2019 Albums Of The Year

© Simon Poulter 2019

2019. Quite literally, to paraphrase Mike Smash, 12 months which began on January 1st and come to an end today. As every year, one with plenty of ups and downs, arrivals and departures (not the least of which my dad, who left this world in August, just a few months after his 90th birthday, and the job I left barely two weeks after we'd said our final farewells to him). A year of change and personal reflection, then, while the world around us raged (in the UK, at least), pretty much from start to finish about Brexit. There was more lunacy from Trump, an angry Swedish teenager kicked up dust about climate change, Greggs launched a vegetarian sausage roll, and the British royal family found themselves up to their eyes in car accidents, fraternal discord, media bating and media avoidance.

As ever, music has been a constant soundtrack, and there has been no shortage of it - both live (Doves at the Albert Hall, Paul Weller in Greenwich, Richard Hawley in a church, Kaiser Chiefs in a sweaty old nightclub, a bizarre evening with Roy Harper, the mighty Second Sons in a Raynes Park pub) and on record. So, here goes with my albums of 2019, a list of ten that took some narrowing down to a line-up that has brought pleasure to my ears in a year of mixed blessings personally (happy and sad) and professionally, a year made all the more better by the following:

Album Of The Year 2019 - King Of Madrid by Peter Bruntnell

I was a slow convert to Bruntnell, which is another way of saying I’d missed out on an extensive body if work dating back to 1995, including albums like the acclaimed Normal For Bridgwater. And then, a couple of years ago, a friend of mine invited me up to Tufnell Park to see Bruntnell and his ‘full’ band squeezed onto a basement stage, and after a brilliant set of wry, Americana-tinged jangly guitar pop, I was sold. Only later did I discover that Bruntnell grew up near me and went to my junior and secondary schools, five years ahead of me. Only later still did I discover that his mum knows my my mum. While all of that are, ultimately, nice coincidences, it’s the music, man, that draws me to his brilliance. King Of Madrid, his tenth album in 24 years, encapsulates all that I admire, as well as all that frustrates me about him: from the opener, Broken Wing, Bruntnell expounds on the state of Britain from various perspectives via a collection of ten songs, co-scripted with Canadian writing partner Bill Ritchie. It’s understandable that Bruntnell should get earmarked as an Americana artist, or even 'alt-country', but the likes of National Museum and even the gently lilting title track lend more to the great roots of American guitar music, from Wilco to Tom Petty (with a noted nod to Beatle-esque melodicism, as on Dinosaur). It’s pithy, it’s invigorating, and it hasn’t been out of my car’s CD player since it was released in May. So what is it that frustrates me about Peter Bruntnell? Well, he’s another of my lost causes. Like my childhood friend Steven Wilson (more below on him...), Bruntnell is another local connection to my origins who I’ve come to discover writes and records my kind of music. And yet he is known largely to a cognoscenti of musos. Both Wilson and Bruntnell deserve far greater status than they currently occupy. Wilson is starting to get there, with a new record company (Caroline, part of the Universal Music Group) getting him ever greater exposure, driving ever greater attention including a forthcoming mega-arena tour. Bruntnell, on the other hand, remains resigned to something akin to a cult following, especially in the United States where he tours frequently. It’s a shame, but on the evidence of King Of Madrid he deserves to be better known and better heard. Much, much better. An outstanding album from an outstanding artist.

2. WHO - The Who

It's impossible for the surviving legends of '60s pop - Macca, the Stones, Ray Davies, et al - to maintain their brilliance six decades on without resorting to repetition, self-reference and nodding winks. If you’re Jagger & Co, you have the wealth of classic blues to retread or simply reapply their patent DNA to; Paul McCartney has done well, with his recent efforts, not to overdo the knowing fabness, even to the extent of being quite cool still; and Davies, rather than pursuing a confected version of his particular place in Britpop's original geolocation, has followed his instincts down the path of Americana with his most recent albums. Others from the era - Neil Young springs immediately to mind - continue to show the generation inspired by their era what longevity is about. Paul Weller shows no signs of slowing up, and if he did, he’d be shamed by The Who, who’s surviving members, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend shipped their 12th studio album, WHO in December. The band's first new album in 13 years, it took a decidedly nostalgic path, reflecting on where the 'Orrible 'Oo's surviving members have found themselves looking back, accepting their lack of relevance but also their place in cultural history (exemplified by the album's Peter Blake cover art). This might sound wistful, both lyrically and sonically, but for the most part, it is a wonderfully energetic record, not reliant too much on atypical Who flourishes, but with just enough guitar crashes from Pete Townshend and vocal gymnastics from Roger Daltrey to remind of what took you to the band to begin with. Daltrey himself rates WHO as one amongst their strongest ("our best album since Quadrophenia in 1973") and he's not at all far wrong. Townshend himself is still a fantastic writer, with the majority of WHO's strong songs being good enough to let the sappy I'll Be Back pass without further comment. Who knows if it'll be their last, but if it is, there would be no finer finale.

