The beginning of the end for the sunbed war?

Until I went on a Mediterranean holiday last year I'd lived under the impression that the sunbed wars - that atypically xenophobic British tabloid trope - were over. On consecutive previous holidays - to Florida, Sicily and California - I'd not once found the issue of lounger larceny an issue. But no.

There, as I breakfasted at a reasonably early hour (actually, unhealthily early, despite being meant to be on holiday...), most mornings in Sardinia last September I saw the telltale flapping of an unaccompanied towel, unsecured on a sunbed in a strategically viable location for catching the sun for the best parts of the day. I won't mention the nationality of the owners of said towels, because they know who they are and, I'd suggest, you do, too.

That said, it's not just the you-know-whos who are responsible for these lapses of poolside etiquette: on my Caribbean cruise in October, the mania for people queuing for the free breakfast buffet at dawn was accompanied by sun loungers being not-too subtly 'reserved' in the most strategic sunspots. And that was on a cruise ship notably free of any continental Europeans.

So the travel company Thomas Cook has come up with a solution to the problem, one which The Sun today trumpeted in its inimitable style. In what is clearly an extension of airlines charging for reserving a seat, Thomas Cook has launched the excitingly-named "Choose Your Favourite Sunbed" online service, in which - for £22 - holidaymakers will be able to reserve a sunbed for the entire length of their stay. The scheme will be trialed in three hotels from the end of February before being rolled out in 30 hotels this summer.

Thomas Cook (which, perhaps significantly, competes with the German travel group Tui) has diplomatically positioned the new service as being a family-friendly scheme for groups of hotel guests who want to spend more time together in a preferred spot. The service follows a trial last year by the firm of a similar scheme  which allows customers to select their hotel room before they arrive in their chosen resort. More than 10,000 holidaymakers used it.

"Traditional package holidays are a thing of the past," said Thomas Cook UK managing director Chris Mottershead in a press release. "Holidaymakers today want to personalise their package, mixing and matching the elements that best fit their needs and lifestyle. We're excited about the opportunity with Choose Your Favourite Sunbed, particularly among families that want to secure a number of beds together in a specific spot."

The scheme will work much like airline seat bookings over the web, with a certain proportion of sunbeds in each hotel bookable, and selected using an online map displaying the beds as well as a compass to help people work out where the sun will be at different times of the day. For those who don't want to pay the convenience premium, other beds will be available in the usual way.

Source: Thomas Cook

Now, there are going to be people who think it all a bit unnecessary, that Johnny Foreigner should simply play more fairly. And there are those who'll think it a bit petty. And there's me, who thinks that we should all just get on with each other, and spend our holidays lacing daisy chains in each other's hair, while joining in rousing choruses of I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing.

But the truth of the matter is, in the words of Ben Elton, we are all at root selfish farties: we want a relaxing holiday, where we don't bother setting the alarm clock, but we can handle the fact other nationalities are up before us. On the other hand, should we be charged even more money - on top of our Speedy Boarding and Premium Economy seats simply for a piece of furniture? Well, perhaps if it matters that much, the Thomas Cook scheme isn't a bad idea, if it means that families - in particular - can enjoy the peace of mind of knowing their precious two weeks away will be spent together.

Speaking of Mr. Elton, however, here's a 32-year-old reminder of how spot on he was when describing just how protective we can be of personal space...

View from the VAR side

"It's hard to know where to start," said West Bromwich Albion manager Alan Pardew last night, as he was asked about the impact the Video Assistant Referee had on his FA Cup Fourth Round win over Liverpool. And he wasn't about to be positive, either. "I don't think that is what we want to see going forward, whether you are a Liverpool or West Brom fan."

VAR is only a matter of weeks old in English football, and - as with anything new and slightly clunky - is taking time to accept. We've moaned long enough about the need for video technology and when it finally comes in we moan some more. In last night's cup tie, referee Craig Pawson referred to VAR and the eyes of virtual referee Andre Marriner (in a box somewhere in London) a total of eight times. Three incidents reviewed via the system proved to be key the game's outcome - including a disallowed West Brom strike, Liverpool winning a penalty, and a contested Baggies goal being allowed to stand.

In its match report, the London Evening Standard talked about VAR being used "...during an action-packed first half". The problem is, VAR slows down that action completely. Craig Dawson's goal took more than a minute to be judged offside via VAR. "Firstly, there is no communication from the referee to us," Pardew complained, adding that the bigger issue was the four minutes it took to judge the Liverpool penalty claim after Mo Salah went down in the Albion box in the 23rd minute. "You are going from high-tempo workrate to nothing," said Pardew. "We had a hastring [injury] just after that." (i.e. "Just sayin'").

It's something I noticed at Stamford Bridge two weeks ago when Chelsea played Arsenal in the Carabao Cup. VAR reviews of, first, César Azpilicueta and Calum Chambers' coming together, then a challenge on Cesc Fàbregas, and again when Victor Moses appeared to foul Alex Iwobi in the penalty area, seemed to take forever for referee Martin Atkinson to resolve. If the managers didn't know what was going on, the players on the pitch certainly didn't and nor did we up in the stand, bored by the tedious 0-0 stalemate unfolding. From a television point of view, it was the sort of pause broadcasters hate - dead air, effectively - as Atkinson repeatedly held his finger to his ear like Chris Morris's spoof newsreader in The Day Today.

For us paying fans, we could easily fill the downtime by posting facetious tweets, but for the players at risk of hamstrings cooling down, it must have felt like eternity. It is, of course, only sensible to assume that VAR simply needs more time to get used to. We've needed video technology for too long now, and now it's here we should embrace it. Jurgen Klopp, the defeated Liverpool manager last night, was certainly more stoic than Pardew: "Normally after a game I have to explain to you a defeat which was not deserved because we din't get a penalty or they scored another goal. Is it cool in January to have delays when it's cold, especially for the players? Maybe not, but it will become smoother and more fluent in the future."

Definitely not impressed was broadcaster Danny Baker, who launched into one of his periodic football rants (and of a veracity not seen since he laid into a combination of England's shameful 2016 European Championship game against Iceland, and Glenn Hoddle's commentary of it). Of the more repeatable tweets, "VAR is sucking all the life out of what was a pulsating cup tie. Literally draining the atmosphere. So, we may have a correct game by computer but dull match in flesh and blood. Absolutely awful. yet this terrible thing will be rolled out" and "What numbs a crowd is the idea that now THEY aren't the people at the event, they are just watching something that is being judged and relayed from some remote office. Supporters are now just extras at their own event. VAR MUST BE ABANDONED."

I have a suspicion that this will run. And run...

Crate expectations

A funny thing happened the other day, as I sat in gridlocked London traffic: the taxi I was in was overtaken by a milk float. A milk float. Apart from highlighting the ridiculously glacial speed of London traffic, it was the first time either the cab driver or myself had actually seen a milk float in many, many years.

