, meanwhile, was a corker — as was 1966, 1976 and 1986. The theory has a lot of holes in it, and there’s any number of examples you can cite that push the phrase “the exception that proves the rule” way beyond breaking point. That said, there is a certain rhythm to the charts, an ebb and flow of boom and bust, creativity and stagnation. The Christmases of 1983 and 1984 weren’t exactly re-runs of ’73 and ’74 but, well … there are similarities. Even the mainstream press noticed. “Pop music stood still in 1983”, said the Mirror, noting the success of David Bowie, Elton John, Rod Stewart, the Rolling Stones, the Who and Paul McCartney across the year — all of which had been superstars a decade earlier. The Christmas season only amplified this. Elton John, for example, found himself just the wrong side of the top 20 with a song with the word “Christmas” in the title, something he had only done once before, in 1973. The fact that ‘As Cold As Christmas (In the Middle of the Year)’ was, as the name suggests, not actually about Christmas at all is neither here nor there. Other returning acts from a decade previous included Rod Stewart, Cliff Richard, and Paul McCartney (the latter two underlining the “pop moves in ten year cycles” theory by also being refugees from the 1963 Christmas chart). Out in the real world, the parallels between 1973 and 1983 were there if you looked for them; England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had all, yet again, failed to qualify for a major football tournament, there was a miner’s strike on the horizon and a spate of IRA bombings keeping the country on edge. 1973 had low unemployment but high inflation. By 1983 inflation had been brought under control, but unemployment had spiked to record levels. Neither year was a picture of social and economic stability. Following an incredibly divisive general election, which had seen Thatcher’s Conservatives absolutely trounce an opposition riven with infighting, the mood in the country felt combative and sour, with tensions high, confidence low and the divide between the well-off and the struggling, north and south, “them” and “us”, feeling sharply pronounced. It wasn’t a cheerful year. Just like it had a decade earlier, what the country needed now, more than ever, was Slade.

The originators of the whole concept of a “Christmas number one” had hit the December charts a few times over the previous decade, with inevitable reissues of ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ hanging around the nether regions of the top 40. The band would then dutifully go through the motions of miming the song on Top of the Pops, to the point that their appearances became a semi-annual tradition (“it wouldn’t be Christmas without them!” said Peter Powell introducing Slade in 1984). For its tenth anniversary, ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ had charted at a very respectable 20 which isn’t bad for a decade-old song. Something far more interesting, though, was happening at the top end of the chart, where the band’s new single, ‘My Oh My’, had become comfortably their biggest hit since 1974 and given them their first visit to the top ten since 1975. 

The back-end of the seventies had been rough for Slade. Though no-one could have foreseen it at the time, Christmas 1973 had been their peak and it had been a slow decline since then, with the band all privately considering throwing in the towel as the decade came to an end. A last-minute, unbilled appearance at the 1980 Reading Festival changed that. Had that particular field in Middlesex had a roof then Slade – always a tremendous live act – would have ripped it off with a flourish. As it was, they detonated like a Brummie atom bomb. The set climaxed in a mass singalong of ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ — despite the fact that, it being August, the band hadn’t actually played it. It turned out the nation had kept Noddy and chums in their hearts all along, and the reaction gave the band a boost which launched them into the eighties with enough momentum for another three years of successful touring and a trio of well-received albums. Alas, though, the hit singles hadn’t come. Then, in 1983, Jim Lea and Noddy Holder delivered ‘My Oh My’, a huge-sounding power ballad that was essentially one long chorus, consciously following the cyclical pattern of Rod Stewart’s massive hit ‘Sailing’. ‘My Oh My’ started gently, had slamming drums coming in about two thirds of the way through and ramped up to a big guitar solo from Dave Hill and a mass, chanted singalong at the end. The words were easy to pick up, lighters were automatically held aloft and fans were encouraged to wave football scarves from side to side, both arms raised in the air. The song was rush-released for Christmas, a time of year Slade had practically trademarked by now, and it quickly ascended the charts, affection for the band tied to a genuinely anthemic single that automatically created communal moments wherever it was played, arms thrown around shoulders and pints held aloft. As Christmas approached, it was a perfect pub jukebox record. Britain, you see, still really cherished the Wolves foursome. They were good for the soul. The communal nature of the song wasn’t lost on reviewers — “Noddy and the lads attempt to out-chant Queen's ‘We Are the Champions’ and might very well succeed” said heavy metal bible Kerrang!. “[It] builds nicely to a rousing finale that should have them waving their scarves on the terraces by Christmas.” “Must be a hit with all those terrace rowdies that are forced to sit down and be nice to their wives this time of year”, proclaimed Sounds. “Surely destined to be a football terrace anthem for decades to come”, said Melody Maker. Even the bubblegum pop market was wooed: “I think it’ll be a boozy Christmas hit” said Bananarama’s Keren Woodward when the band were invited to review the week’s single in Record Mirror. “But is the world ready for it?” replied future goth legend Siobhan Fahey. “Anyway, we all love Slade”. The song was even a minor hit in the US, peaking at 37 on the Hot 100. “A tuneful, love-your-fellow-man anthem, awash in power chords", said Billboard, “the irrepressibly cheerful Noddy Holder joined by what sounds like a whole football team of singalong choristers”.