3. Ghosteen - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds

Like many artists who've earned near-unconditional adoration throughout their careers, especially those who might be described as being of the left field, it took a punt on Ghosteen for me to be finally won over to the Antipodean with the distinct baritone. But here was an album, seeped in the grief of Cave's teenage son's accidental death in 2015, which appeared a month after my own dad's funeral, which provided a welcome, if moving accompaniment to my journeys around the M25 between south-east and south-west London. Ghosteen's catharsis comes in the form of ethereal landscapes, literally fog-like keyboard beds and sombre piano that underlay Cave's distinct vocals. There's rarely any reason to question who the songs are about, but there's no overt wailing either. If it was intended to be Cave's processing of his son's death, it is never self-indulgent. It is, however, breathtakingly beautiful.

4. Giants Of All Sizes - Elbow

Elbow's eighth album is, according to the band, anything but cuddly, contrary to the somewhat avuncular profile of its frontman, Guy Garvey. Don't, however, take that to mean it's a gloomfest - Giants Of All Sizes is still very much an Elbow album, replete with Garvey's cocoa-warm voice bound to a band experimenting with sounds and instrumentation without going too far - but contained within that experimentation is a darker tonality. From the off,  opener Dexter & Sinister and its disjointed time signatures and non-sequitur breaks addressing a number of things on Garvey's mind, from Brexit to bereavement (including the death of his father) and, in his own words, "the general sense of disaffection you see all-around at the moment". Musically, some might find Giants musically narrow, with a very similar range across its nine songs and a notable lack of a One Day Like This anthem, but this lack of width makes for a better album. It is one that places itself in the company of the more melodic reaches of prog rock (Garvey is a fan), which doesn't mean endless organ solos, but a rich variety of tone and layers, rhythms and storytelling. Like Cave's Ghosteen, Elbow's Giants Of All Sizes also addresses grief and loss, but with what I call "balanced grace", looks for light in the darkness by placing arrivals in the proper perspectively. Some reviewers have (quite rightly) claimed it to be Elbow's best yet and, on reflection, it probably is - brilliantly intriguing, musically, and obliquely reflective, lyrically. One I listened to on repeat for most of the Saturday afternoon after it was released, hearing something new each time, pulling it closer like a warm blanket on a cold, wet October afternoon, a comfort no Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks will ever fulfil.

5. Kiwanuka - Michael Kiwanuka

A late entry in my albums of the year, on account of it being given to me for Christmas by my 18-year-old university student step-daughter, bought with her own money. What a wise young woman she is...and, notably, properly plugged in to what makes me tick, musically. I'm not, however, normally given over to hyperbole. I've habitually given anything a mighty swerve that's been raved about by the cool brigade. So, when Kiwanuka was received in November by The Guardian as "one of the greatest albums of the decade" I was naturally deflected. I'd heard, from reviews of Michael Kiwanuka's first two albums that here we had a musically literate, experimental lab scientist, a soulful Heston Blumenthal making clever musical cocktails, much like the last fusion hero to come along, Thundercat. As smart as all that was, Kiwanuka is way more rewarding. Through subtle textures, rather than brash pronouncements, it serves up reflective soul of the kind Otis Redding rarely got credit for, but with elements of gospel, orchestral grandeur and even shades of Hendrix. There have been plenty of soul pretenders over the decades, including those trying to do soul with a twist. This, finally, delivers all that. Sublime. And thanks Ella x.