Somewhere between me leaving home, 30 years ago, to live in the first of a series of flats, and then moving abroad, home milk deliveries seem to have been replaced by plastic bottles and cartons from supermarkets and convenience stores. Now, I'm sure this is not the case everywhere. With 5,000 people still employed in the UK in doorstep delivery, there are clearly many communities still being served by milkmen/milkwomen ("milkpersons" just sounds plain wrong).

As a child, the milk float seemed an intrinsic part of British life, along with power cuts and holidays spent exclusively wearing cagoules. In fact - and I'm sure someone will correct me - I can't think of another country where milk has ever been delivered this way. It's a practice that began in Britain in the 1860s as the spreading railways brought fresh milk cheaply into towns and cities from provincial dairy farms. By the turn of the 20th century, dairies were distributing milk to households via horse and cart, with the battery-powered milk float appearing in the 1940s, sometimes making calls up to three times a day due to absence of fridges in many households.

The clinking of milk bottles in crates and the whining of the milk float's electric motor was part of the early morning soundtrack of British communities. And now, through the prism of environmental concerns about how much plastic we use and how that distressingly ends up being consumed by whales in David Attenborough documentaries, it surely is time to reconsider the traditional British home milk delivery. Because it was the perfect recycling model: fresh bottles of milk on the doorstep at dawn, empties taken away. Bread, cream and yoghurt delivered too, with 'Milko' calling every second Thursday to have his bill paid.

My taxi driver and I concluded that the shift to buying milk in plastic bottles from the supermarket has coincided with the shift to urban dwelling. In 1975, 94% of milk was supplied in glass bottles. By 2016, that figure had fallen to less than 3%. In London, for example, the proliferation of new apartment blocks in gated communities has, surely, precluded the traditional milk delivery, coupled with the convenience of supermarkets (and, it is claimed, a lowering of costs, for the consumer and retailer alike) as our grocery habits have changed.

This, however, could be changing: with the world buying a million plastic bottles every minute, and annual consumption is expected to go beyond half a trillion by 2021, the glass milk bottle is poised to make a comeback. The Telegraph recently reported that Mark Woodman, who runs a dairy in Cardiff has recently spent thousands refurbishing an old milk float to meet new demand. "We've had 50 to 100 people call in this week," he told the online newspaper, "with 30 to 40 new customers off the Internet looking to cut down on their use of plastic".

Dairy UK, the trade body, says that doorstep deliveries of milk in glass bottles now total around a million per day, a modest increase over the last couple of years. Mark Woodman says he's seen a 30% rise of milk via traditional glass bottles over the same period. According to The Telegraph, traditional milk float deliveries have far from disappeared. Parker Dairies, a family-owned dairy in Woodford, Essex, continues to serve 11,000 homes, offices, schools and businesses in central and east London via a fleet of 25 floats. And depot manager ​Paul Lough says there is a clear resurgence: "I think the idea of going back to glass bottles and milk floats have captured people's imagination."

So, too, should be the idea of recycling. When I was a small boy, we'd take empty lemonade bottles down to the local off licence to get a shilling back on the return, an act of recycling before the phrase was in common use. In the Netherlands, I would take all of our household plastic bottles down to repositories in branches of the Albert Heijn supermarket chain, where the bottles would be sized and counted before the machine issues a voucher to be redeemed at the checkout against purchase. It really was that simple.

Where I live, next to the Thames at Greenwich in London, low tide reveals the scale of our indifference towards plastic waste. The piles - I don't exaggerate here - of plastic bottles lining the foreshore, or piling up in the mud of Deptford Creek illustrates the scale of the problem. And I'm part of it, if I look at my own consumption of single-use plastic bottles. Not only that, by my contribution to the problem: every time I visit Starbucks or Costa for a latte, there behind the counter are fridges full of plastic milk bottles. I'm sure these chains dispose of them responsibly, but you can't help wondering whether a trick is being missed by not returning to glass milk bottles.

In its recently launched 25-Year Environment Plan, the British government revealed that the UK's Marine Conservation Society found 718 pieces of litter for every 100m stretch of the country's beaches that it surveyed - and at least a fifth of this was from food and drink packaging.

The government also revealed that the total amount of plastic produced worldwide since the 1950s could become 34 billion tonnes by the middle of this century, with a lot of that invariably ending up in landfill or entering the marine ecosystem and subsequently the food chain. The government plan calls for a number of measures, from taxation to efforts to eradicate single-use plastics. Clearly, though, there's a long way to go.

The problem is, probably, not milk bottles but all the other bottles we get through - the impulse buy of a cold Diet Coke on a hot day, the need to carry a litre of Evian with you when travelling on London's broiling Underground. For that, I applaud the availability of tap water with which to fill up reusable flasks, and owners of cafes, coffee shops and restaurants lightening up about offering it for free, rather than fleecing us with overpriced plastic bottles of H2O. It really isn't that hard to return back to the pre-convenience age, when things were just that little bit more convenient for the environment.

We've heard this one before

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

The warning signs are there: Antonio Conte is not a happy bunny. "Sometimes, I can have an impact on transfers, sometimes you can't," he told reporters after Wednesday night's Carabao Cup exit to Arsenal. "My first task is to do my job and be a coach. For sure, I don't have a big impact on the transfer market."

Elsewhere, the Italian bemoaned the lack of options at his disposal after Willian went off injured, affording Ross Barkley his Chelsea debut, albeit one after several months out, with only a training match under his belt for his new club. "Willian's injury was decisive because we don't have many players to make subsititutions. Morata was out and, after injury, I was a bit forced to decide to play Ross Barkley."

Out of context, "I was a bit forced" might sound like a reference to the apparent indifference Conte showed towards the signing of Barkley. It probably wasn't, and Conte's English skills aren't 100%, but there is certainly something simmering with him. For a manager unable to suppress rumours that he'll be off at the end of the season, he's not doing much to lift the mood.

If newspaper reports are to be believed, we're currently in the fourth transfer window where Conte's wishlist has barely been touched. For this we must remember the separation between church and state at Chelsea: Conte is 'First Team Head Coach', the club's football board is responsible for player acquisitions and disposals. Today's Times reports that Conte's relationship with board member Marina Granovskaia - the de facto managing director and the club's chief conduit to Roman Abramovich - has become so strained that they now communicate through Carlo Cudicini, the former Chelsea goalkeeper-turned assistant coach and Italian-speaking liaison. Things have worsened, according to The Times, since Michael Emanalo stepped down as technical director in November, having previously acted as a "buffer" between Conte and the board, bridging the former's responsibilities for first team performance and the board's role in squad evolution.

Picture: Twitter/Chelsea FC

Even if the headlines scream of paying inflated prices for average players, and a vast army of assets sent out on loan as a clear husbandry policy, Chelsea are, in the main, quite astute when it comes to transfers. Granovskaia is seen as being the key to that. Whatever you think of the player, reducing Everton down by £20 million for Ross Barkley is good business. However, the same probably can't be said of the £40 million spent on 23-year-old Tiémoué Bakayoko, whatever his reputation was at Monaco. But here highlights the divide between Conte and the club's board: neither of these midfielders were on his list of players to bring in. Nor was Michy Batshuayi, who has so far failed to win over Conte's trust (even when he could start as centre forward in place of Álvaro Morata, Eden Hazard has been the preferred option).

