Skuds’ Sister’s Brother

It was very saddening to hear today that Ted Rogers died on Saturday.  Not the Ted Rogers from the TV but the man many in Crawley think of as “the” Ted Rogers.   I did not know him very well, having only met him properly in the last couple of years, but I had seen him […]

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In London yesterday I had a little look around the cheap bookshop on the corner of Waterloo Bridge Rd. I don’t need any books right now as I have 4 novels and a biography in the to-read pile, but its always fun to look, just in case there is a bargain.

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I just caught the end of a programme on TV tonight which really made me wish I had sat down and watched it from the begining.  It was on BBC Four and was called Atom.  Fortunately it is repeated at 2:00am tomorrow so I have the V+ box set up to record it.

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What was I thinking?  When this month’s Vine newsletter arrived I selected a couple of freebies to review - a CD by a band I had not heard and a book by someone I had never heard of.
I didn’t realise that the book was 540 pages long and in large format too.  That’s a lot […]

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On Saturday I collected a book from my sister, which was a birthday present from my other sister - a signed copy of Robert Rankin’s new book, The Da-da-de-da-da Code.
I have been looking forward to this for ages, but I am resisting the urge to start reading it until I finish at least one of […]

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What to make of the story about the man who has been put on probation for attempting to have sex with his bicycle?
Its easy enough to make jokes about it, and the headline seems to say it all, but I think the man in question has had a bit of a rough deal. Not […]

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Another freebie from Amazon. The best of the batch because its the one I was least likely to have come across on my own. The Crockatt & Powell gang will enjoy the fact that this book is dedicated to Scott Pack (The book is being published by his new company, The […]

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While looking around town, killing a bit of time after having some birthday drinks, I wandered into that remaindered books-type shop (Book Works?). What a result!
I picked up the Rik Mayall autobiography, The Understudy by David Nicholls (who wrote Starter for Ten which I read this month) and a book about Peter Cook […]

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As an Essex boy, from deepest South-East Essex, I was quite pleased to start reading a book called Starter for 10 and find that the main protagonist’s home town was Southend-on-Sea. The book is set in the early 80’s - around the same sort of time I used to spend a lot of time […]

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I have just finished reading Christopher Brookmyre’s new book The Atttack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks and what a book it is. The book is dedicated to James Randi and Richard Dawkins, which for many will be recommendation enough.
As a firm fan of Brookmyre and especially his character Jack Parlabane, the cat-burgling crime reporter […]

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