6. Further - Richard Hawley

The same friend who introduced me to Peter Bruntnell was on a roll, then, having previously introduced me to Sheffield's pre-eminent crooner, Richard Hawley. A Sunday morning free stream of Hawley's Standing At The Sky's Edge, courtesy of The Observer, introduced me to an album of distortion-drenched psychedelic epics that I listened to exclusively for what seemed like weeks. Two weeks after the Bataclan attack in Paris, where I was living at the time, Hawley's gentle humour and mellifluous songs were, that night, just what Paris needed. A musical arm around the shoulder. Soothing reassurance. With this year's release Further, Hawley returned to the mellifluousness of his earlier, countrified releases, dreamily shimmering with songs like Emilina Says, Galley Girl and My Little Treasures, and the Beatle-esque Doors. Four years after those terrible events in Paris, and in a world more politically febrile than ever, Hawley's songs and engaging lyrics have been a soothing balm in troubled times, and none more so than on this album.

7. Western Stars - Bruce Springsteen

The Boss has been in a reflective mood of late. In the five years between Western Stars and his previous studio album, he released his excellent autobiography, Born To Run, and ran his one-man Springsteen On Broadway for more than a year. All of this became part of a narrative of reflection as Springsteen neared the end of his 60s, recalling in his work the blue collar New Jersey upbringing, the thunderclaps of seeing Elvis and The Beatles' debuts on The Ed Sullivan Show, and his own journey to become America's most earnest rock star. Western Stars, Springsteen's 19th studio album casts a winsome gaze over the cowboy culture of Roy Rogers and the early 1950s television the young Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen was exposed, framing further the America Springsteen has, in one way, shape or another, eulogised throughout his career, but seen now through the prism of it’s most dramatic, some might even say disturbing schism in several generations. Springsteen has been telling his own American Story since Born To Run "sprung from cages out on Highway 9", but in Western Stars he places his America in a context of the deserts and vast scrublands west of the Mississippi for the challenges they present now, and while this may be a reflection on his own, perhaps surprising struggles with mental health, the 'home on the range' expression on Western Stars provides an outlet for the desire for mental freedom as much as traditional American expressions of the frontier spirit.

8. The New Adventures Of...PP Arnold - PP Arnold

There are plenty of artists of a certain vintage whom you could call tardy for the distances that open up between recordings. Peter Gabriel comes straight to mind, for the dilettantism that sends him off in multiple directions without bringing him back to what he does best (his last album of original new songs was Up in 2002 - almost 18 years ago). Patricia Ann Cole - professionally known as PP Arnold - might have a greater claim. In the '60s she became part of the musical fabric: haling from LA's troubled Watts district, she joined Ike and Tina Turner's soul review as an Ikette before remaining in London after a tour with the Rolling Stones, establishing a solo career there that led to work with the Small Faces and other luminaries of late '60s swinging London. Around this time she recorded her standout hits, The First Cut Is the Deepest and Angel of the Morning, and the albums The First Lady Of Immediate in 1967 and Kafunta in 1968. A third album, The Turning Tide was recorded around the turn of that decade, with Barry Gibb and Eric Clapton producing, but it was never finished and the recordings lay dormant until 2017, when Arnold resurrected and released the album. The intervening years hadn't exactly rendered Arnold idle - as a singer-for-hire she worked with people like Clapton and Roger Waters, but the voice that enchanted so many with The First Cut Is The Deepest held a lasting fascination with Paul Weller and his guitarist (and Ocean Colour Scene co-founder) Steve Craddock, who offered Arnold a bunch of their songs. The New Adventures Of... PP Arnold is the product of that offering, produced by Craddock, it showcases the 72-year-old Arnold has still possessing a voice of some beauty, via a mix of the Weller/Craddock material, as well as engaging covers of Sandy Denny's I'm A Dreamer and Mike Nesmith's Different Drum. Coming more than 50 years since she last committed her amazing voice to original material, you can only wonder what we've missed out on in the intervening years.