Now we have a seemingly desperate hunt for a back-up striker, with names as varied as Andy Carroll and Peter Crouch apparently in Chelsea's sights, along with a protracted effort to bring in the 31-year-old Edin Džeko from Roma, despite the player's apparent reluctance to move, the Italian club's reluctance to let him go, and Chelsea having to compromise on its policy of offering multi-year contracts to players over 30.

All of this points to dysfunction at Chelsea, but compared with the dark final days of the Mourinho era, things are anything but. But with Conte showing no signs of letting up in projecting his dissatisfaction over transfer targets and activity to the board that employs him, there is only ever going to be one outcome: either he walks in the summer, or he gets pushed, just as former manager Carlo Ancelotti (who, despite being fired by Abramovich has maintained a gracious proximity) moves back to London...with a view to returning to Premier League management.

Unexpected person in the bagging area

Picture: LG

Amongst the supersized TV screens and Internet of Things-enabled toothbrushes unveiled in Las Vegas at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, the South Korean firm LG showcased the future. Yes, the future. And I know that’s what they all say (and, in my own CES history, I probably have, too..), but what LG revealed should make the blood run cold amongst any of the paranoid theorists who believe that we humans are to be replaced by robots.

LG revealed a conceptual family of robots designed to do menial tasks at airports, hotels and in supermarkets, such as carrying suitcases or giving directions. LG's 'CLOi' (pronounced "klo-hee") family all have faces - all bright eyes and a friendly, smiley appearance, just what might appeal to patrons of aforesaid airports, hotels and supermarkets. The added bonus is that they won't require salaries, health plans, paid holidays and sick leave. Unfortunately for LG, the CES demo of its first 'GLOi' machine - a cute-looking, voice activated kitchen assistant - didn’t go so well as the little fella refused to respond to instructions from the very human LG marketing man, David van der Waal. It won't be the first time a demo at CES has fallen over, but for tech companies like LG banking on artificial intelligence as the next big thing, it's a little embarrassing, to say the least.

Artificial intelligence has been a holy grail in the technology world for decades. It has also been a mainstay of science fiction for even longer, where robots have been a source of both whimsy and menace, be it Star Wars' R2D2 for cuteness or Gort in The Day The World Stood Still for fear (a post-Hiroshima metaphor for 1950s Cold War paranoia). But while droids in a galaxy far, far away, might be useful for fixing vaporators on Tatooine or keeping X-wing fighters in the battle, back here on Earth (i.e. the real world), robotic artificial intelligence has a long way to go, as LG's CES demo seems to suggest.

There is, though, no denying that it is coming. The question is, how quickly? And what will be the true cost to society when workers are replaced by a variety of gizmos? The service economy alone represents almost a billion employees worldwide, including the likes of airport, hotel and supermarket workers, such as those LG's CLOi robots could usurp. The Institute for Public Policy Research think tank in the UK argues that automation could help business productivity, but it also warns that that benefits could be concentrated among a narrow group of people such as investors and highly-skilled workers, at the cost of everyone else. Indeed, an IPPR report last year estimated that jobs generating wages of £290 billion annually - a third of all earned wages in the UK economy - have the potential to be automated.

And it has already begun. Remember that 1980s Fiat Strada advert showing the first industrial robots building cars? And remember the Not The Nine O'Clock News spoof, with the British Leyland 'Ambassador' being "built by Roberts" ("Bob - have you got Bob's tool wrench?"). That, though, was in the realms of the third, so-called industrial revolution, the evolution from mass production assembly lines to human-assisted automation. Today, however, the buzzword is 'Industry 4.0' - the fourth industrial revolution. Here, robots would transform from relatively dumb instruments in factories performing recurring tasks, to the use automation and data exchange, Internet of Things technology, cloud computing and, eventually, 5G - the next mobile broadband platform - to a point where data processing becomes cognitive. So-called "cyber-physical systems" will learn, making decisions for themselves about physical industrial processes. So the theory goes, computers can make decisions about how an airliner flies or a car travels, far faster than any human brain, so why not robotic factory production?

Machine learning is also already here. The American scientist Claude Shannon (who worked for my own company's Bell Labs, conducting encryption research during World War 2) developed early 'learning' electrical circuits in the 1930s, leading to research on natural language processing, work whose traces can be found in many devices today in daily usage as well as, critically, the search algorithms that are the basis of 'virtual assistants' such as Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri. Similarly, the somewhat creepy face recognition algorithms Facebook uses (and which are in common use for security applications) is also an example of the machine-based learning that is a core part of the move towards full artificial intelligence and, yes, intelligent, cognitive robots.

Businesses and industries already using artificial intelligence and robotics will avoid the elephant in the room, the replacement of human workers, by claiming that automation frees up employees and makes them more efficient. But business is business. It operates for profit - and maximising that profit, in particular - so if a machine can do the job of a human, it will.

The most obvious example of this are the self-service tills now prevalent in supermarkets. Clearly designed to replace paid-for till workers (despite being positioned as customer conveniences...), they still require a shop employee to keep watch on shoppers and - frequently, in my experience - come and sort out a terminal when it refuses to work.

Actually, self-service tills are an example of flawed logic in automation: just before Christmas it was revealed that British shoppers steal £3.2 billion via self-service tills every year, with nearly a quarter admitting to taking at least one item without paying for it, with toiletries, fruit and vegetables the most popular products for pilferage. In fact, over the past four years theft via self-scan tills has more than doubled. The research, carried out by VoucherCodesPro.co.uk, found that shoppers were awarding themselves discounts - pricing up one type apple by selecting a different, cheaper variety, for example - or simply finding ways of sneaking items into their shopping bag without being scanned. Another common scam is shoppers 'forgetting' to add the 5p charge for a carrier bag. Almost two-thirds of those surveyed, though, said that taking an item was due to a technical difficulty with the machine. Easy to say that, of course, but not impossible. Self-service tills are an odd compromise between cost-saving and a trusting nature. Clearly, too trusting.

They are, though, the thin end of the wedge. We're already reading about drones taking care of pizza and Amazon deliveries, and active thought is being given to drones delivering medical supplies, particularly in hard to reach parts of the developing world. Driverless vehicles are now being tested out and 5G connectivity will bring them even closer to reality, meaning taxis, buses and freight trucks without humans at the wheel could happen.

The online grocery company Ocado announced last week that it will introduce humanoid robots in its warehouses in 2025, supporting human workers with tasks like ladder moving and using a combination of artificial intelligence and speech recognition. Ocado already employs robots at its depot in Andover to move groceries around the site, but insists that it doesn't see the use of robots is a step towards getting rid of human employees: "The idea of [the SecondHands concept] is not to replace people," as spokesperson said, "it is to take away an element of a technician's job that is physically demanding, boring or unpleasant. We are removing the physical labour but you will still need the human. The idea is they work together and are more productive as a pair."