Had the universe any sense of poetic justice, ‘My Oh My’ would have been Christmas number one that year, no question. That’s how the story was always meant to go. Unfortunately, surprise disappointments were a hallmark of Thatcher’s Britain. Not only did ‘My Oh My’ stall at number two, despite selling a very respectable 500,000 copies (it did give them a number one in Sweden and Norway), it’s also been largely forgotten. It’s certainly not a song that’s made it onto the merry-go-round of Christmas-adjacent classics. It’s a shame. It really should be spoken about in the same breath as ‘Sailing’ and ‘We Are The Champions’. It really should have been a terrace anthem remembered for decades. Alas, it came and went, and ultimately it was a last hurrah for the band, who never bothered the top five again (though the following year’s surprisingly contemporary-sounding ‘Run Runaround’ did get to number seven, and an impressive 20 in the US). In 1984, the band were forced to cancel a lengthy American tour with Ozzy Osbourne, after hepatitis put Jim Lea out of action for months, essentially missing their window to capitalise on recent successes and consolidate their new-found Stateside popularity. It knocked the wind out of everyone’s sails. Holder, going through a divorce and burned out from twenty years on the road, decided to opt out of playing live and the original band never toured again. They had a crack at another anthem for Christmas ’84 with ‘All Join Hands’, which was decent enough but very-much a retread of ‘My Oh My’; it did respectably but stalled at number 15, and by Christmas week it had dropped down to 27. A whole Christmas album, Crackers, was released in 1985, featuring some by-the-numbers retreads of classics (photocopying Springsteen’s ‘Santa Claus Is Coming To Town’, re-recording their own ‘Cum On Feel The Noize’, butchering ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’) but it sparked very little interest. They limped along as a studio act into the nineties scoring the occasional minor hit, the last of which was the rather good ‘Radio Wall of Sound’ in 1991, but the spark wasn’t there anymore and without live gigs to sustain interest, all but the hardcore of their audience withered away. Holder and Lea both left the band in 1992, bored of in-fighting and the constant disappointing returns. Don Powell and Dave Hill kept going as “Slade II”, later changing their name back to just “Slade”, promoting themselves mostly as an oldies act and sustained by annual Christmas tours. Holder says he doesn’t mind his bandmates making a living off the name — he and Lea, after all, as the writers of ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, had their pensions secured already. Powell was dismissed in 2020 (he went on to form “Don Powell’s Slade”), but Hill is still touring as Slade, still dressing in sequins, still wearing daft hats. Every year the band’s biggest song is inescapable. Every year Noddy Holder, who went on to a respectable TV and radio career, is paid a small fortune to shout “IT’S CHRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISTMAAAAAAAAAAAAA” somewhere or other. And who can begrudge him that? Slade — national treasures, always.