9. Warm/Warmer - Jeff Tweedy

Wilco crept up on me as a band I should like. Again, put off by hype, there seemed to be just too much gushing about them. And then I came across their Star Wars album in 2015 and, a decade-and-a-half since their Yankee Foxtrot breakthrough, I was kicking myself at what I'd missed. Earlier this year I was kicking myself at having completely missed the release of frontman Jeff Tweedy's 2018 solo album Warm, so when the record was re-released as a double package with the subsequent Warmer I was determined not to make the same mistake again. Recorded together in the same Chicago session, these twin albums find Tweedy in a soothingly laid-back frame of mind, both lyrically and musically. The albums' titles give this away. With Wilco themselves also releasing this year Ode To Joy (see below), there has been a generous doling out of comfort food from Tweedy and his cohorts (which include son Spencer on drums of these two solo releases), applying his wry turn of phrase on tracks like Evergreen and Ten Sentences with his gently abrasive country-folk melodies and a voice that always reminds me of Eels' Mark Everett - slightly gravelly and delightfully claustrophobic without being weird. Warmer's highlight is the sign-of-the-times commentary of Family Ghost, a striking commentary on the divisions of Trump's America and the dangerous empowerment of the right by news outlets like Fox News. Comparing Tweedy with Bruce Springsteen, as some critics have attempted, is a redundant task, but there are more clear parallels between the two than you might at first realise. There is, of course, the liberal earnestness, and you'd even go as saying that they operate in different spheres of the same alt-folk universe. Warm/Warmer, however, prove that even with such deliberately understated material, released more for the fun of Record Store Day than any serious tilt at the charts, that Tweedy is a performer and writer of gifted proportions. And, thankfully, there's a lot more left in him to come.

10. Echo In The Canyon OST

One of my favourite eras of the pop age is the period towards the end of the 1960s and early 1970s when the wooded canyons north of Los Angeles effectively constituted a large commune of bed-hopping, dope-smoking hippies making love and sweet music at the same time. The definitive written guide to this era - and its principle characters - can be found in Barney Hoskyns' brilliant (if lengthily titled) Hotel California: Singer-Songwriters & Cocaine Cowboys In The L.A. Canyons. Hoskyns' book recounts the music and the inter-personal relationships of people like Joni Mitchell, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, The Eagles, James Taylor, Jackson Browne and the record executive David Geffen, as they indulged high in the Hollywood hills during the daytime and played hard in the clubs of Sunset Boulevard in the nights. It was the musical premise of this period that caught my attention when the documentary Echo In The Canyon came out in the US in late 2018, focusing on the extraordinary creativity that came out of LA's Laurel Canyon as folk music met pop and the green shoots of rock with bands like The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and The Mamas and the Papas, drawing on the The Beatles, partly, to create a Californian sound of its own. Drawn into this world were some of the figures covered in Hoskyns' book, but also the likes of Eric Clapton (as his meteoric career pinballed from one band to another, one style to another) as well as younger entrants to the scene, like the aforementioned Browne and Tom Petty. Andrew Slater's Echo In The Canyon delves into the figures that made the Canyon scene, with Bob's son Jakob Dylan fronting the documentary (which I've now managed to see on DVD). Inevitably, such a rich musical subject matter as this produces a fantastic soundtrack, centred around Dylan, and featuring recordings from many of those who feature in the film, including Josh Homme, Norah Jones, Fiona Apple, Clapton and Stephen Stills, and Beck, who covers Goin' Back, the Goffin/King song written for Dusty Springfield (and a regular feature in Peter Bruntnell's live sets). It's a celebration of songwriting craft at its best, but a craft that matured delightfully in a particular window in time.