I suppose that if you apply this notion to science fiction, R2D2 and C3PO weren't acquired to replace Luke Skywalker, but to assist him on his uncle, Owen Lars' moisture farm. The other extreme is The Terminator, and Cyberdine Systems' Skynet artificial intelligence defence network becoming self-aware and causing nuclear holocaust. In the real world, somewhere between the two will be the likely scenario. The question is, at what cost to human employment? Could you be replaced by a robot...?

I guess that's why they call it the blues

Regular visitors to this blog will know my fascination with the south-west suburbs of London that I grew up in and their profound connection with the music Britain exported to the world in the 1960s and 70s. At its root was the Blues and the songs of an impoverished American South, implausibly transported into Surrey bedrooms​ to provide identity to angst-ridden teenagers living in relative affluence on the outskirts of the capital.

Of these adolescents, the individual who, perhaps, channeled the Delta Blues most effectively, both in terms of his playing and his own, personal tragedies, is Eric Clapton, the subject of Lili Fini Zanuck's engaging new documentary, Eric Clapton: Life In 12 Bars. The Clapton-endorsed film doesn't seek to tell anything new about the guitarist - nor does it. Instead, via a lengthy sequence of home movie clips, archive interviews and personal photographs, overlaid with dialogue from characters who've been pivotal - one way or another - in Clapton's 72 years, Zanuck focuses on several periods in his life which have defined him, and via the footage used, adds an extra dimension to much of what Clapton himself wrote about in his 2007 autobiography.

Indeed, Zanuck's film somehow continues the catharsis Clapton has been seeking, it would appear, most of his life and, arguably, for those things most people know about him already: his childhood, growing up believing his grandmother was his mother, and his mother was his sister; his rapid rise from teenage guitar prodigy in 1963 to feited "god" as one third of Cream in 1967 (having passed through The Yardbirds and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers in the process); his descent into drug and alcohol abuse at the turn of the 70s and the addled decade that followed; the tragic death of his first child, son Conor, when he fell from the 53rd floor of a New York apartment building in 1991.

It's always tricky, presenting a multi-millionaire rock star with the Italian-style Surrey mansion, a collection of Ferraris, vintage Rolexes and a penchant for Armani suits, as a tragic figure. But, if A Life In 12 Bars panders selectively towards the melancholy, rather than periods of happiness, contentment and celebration in Clapton's 55 years as a professional performer (not to mention the teenage years busking in the riverside pubs of Kingston-upon-Thames), it is consciously to draw out the sadness as the fuel behind his career. In this respect, Zanuck's film neither calls for pity or scorn.

It does, though, paint a somewhat despondent picture of an artist, not so much tortured as unlucky. Growing up in the peaceful Surrey hamlet of Ripley, he cut a strange and lonely figure: after getting his first guitar (bought from a now defunct shop in Tolworth), he discovered the blues of Big Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters and BB King, also finding that, with some endeavour, he could emulate their licks on his little acoustic guitar. Learning from his grandmother the truth about his origins (his absentee father was a Canadian serviceman who'd had a wartime one-night stand with his mother), Eric Clapton would spend the rest of his life seeking escape from this conflict, while adding more, all to the soundtrack of music conjured many thousands of miles away.

Later events, such as the death in 1970 of his friend Jimi Hendrix, would build on this trajectory by putting him on a path of self-destruction, confessing - in one of the film's more disturbing scenes - his "deathwish".

As with Asif Kapadia's documentaries about Ayrton Senna and Amy Winehouse, Zanuck's absence of on-camera interviews and use of footage and stills adds the film's tone. Disembodied, we hear Rose Clapp - Clapton's grandmother, his Auntie Sylvia, his onetime girlfriend Charlotte Martin, his wife/muse Patti Boyd, and his late friend and mentor, Ben Palmer, provide the colour. There isn't pity - Rose says Clapton had a mostly idyllic childhood - but there is plenty of undercurrent that doesn't disappear until long after the death of his son.

72 years is a lot to cram into a documentary of any length, so while it seems that large chunks of Clapton's life have been left out, they are probably the chunks that have little to add to the primary story. Indeed, the film ends with a brief montage of private film clips of the elder Clapton and his 'new' family today - wife Melia, daughters Julie, Ella and Sophie. There's no mention of his continued musical output and touring (or his reported health challenges - encroaching deafness, difficulties playing guitar), which have been Clapton's raison d'etre for the better part of six decades. But, weirdly, that's not the point.

A Life In 12 Bars - a title with so much meaning (all things - wink-wink - considered), may not be the perfect editorial study; indeed, Zanuck - who first met Clapton when she was directing the harrowing drug cop film Rush, to which he provided the musical score - doesn't open up anything more than a third, pictorial dimension to the star's life. But it does provide a rich scrapbook to remind ourselves just what the fuss was all about - why a 17-year-old Surbiton schoolboy was invited to join The Roosters in 1963, why he then became a part of British blues history in The Yardbirds, in John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, in Cream, in Blind Faith, with Delaney And Bonnie, and as the frontman of Derek & The Dominoes, and as the rock star's rock star ever since. Because down on that Ripley village green in the mid-1950s, with his blues records and his Hoyer acoustic guitar, was the lonely, troubled misfit, rejected by his birth mother, who embarked on a journey to counter that rejection and apply what can only be described as a God-given talent for making a guitar sing.

Does anyone have a cure for goal shyness?

Thanks to social media we are now familiar with almost every aspect of a footballer's life. When they sign for a club we get the obligatory 'thumbs up' photograph of the player undergoing his medical, followed soon by the contract signing itself, and then the standard 'club shirt/scarf aloft' picture. As they progress through their club careers we are entertained by videos of the player banging in trick shots and dummying teammates on the training ground, all designed to show what a fantastic player they are when, obviously, not having to deal with actual opposition players coming at them in full tilt.

However, none of this fan engagement via social media reveals what Chelsea's players are actually doing at their Cobham training ground all week long. Because, in last night's frustratingly tedious 0-0 draw with Arsenal in the Carabao Cup we saw the Blues dominate with more than half of the possession, and had 21 shots on goal against Arsenal's eight and six shots on target to Arsenal’s three. Álvaro Morata, the latest striker to bear the prefix "club record signing" was, once again, industrious without product, leading to a notable increase in the volume of tutting in the stand around me and my girlfriend (attending her first ever top-tier football match...).

After opening his Chelsea account with a number of we’ll taken goals early on, since October Morata has been achingly profligate, most notably in one-on-one opportunities. Now, it would be charitable to credit the goalkeepers in each of these situations, but the truth of the matter is that a striker with his cojones properly attached would have put those chances away time after time. And, of course, it can only get worse. One newspaper report today noted that defender Andreas Christensen is yet to score for the club. So what? He’s a defender. What I’m interested in is the striker scoring, mainly because in his job description that’s mostly all it says.

Chelsea have been there before, of course. In fact it’s been an Achilles heel of the club for many years that, not since Gianfranco Zola's era, has it enjoyed a striker so deadly that goals happen every time, without fail (and I'm not even sure that Franco was all that consistent). Not for nothing is the club's record goal scorer Frank Lampard, a midfielder. Diego Costa and Didier Drogba were the closest Chelsea have come in the modern, Abramovich era to a regular marksmen, though both suffered being temperamental, the latter in particular, when disinterested in a fixture, simply breaking down when it suited him. And there have been the fanciful experiments - Shevchenko, Torres, Crespo, Sturridge, Eto'o, Ba, Casiraghi - with mixed results, mostly of the occasional kind.

It's easy, of course, from my seat high up in the East Stand of Stamford Bridge to carp about what happens on the pitch below, but expectations are high. And when you're spending a reported £60 million on a striker, you’d hope he does what it says on the tin. Morata isn’t alone, however. I've now watched several consecutive Chelsea games in which the goal margins could have been higher had shots on target have actually gone in. Yes, some of those can be put down to good goalkeeping, but many could have been converted with more confident, accurate predation by the players involved. That, is what I want to see on my social media feeds. Not cute larks on the training field, but players - especially those paid handsomely to score goals - practising how best to bang them in, time and time again.

The problem isn't just Morata: even Eden Hazard has been more miss than hit. Teams like Southampton and Stoke - despite their shambolic league position - have gone out of their way to frustrate Chelsea in front of goal. But then that should be something the attacking side has a plan for. Again, back to the training ground. Morata has, though, been the most obvious miscreant. In last week's league encounter with Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium the Spaniard missed a priceless chance in the first half and then sent another effort wide when bearing down on Petr Čech towards the end of the 2-2 draw. Morata was, according to Antonio Conte, "not lucky in this period". "He’s young," the Italian explained. "I repeat, I understand for a striker it's not easy if you don't score, but don't forget for Alvaro it's his first season playing regularly. He didn’t always play with Real Madrid and Juventus. You have to know this. I’m very happy with his commitment and the way he's playing. He has to stay calm continue to play this way. The goal is coming." True, and last night you couldn't fault his work rate. But, to repeat, his job is scoring goals. Going back to October, his early season form dipped for the first time following injury, with Conte saying that he needed more time to return to top form after missing chances against Bournemouth, including yet another convertible one-on-one opportunity.

If anything, Morata's apparent lack of confidence, with his feet at least. in front of goal draws the spotlight on Conte's need for a striker in the January window (the exact same problem that led to Fernando Torres joining the club in January 2011). Michy Batshuyai, the charismatic Belgian, is the de facto backup to Morata, but he has looked increasingly not the solution with every ten-minute cameo Conte has given him. Long-term, there's Tammy Abraham, who won't be recalled from loan, meaning that the only salvation for Chelsea's misfiring forwards is either an epiphany or a fresh injection of talent. And it's not entirely certain where that might come from. For now, Chelsea need to work - and work hard - on the training pitch at Cobham. They need to rediscover what you do with the ball in front of goal, regaining the confidence to not overplay and overelaborate, but shoot straight and true.

The Premier League is now clearly out of sight for all but Manchester City, but with this Saturday's league fixture against Leicester, next Wednesday's FA Cup replay against Norwich, the second leg of the Carabao Cup against Arsenal a week later, and Barcelona in the not-too distant future in the Champions League, Chelsea need a strikeforce as effective as their defence continues to be, thankfully. Because it's goals scored we pay to see, not goals saved...

So VAR, so what?

Viewers of last night's BT Sport coverage of the FA Cup Third Round tie between Brighton and Crystal Palace may have noticed occasional mention of VAR or Video Assistant Referee. Well, I say "may" and "occasional", but if truth be told, the game was so dull that commentator Ian Darke spoke of little else (including the compelling insight that Bakary Sako's 25-yard equaliser for Palace was so straight and true that VAR wasn't needed to provide adjudication. Thanks for that.).

The curiosity around VAR last night was, perhaps, understandable, given that it was the first competitive game in England to have the technology available. As it turned out, it was only used the once, to help Andre Marriner adjudicate on Glenn Murray's 87th-minute winner for Brighton, but even then video pictures couldn't conclusively confirm whether the ball had brushed the forward's arm before crossing the line. It hadn't, but the fact that VAR and TV cameras still couldn't reach a decision shows that perennial arguments in football will still continue, even with the potential adoption of this system.

VAR is, for now, a limited technology solution for resolving disputes, being restricted to four types of incidents - goals, penalties, straight red cards and cases of mistaken identity. The game's legislative body, the International Football Association Board is expected to decide next March whether VAR will become a permanent part of the game. But despite is apparent limitations (with the caveat that the 'human' referee is still the absolute arbiter of any game), VAR is a step in the right direction.

Far too many games these days are dominated by refereeing controversies, and these are exacerbated by the fact that football is overscrutinised. Ever since Sky introduced up to 13 cameras positions at major games, with most now broadcast in high definition (including 4K resolution), there's very little that anyone watching around the world can miss. Which means that by the time a professional referee has made a judgement, it will have been dissected countless times by TV pundits and Twitter experts alike, giving very little room for simple human error. This, in turn, is leading to referees seeking stress counselling. Now, I know this won't garner that much sympathy from the rank and file football fan, but if there's something the game needs, it's engaged, competent referees whose professional capabilities match those of the multi-millionaire players they are employed to police. Technology can only help, and in this respect football can even be accused of being well behind the times. Many other sports have adopted technology to improve decision making, transparency and to resolve time-consuming disputes, so it’s about time the world's most popular sport follows suit. It won’t resolve some of the more subjective arguments, of course, but if it means reducing those tedious issues that put referees in the spotlight rather than the 22 players supposedly providing the active entertainment, that can only be a good thing.

If manners maketh the man...

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It seems hard to believe that Christmas Day was just two weeks ago and we were in the midst of celebrating goodwill to all. But today's the day everything - and everyone - properly comes down to Earth with a bump: even if you were already back at the coalface last Tuesday, slightly hungover and still smelling of that Christmas gift perfume/aftershave you promised to keep wearing beyond Boxing Day, you may have been able to enjoy a few extra days of lighter roads and emptier trains thanks to the lucky minority who extended their festive break with a note from matron and a quick trip to the the Caribbean.

By lunchtime today, normal pre-Christmas blood pressure levels will have returned, as office routines are reapplied in full. You-know-who is once again forgetting to restock the printer paper, the annoying one has resumed her/his loud personal phone conversations in an already aggrieved open-plan office, and because it's winter, there will be the lunchtime odour of particularly pungent soup wafting across the desk opposite.