Worthy of mention

• Lost Girls - Bat For Lashes: Welcome return from Natasha Khan, AKA Bat For Lashes, with something of a concept album about a gang of biker women roaming a dystopian Los Angeles. I've probably not done the concept justice here, but the record is exquisite.
• Free - Iggy Pop: Trailed by the delightfully kitsch (and radio-friendly) single James Bond, the Iggster's 18th studio album finds the so-called "Godfather of Punk" in contemplative mood (well, at 72 he had to start calming down sooner or later) as he considers life after the big tours have started to come to an end. With half its tracks written by LA-based guitar wizz Sarah Lipstate, others including one whose lyrics were written by Lou Reed in 1970 and another drawing on the Dylan Thomas poem Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, it's a calmer Pop record than we've become used to, and with a somewhat improvised feel to it, too. None of which is a bad thing, either.  
• Threads - Sheryl Crow: billed as Crow's final album (she decided that it was no longer worth competing in the age of single-track listens via streaming sites), Threads pairs Crow with a variety of partners from the legend end of rock's executive lounge, with a combination of covers and original songs. And it is mostly fabulous. Collaborations with Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt and Mavis Staples are sublime, although we could have done without the cover of George Harrison’s Beware Of Darkness featuring Sting and Brandi Carlisle. As an exercise in the application of professional friendships, Threads can’t be faulted, but it is at its best when Crow’s natural songwriting ability around with rock-blues roots comes to the fore and you don’t, actually, care all that much who she’s working with on the track.
• Ode To Joy - Wilco: I've already waxed on above about Jeff Tweedy's twin contribution to the 2018/2019 album story, but at risk of presenting him as a greedy sod, he also managed to get the band together this year to produce Ode To Joy, which it is. It's a somewhat gentle album, but since I would probably, now, rate a Wilco album that was essentially 12 tracks of nails and screws being thrown into a bowl, I've got plenty of bandwidth for an album from them that doesn't tread expected routes. You could even look upon it as a romantic album. There, I said it.
• Anima - Thom Yorke/Flowers At The Scene - Tim Bowness/Love You To Bits - No-Man: I've lumped together my final three new albums at risk of annoying the artists involved. No, they're not identical, but there are behavioural patterns behind those who've made them. Thom Yorke's Anima (a somewhat hoity-toity reference to Carl Jung) is a darkly layered collection of electronic music that, on my first listen while driving around the M25, left me underwhelmed. And slightly unfit to drive on account of its somnambulant dangers. Subsequent listens improved my appreciation considerably, especially tracks like the opener Traffic and the stunning The Axe. Truly a master at work. As is Tim Bowness, the Cheshire musician known perhaps best for his work with Steven Wilson in No-Man (see next), but who has worked with a range of musicians to produce brilliant albums seeped in ambience and depth that, thankfully, defy any definitive labelling. His latest, Flowers At The Scene brought him together with guests like 10cc's Kevin Godley, XTC's Andy Partridge, Peter Hammill and, as co-producer, that man Wilson again, like his compadre's own move towards greater mainstream accessibility, draws together bold strands of pop, soundscapes and confessional lyrics to create one of the year's most engaging records. Which brings us to No-Man's Love You To Bits. Long before Wilson was shifting significant critical acclaim with Porcupine Tree, he and Bowness were, starting in 1987, experimenting with whatever took their fancy with No-Man, first finding attention with their Flowermouth album in 1994 (featuring Robert Fripp, no less) and presenting to the world a showcase for their own hugely eclectic musical tastes - dance music, ambient music, acoustic, electronic. Love You To Bits is Bowness and Wilson's first full album together as No-Man since 2008, and dives headfirst into their mutual love of synth pop. Taking the quintessentially prog approach of spanning the album over, essentially, two tracks - Love You To Bits (Bits 1-5) and Love You To Pieces (Pieces 1-5), Bowness and Wilson resurrected an idea that had been around for a decade or two, of an album that nodded to their love of bands like New Order and Talk Talk, rich in synths and drum machines and the sort of electronic dance music - there, I've said it - that were a core part of their music consumption in the early 1990s. The cover image, of a glitter ball tees up the opening phase of the Love You To Bits side, proper 4-4 disco stomp that, actually goes beyond just guilty pleasure territory, but is genuinely infectious, as is the rest of the album, which, over its two sides, explores the breakup of a relationship from the perspectives of its two principals. The second side opens on a jazzier note - no surprise given its use of Wilson's touring keyboard player, Adam Holtzman, the last ivory tinkler to work for Miles Davis, but spreads out over its five sections into a wonderful stew of trance-like club music. For those who've followed Wilson's career in particular, and who have (wrongly) formed the view that he is a standard-bearer for prog rock, you must remember that the two albums that sparked his interest to begin with were Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon (a Christmas present from his mother to his father) and Donna Summer's Love To Love You Baby (a Christmas present from his father to his mother). Both would shape the career of an extraordinary, if still criminally under-rated artist, a description he easily shares with Bowness. 

Back For More

• Abbey Road - The Beatles: Re-released with all the bumper package options to celebrate its 50th anniversary, the basic album alone is worth a re-listen, let alone all the outtakes and curiosities that come with the 'super deluxe edition'. Of course, Abbey Road depicts The Fabs'  last hurrah (yes, yes, I know all about Let It Be...) but also a now-mature rock band seemingly comfortable in its skin and, at times, its own company. Doesn't matter how many copies you own, this is a retread worth every penny.
• London Calling - The Clash: Another anniversary waltz, but even if you bought the 30th anniversary edition, adding another ten years hence, with the accompanying storybook package, is worth your hard-earned for, quite frankly, the best album of the punk era, largely because it wasn't punk at all.
• VH1 Storytellers - David Bowie: Since The Dame's death in 2016 there has been a steady industry of releasing luxurious packages of his cannon, from the complete sequence of studio and live albums to the recent box of his early development. The VH1 Storytellers album originally came out in 2009, ten years after Bowie had actually appeared in VH1's live performance Storytellers series. Dipping into Bowie's career, as far back as Life On Mars, right up to material for the under-appreciated Hours album, the somewhat stripped back sample of the man's work actually serves to highlight just how good he was. Understatement, right?
• Let It Bleed - Rolling Stones: Yes, another nice bone to throw the Stones' pension pots, but why not? Let It Bleed found the Stones at their louche best, with stonkers like Gimme Shelter, Midnight Rambler and You Can't Always Get What You Want standing out, even despite close-run gems like Country Honk and Monkey Man. Another 50th anniversary release, with all the trimmings that entails in the heritage market, it's one of those Stones albums you simply go out and buy again, and listen as if new.
• Mark Hollis - Mark Hollis: Talk Talk frontman Hollis' death in February this year took the wind out of many's sails, not least of which mine. What compounded that emotion was that Hollis's work was as sparse as the songs he often recorded. And none more so than this, his only solo album, released in 1998 (and again in 2003 as an LP only), but still often forgotten, or even dismissed as being unlistenable due to its achingly hushed material, of the kind cynics might say could only have been heard of by mountain rescue dogs. This new vinyl re-release addresses many of the snarks and even complaints about the sonic dullness of the original, being slightly brightened up in the studio and released as a posthumous curiosity for those who loved all Hollis did with Talk Talk and, even with its obvious limitations, would find interest in now.

London royalty: the Soho Dukes

© Simon Poulter 2019

Living in Greenwich, as I partially still do, I am constantly reminded of the emergence of the so-called New Wave in the late 1970s. All around this corner of south-east London there are venues that played host to legends of pub rock that were a vital part of the New Wave. Squeeze, in particular, loom large in this story, gigging in and around Greenwich and Deptford (Glenn Tillbrook still lives and works from a studio in Charlton), and there are tales from varying ends of the Old Kent Road of bands like Nine Below Zero, Dr Feelgood, Kilburn And The High Roads (and their successors, Ian Dury & The Blockheads) and even Dire Straits plying their trade in the pubs of the area. Dire Straits' debut single, Sultans Of Swing, was even inspired by a jazz band playing a near-deserted pub in Deptford.

Before the term ‘pub rock’ became coined, there was no shortage of back rooms in pubs hosting bands. The Rolling Stones got their break with a residency at the Crawdaddy Club, a back room at The Station Hotel in Richmond-upon-Thames which was a glorified pub itself. A couple of years later, The Yardbirds - featuring the teenage Eric Clapton - built a similar following in the same part of south-west London. Clapton himself had grown his reputation by busking in the pubs of nearby Kingston. It was perhaps fitting, then, that he signed his professional terms to join The Yardbirds in a pub down the road in New Malden. Today, the term 'pub rock' covers a multitude of exponents and it is, perhaps, a lazy term, but does still validly cover that strata of the music industry that can be found on any given night of the week knocking out a combination of standards and their own tunes to an audience of punters getting ever-so-slightly sozzled, and ever-so-slightly deaf. A case in point is the Cavern Freehouse in Raynes Park, a couple of miles up the road from the pub where Clapton turned pro, and typical of the kind of local haunts where, on any given night of the week, an erstwhile act will be pumping out some chugging boogie. Unashamedly named after its more famous Liverpool namesake, thanks to proprietor Noel being a proud Scouser and Beatles fan, the Raynes Park Cavern is typical of venues where you’ll find good quality, honest-to-goodness pub rock. Such as, on this particular Wednesday night, courtesy of the Soho Dukes.