Assuming you were actually able to get to work, thanks to the rail strike, you will have already have experienced the kind of bad manners you'd blissfully forgotten about during the break. If you commute by train, you'll have endured standing room-only in a packed, sweaty carriage, the sounds of someone's iPhone playing Game Of Thrones without headphones or relentless sniffing as you realise that you're crammed into an eight-carriage Petri dish swimming with the latest winter ills. As you disembark, you'll have been bundled out the door by the twat with the folded Brompton bike, desperate to get on the road where, with his fellow legion of fluorescent Lycra-clad cycling orcs, he will make life misery for all other road users by regarding the cycle lane as merely a suggested thoroughfare while preferring the open road.

This might be a bit much to lay on the morning head, especially so soon in the week, and indeed so soon in the year. But the return to normal hostilities today is a reminder of just how bad mannered we've become. One of the things I smugly enjoyed whilst living abroad was Britain's supposed reputation for good manners. According to some, we doffed our hats to motorists as they invited us across pedestrian crossings, and we obsessively said sorry for everything, especially to the Tube station tripper when being tripped, despite being the tripee. Indeed, we Brits xenophobically use good manners to distinguish ourselves from sunbed-hogging, queue-jumping, a-please-wouldn’t-go-amiss Johnny Foreigner.

At risk of turning this into a Daily Express why-oh-why piece, there is no doubt that Britain, in the time I was living away from it, lost its civility. And no more so than in London. We charge down Underground escalators at five in the afternoon as if the last train of the day is about to leave, oblivious to the passengers left wobbling in our wake like teetering skittles. We bomb about glued to our smartphone screens, seemingly unaware of the proximity of any other warm body, apparently unable to detach ourselves from e-mail and social media to perform the simple task of walking down a busy street. And while it should be praised that Londoners are taking exercise, the proliferation of aggressive cyclists and joggers charging through pedestrians with arrogant superiority has led to a complete disregard for anything or anyone other than their own adrenaline-pumped, endorphin-rushed selves. Off the streets of London things aren’t much nicer: assuming you can get to a Tube station without being stabbed or have face-melting drain cleaner thrown at you, there are the overcrowded trains where people block doorways and don’t want to reduce the sweltering, sweaty inhumanity by opening a window for fear of upsetting the one passenger likely to complain they're cold.

I’m not alone in seeing this London. Late last year the influential Centre For London think tank published a report identifying the disappearance of civility in the capital and calling for a code to restore politeness and good citizenship. In particular it identified Londoners' main complaints, from pedestrians wandering aimlessly while looking at phones to the aforementioned cyclist scourge, and from lorries choking streets to passengers refusing to give up their Tube seats to those more in need. CFL has discussed its findings with Transport for London chiefs in the hope that some of them could be turned into guidelines that could eventually be incorporated into a rewritten Highway Code.

"Increasingly we live and walk and move in a bubble," said Patricia Brown, who helped commission the report, telling the Evening Standard: "We all need to realise that we’re part of a system and have to apply some sort of process to the way we move. Ultimately we don’t have enough space in the city for all of these different things to work in a perfect way. Some people are alert and very polite as they move around. But we get very frustrated with the increasing number of people that are in the bubble."

That frustration manifests itself with road rage (such as the motorist, Shanique Syrena, who screamed insults at BBC presenter Jeremy Vine as he cycled home, leading to a threat of knocking him out, a confrontation that led to her being found guilty of threatening and abusive behaviour and sentenced to nine months in prison). Underground, however, things are getting even worse, as platforms swell to dangerous levels of overcrowding during peak hours.

Last year there was a "dramatic" surge of public order incidents on the Tube with, in particular, "low-level violence", pushing and shoving, arguments and passive-aggressive behaviour becoming threatening, in the morning and evening peak commuting times, as well as on Friday and Saturday nights. Transport For London figures found that all forms of transport, with the exception of the bus network, "experienced an increase in the volume of reported crime and a higher rate of crime per million passenger journeys compared with the previous year." Now, while many of these incidents were criminal, rather than anti-social behaviour, the underlying trend of the latter were catnip to the rail unions spoiling for a fight over reduced staffing at stations.

Inevitably, all this negative energy does us no good. For those who commute by car, the absence of manners isn't any better, and according to a study published before Christmas, more than half a million people in the UK are seeing their work suffer due to the stress of driving to work. "Stress is bad for us in the morning because the cascading of stress hormones released can leave us feeling frazzled, reactive, anxious, low in mood and energetically depleted before the demands of the work day has even begun," Suzy Reading, a psychologist, specialising in wellbeing and stress management told the i newspaper. Commuting in London, in particularly, is stressful enough without that stress being exacerbated by stressed-out commuters being obnoxious and inconsiderate.

There are ways to mitigate the rude fellow commuter: Kerry Alison Wekelo, of the US consulting firm Actualize Consulting and author of the book Culture Infusion, recently told the New York Post that we should simply roll with the punches on difficult journeys to work: "Simply laugh out loud, or strike up a conversation with a stranger and say something like, ‘You could not make this up if you tried'," she suggests, along with, simply, breathing deeply to relieve anxiety and stress. And if that doesn't work...there's always the bigger picture: "If you cannot find balance, look for another job that will not require as long a commute," she told the Post. "If you are working or commuting too much, then you will not have the energy to be at your highest performance at work or home." It sounds simple, but with the recent hikes in rail ticket prices (in addition to the lousy services of some rail companies), you couldn't blame anyone for opting for a daily routine with civility built in.

For Queen and country: who will be the next Bond?

The BBC's cracking new organised crime drama McMafia has created a dilemma for the Beeb - what if its star, James Norton, gets poached to be the next James Bond? It's an interesting question: Daniel Craig has agreed to one more outing as 007, but by the time the film currently known only as 'Bond 25' appears on its target date of November 8, 2019, he will be 51 - two years older than Pierce Brosnan when his last, Die Another Day, was released (although Sir Roger Moore was 58 when he finally hung up the Walther PPK with A View To A Kill).

Age should not necessarily be a barrier, of course, but with the series becoming grittier and more physical for the lead actor since its reboot with Craig and Casino Royale in 2006, his seemingly petulant 2015 statement that he’d “rather slit his wrists” than do another Bond may have had some foundation. Craig's tone has, though, since changed (a lucrative contract will do that, of course) and it is believed that he will again be joined by Naomie Harris as Miss Moneypenny, Ben Whishaw as Q and Ralph Fiennes as M, with Yann Demange, directing. Neal Purvis and Robert Wade - who’ve written the last six Bond films - are also said to be working on the script.

As with the previous productions, the film's name and cast will probably only be revealed at a press event roughly a year before the movie opens, so late this year. Between now and the actual release date we will have to speculate on the plot, although apparent leaks have suggested that it will see Bond quit MI6 and get married. Not exactly the basis of a ripping action flick, though if it follows the plot of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, in which the newly-betrothed 007 quickly becomes a widower, then there are grounds for revenge and the usual mayhem can ensue.

Assuming, though, that '25' will be Craig's last Bond film, the race has already begun to replace him. After much (credible) speculation about Idris Elba (too old), Tom Hardy (too brawny and probably already too old) and Tom Hiddlestone (too fey), James Norton has emerged as a standout candidate. His current portrayal of Alex Godman, the English-raised son of Russian mobsters in McMafia, has possibly provided the same Bond audition as Layer Cake did for Daniel Craig (I rewatched it recently - he basically was Bond...). Ironically, McMafia's New Year's Day BBC1 premiere drew an audience of six million - a million more than the ITV premiere of Craig's last Bond film, Spectre. At least the BBC know they’ve got a couple of years to cram in more of its dramatisation of journalist Misha Glenny's non-fiction book before its star gets poached by the Broccoli family.

Picture: Nick Wall/BBC/Cuba

That said, as easy as it is to see the Cambridge-educated Norton as Bond on the back of his brooding role (not to mention well-cut tailoring) in McMafia, it is an altogether more gentle performance that marked him out for me as a possible 007: Diane Keaton's cocky but charming son in the soppy-but-amusing Hampstead. Throw in his more recent psychopathic turn in Line Of Duty, and you've got the perfect candidate to give James Bond a new lease of life in the next chapter of the longest running - and best - series in cinema history.

2017: that was the (music) year that was

So here it is - a shiny new year. We’ve rung out the old and are already getting on with the new. But to allow one last coquettish glance over the shoulder at 2017, there are a couple of reflections to note: because this was a year that commenced with the hangover of the prior annus horribilis and its morbid stream of departures, from Bowie to Prince to George Michael. We switched, then, from 2016's somewhat grim procession to 2017's irritating insanity, chiefly due to an elderly playboy with candy floss hair arriving at the White House in January and then on a daily - if not hourly - basis displaying all the characteristics of a petulant child in whatever first came to his mind while, clearly, carrying out his morning ablutions.

Thankfully, music intervened to provide a certain feelgood factor. In short, 2017 was a superb year for new music and live performances. Just cast your mind back to an unseasonally sunny June and Glastonbury: 12 months on from the Brexit referendum, a month after both the Manchester Arena bomb and a stuttering British government stuttering further with one of the most pointless general elections in history, three weeks after the London Bridge attack and two weeks after the Grenfell fire, music did its bit to perk up the nation, with Nile Rogers/Chic and the-now ‘Sir’ Barry Gibb cranking out guilty pleasures in the heritage slots, headliners Radiohead and Foo Fighters delivering unabashed crowd-pleasing enormity, and relative newcomers like The xx and Royal Blood proving that engaging live performances on a grand stage are far from over.

Further back, in April, there was a bonanza of consumption as Record Store Day generated treasures such as The The's first new music in an age (and an Elbow cover of one of their older songs), as well as sumptuous vinyl releases from the likes of Prince and T-Rex to make the brutally early start to queuing worthwhile. Throughout the year live music was equally as rich and rewarding for me personally, kicking off with Michele Stoddart in early January performing her beautiful Pieces album in its entirety at Camberwell’s Slaughtered Lamb. Later that month I made acquaintance with the brilliant Peter Bruntnell (and discovered that he's from both my home town and school); I saw Robert Howard, Matt Deighton and Chris Difford deliver a masterclass in songwriting and experienced Squeeze on their home patch for a communion of arguably the UK’s most prolific pop-rock band since The Beatles. And in the summer I celebrated the pure pop joy of Nick Heyward, not once but twice. Indeed, this year has been more about pop than rock for me…though thankfully without succumbing to the Faustian horror of Ed Sheeran and his guitar-looped wallpaper-drivel.

Sheeran, inevitably, features heavily in figures released yesterday by the BPI of how music was consumed in the UK during 2017. The numbers reveal that a total of 135.1 million albums were either streamed, purchased in a physical format, or downloaded - a 9.5% year-on-year rise and the third year of consecutive volume growth. Of significance is that streaming now accounts for over half of the UK's music consumption, with 68.1 billion audio streams served last year through Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and other services, a 51.5% rise on the previous year.

That said, my acquisition of mostly vinyl albums last year maintained a steady pace, to the extent that I actually ended the year with a pile of unlistened-to records more than a pile of those I had played. Clearly I have personally contributed to the growth of vinyl over the last decade: according to the BPI 4.1 million LPs were bought last year - an increase of 26.8% on 2016. That said, it does remain a niche (and, some might say an expensive one, too) with just one in 10 of all physical purchases made in 2017 being vinyl copies. Even the ageing CD represented just under a third of all formats.

Streaming, however, continues to attract converts. In a New Year blog post, my friend Steven Wilson - whose fifth solo album To The Bone was one of the brightest highlights of the year - wrote about his own, somewhat reluctant adoption of streaming formats: "For years I resisted non-physical distribution of music, I just couldn’t relate to music if it didn’t come as a physical piece of art that I could hold in my hands." He acknowledges, however, that streaming services do act as a 'try-before-you-buy' gateway, pointing out that his own album has been streamed eight million times in the four months since it was released. "While those numbers aren’t going to trouble the likes of Kendrick Lamar," he adds, "they are an indication that there are a lot of people out there beginning to discover and hear my music for the first time", pointing out that they might then go on to buy from his back catalogue, or come and see his live shows.

When it was released, To The Bone made it to number three in the album charts. Not bad for an artist many still have never heard of, and even more impressive when you consider that he was pipped to No.2 by someone called Elvis Presley by a relative handful of copies of a greatest hits package. Ed Sheeran - inevitably - remained at No.1 that week by selling a further 15,000 copies of Divide, a relentless achievement helped in part by grannies buying it at supermarket and petrol station checkouts.

I shouldn't be too critical of Sheeran (though his bland, universal appeal does stagger me...meaning that I will). Thank God for more interesting British pop acts, from Rag’n’Bone Man and Stormzy to Paloma Faith, all making for a very good year. It would be impossible to critique everything that passed through my ears in 2017, but particular mention should be given to the following:

Liam Gallagher - As You Were: Liam's reinvention as the macrobiotic, Hampstead Heath-jogging renaissance man (albeit one still hilariously lobbing Twitter grenades at Frère Noel) coincided with him producing the feelgood album of the year. Yes, it was full of Oasis-like stadium stormers, but wasn't that exactly what we wanted? And even if he had help, As You Were also demonstrated that the songwriting genes in the Gallagher family weren't entirely monopolised by his elder sibling. Speaking of whom...

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - Who Built The Moon?: News of a "psychedelic" third solo album from Gallagher proved unfounded. In fact, it took several listens to get any handle on what Who Built The Moon? actually was about. There were traces of Roxy/Sweet/Bolan glam, trademark NG irony, a scissor-playing French vocalist, a flirtation with the sort of Chemical Brothers sound Gallagher had experimented with earlier in his career, and some Britpop whimsy that harked back to prime Oasis. Collectively, and after several listens to be sure, Who Built The Moon? is up there with Liam's product as one of the best of 2017.

LCD Soundsystem - Anerican Dream: James Murphy's declaration that LCD Soundsystem had reached the end in 2011 seemed like a long goodbye when the sumptuous, five-LP live album of that description - The Long Goodbye: LCD Soundsystem Live At Madison Square Garden - made its appearance some years later (and was instantly added to my collection of the greatest live albums ever). So the appearance in 2017 of brand new material from Murphy and his collective, with its conscious and unconscious nods towards Bowie (who'd invited Murphy to work on the Blackstar album but declined citing a lack of worthiness), not to mention Talking Heads, was a surprise. And a welcome one, too. American Dream is a curious cocktail of the obscure and the enlightening, going beyond simply fan pleasing, although fans will be inevitably pleased by the sheer depth of what is dished up. Magnificent.
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Thundercat - Drunk: I’m a lazy music connoisseur: I should have my finger pressed more tightly on the pulse of what’s going on. Indeed, if it wasn’t for a late night visit to the BBC Radio 6 Music Festival in March I might never have come across the splendidly batshit-mad funk of Stephen Bruner - Thundercat - and his mesmerising six-string bass guitar prowess. Drunk pulled all that together into a 23-track album of the weird mixed with the conventional, of Stanley Clark-style jazz funk blended with traces of hip-hop and even FM radio soft rock, courtesy of guest appearances by Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald.

Father John Misty - Pure Comedy: Much is made of Josh Tillman’s wry takes on modern life and his somewhat capricious nature towards fans, rivals and indeed anyone who chooses to take him on, but there is no denying that if, like me, you’re a fan of ‘classic era’ Elton John (Tumbleweed Connection, Madman Across The Water, Honky Chateau et al), FJM’s unmistakably Elton-like vocal delivery is as comforting as a box of Quality Street comprised entirely of the green triangles. And that’s before you come to appreciate the smart lyrics that traverse between bittersweet and humour, while remaining smarter than most others out there. A masterpiece.

Portico Quartet - Art In The Age Of Automation: If every record went on its library classification, Portico Quartet’s four studio albums - including this one - would be hard to file. To some, it’s ambient noodling, to others jazz (“…just a series of mistakes without the 'oops’”, to quote Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnell), and to those more appreciative, clever, engaging electronica which thankfully stays clear of a suburban wine bar’s looped collection of Café del Mar compilations. Art In The Age Of Automation extensively explores over 11 tracks a variety of landscapes and textures, tinkering with the sparse grooves of trip-hop while applying varying thicknesses of layers with an orchestral approach that knows when to be sparing and when to be full on. This was my go-to record in 2017 for commuting or, simply, needing to come down after a more raucous night out on the tiles.

PP Arnold - The Turning Tide: Initiatives like Record Store Day deliver plenty of re-release treasures, but never something which has lain recorded but unreleased for close to half a century. PP Arnold - a former vocalist in the Ike & Tina Turner band and hit maker in her own right (First Cut Is The Deepest and Angel Of The Morning) - dusted off this hidden treasure, which had originally benefitted greatly from the significant involvement of Barry Gibb and the entertainment mogul Robert Stigwood, as well as Eric Clapton, members of his Delaney And Bonnie outfit, Steve Howe (of Yes) and others. The Turning Tide is a fascinating time capsule opened up, representing some of the best freewheeling pop-soul-rock of the late 1960s, including covers of material by Steve Winwood, Van Morrison, and the Glimmer Twins - Jagger and Richards. Bureaucracy, sadly, kept the recordings under lock and key, until Arnold and her manager, Sally Cradock (wife of Ocean Colour Scene/Paul Weller guitarist Steve) started picking at the strands of publishing complexity with an aim of finally getting the recordings released. With further mixing by Cradock's husband at Weller's Black Barn Studio, the resulting album sounds both fresh and a stunning snapshot of the time it was originally recorded, capped by the voice of one of the finest and under-appreciated soul singers ever.

Squeeze - The Knowledge: While not likely to win any prizes for sonic innovation, Squeeze's best album in more than two decades reinforced why, almost 40 years ago, we liked them to begin with: Chris Difford's lyrics, Glenn Tilbrook's uncannily accessible melodies. Wrapped up in an album loosely about the London they love (with specific reference to the south-east London of their youth - and my current dwelling), Squeeze produced a delightful compendium of observations about modern British life, from the state of the NHS to the ageing population, even including an edgy account of child abuse in youth football. National treasures, with a back catalogue - not just the singles - deserving of serious re-indulgence.

Paul Weller - A Kind Revolution: Arguably competing only with Neil Young for the shere rapidity of his output, Weller's umpteenth solo album since 1990 also set the tone for the summer of 2017. A Kind Revolution is chock-full of solid Weller ear-pleasers, although The Cranes Are Back must rank up there with You Do Something To Me for sheer soulful delightfulness.

Nick Heyward - Woodland Echoes: Weller's album may have set the tone for last summer, but the August release of Nick Heyward's first album in 18 years and only his seventh solo effort, proved to be one of the sunniest moments of the year, being a collection of pure bottled delight. That was, of course, the schtick of Haircut 100, back in the early 80s, but the precedents were good when, in the spring, Gary Crowley started playing the double-A side single Baby Blue Sky/Mountaintop, hinting at some breezy latent Britop to come, such as Perfect Sunday Sun, Beautiful Morning and Love Is The Key By The Sea. I saw Heyward live twice last year and on both occasions was left wondering how long it would be before he would be offered one of the feelgood spots at Glastonbury, such was the utterly infectious good time his canon delivers.

Elbow - Little Fictions: The release, just before Christmas, of Elbow's Best Of compilation, featuring their gorgeous cover of The Beatles' Golden Slumbers, gave timely reminder of the Mancunian quartet's status as arguably Britain’s favourite band. And with good reason: for all the festival singalong/wavealong favourites like One Day Like This and Mirrorball, Elbow have successfully retained enough indie credibility to save them from persecution by those curmudgeons who eschew such popular fare. In that respect, Elbow are like few other acts with such popularity (yes, you Sheeran), in producing vivid, layered (some might even say 'prog') rock, with instrumental curiosity and the genuine warmth of Guy Garvey's persona. Little Fictions is the album (their seventh) where you felt that Elbow were fully comfortable in their skins, kicking off with a sense of wellbeing as Magnificent (She Says) struck a resonant keynote of upbeat goodness, along with the lovely Gentle Storm, with its understated chords and unashamed, plaintive refrain "Fall in love with me - every day". From almost anyone else this might be schmaltz, but it sits amongst a collection embracing themes as varied as relationships, post-Brexit national isolation and Fleet Street's vampiric tendencies. As I wrote on Little Fictions' release, it's easy to declare a band's latest album their best, until you play it back in comparison with the previous work. And even though its six predecessors are mostly excellent, it was hard not to consider this Elbow's best yet.