Formed by rhythm guitarist Colin ‘The Duke’ Foster (a New Malden-raised lad himself), together with seasoned pub rockers Johnny Barracuda (vocals), Si Leach (lead guitar), Mark 'Bomber' Randon (bass) and Adrian Blackwell (drums), the Dukes are a lively brew, drawing quite happily on a number of Route 1 influences. Significantly, they write their own songs, rather than rely on an overworked canon of standards. “It’s all about the song for me,” says Foster, the band’s chief songwriter. “Always has been, always will be.” That is always the essence of any good pub rock band. As Bono once said, “All I want is a red guitar, three chords and the truth”. Well, we’re not far off here. No vibey keyboards, no elaborate backing tapes, just a couple of guitars, a bass, drums and a highly charismatic front man.

© Simon Poulter 2019

“The idea behind the Dukes was to take all the influences we love and create a very British band,” Foster says. “One that you could find trawling the streets of Soho, clutching a can of Party Seven in between falling in and out of pubs, bars and venues! It struck me that the musical history and heritage of Soho and its surrounding areas was that of hosting some of the greats in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. So, why not celebrate the area that gave us so much music - places like the Marquee, the St. Moritz Club, the Borderline, Astoria, and so on. Soho is a place where the Dukes had either individually or collectively spent so much time breathing in the sights and sounds. Hence the Soho Dukes: something regal but with dirt under the fingernails”.

And there certainly is plenty of that. This is pub boogie at its best, with songs like Angel Walk, Pablo’s Place, Murdertown and tracks off their recent Three Sheets To The Wind EP drawing on an even wider range of influences to Foster’s writing style. “My influences are many and varied,” he says, “but right at the top of the list are the Stones - Keith’s guitar playing and Mick’s vocal phrasing. But you can add to that Slade lighting up Top Of The Pops [in the 70s] with rabble-rousing anthems; Rod Stewart’s voice and the good-time vibe that The Faces would bring to the bar room table. From across The Pond you’ve got the likes of John Mellencamp and Tom Petty, while back in Blighty, Tyla from the Dogs D'Amour , who is a huge influence on my song writing. Tyla’s lyrics and melodies set to a backdrop of simple, three or four open chords.”

The influences don’t end there: “I love both electric and acoustic compositions,” says Foster. “Take the Black Crowes: Rich Robinson’s guitar on Shake Your Moneymaker and Chris Robinson’s voice, but also the songs overall on that album. Then you’ve got The Quireboys, with their Mott The Hoople/Faces-influenced rock n roll and Spike’s voice; Phil Mogg from UFO’s vocals and lyrics; Blondie with their delicious pop songs and Clem Burke’s Keith Moon-style drums; early Police, Aerosmith, Hanoi Rocks, Zep, ELO and Jeff Lynne’s eloquent songwriting. Cheap Trick’s zany songs and delightful pop melodies. The list goes on…”

It could indeed go on, such is Foster’s unbridled enthusiasm for collating his influences and shoving them into the music blender. All are readily audible in the Dukes’ music, and fronted by the delightfully eccentric Barracuda, one of those lead singers who can transform themselves into something that can’t be ignored with just the addition of an undertaker’s hat and a pair of sunglasses. Married to Foster’s boogietastic compositions, Barracuda draws on Rod Stewart's phrasing, Ian Dury's comic timing and New Wave figures such as Wreckless Eric and Elvis Costello. He’ll even throw in some literary effect: “The wit of Raymond Chandler. The imagery of Ray Bradbury's prose,” he says. “It's all different flavours of genius. And I'd kill for just 1% of it.”

“Weekend Millionaire was the song that, for me, started to properly define the direction the band has taken,” Barracuda explains. “It's become a bit of an anthem for us and was a natural to record for the EP.” Another is Analogue Man: “It’s about an obstinate old boy standing firm against the march of technology, and and possibly more than a little autobiographical! Usually Col and I will develop a song together; guitars and vocal melodies evolving simultaneously. Songs definitely taste better when they're grown organically. ... And we'll generally start with a chorus and work our way outwards. But Analogue Man was an exception. A vocal melody suggested itself as I was writing the words. Col grabbed it, twisted it into shape and then the band took it to another level entirely. This one won't appear on the first album, in the final stages of completion, but it'll definitely feature on the second. I'm already looking forward to recording it.”

With a name evoking that most central area of central London, the Soho Dukes have a distinct Britishness about them. That doesn’t mean Barracuda adopting Steve Marriott’s Itchycoo Park vocal persona, but more of a lyrical geolocation bound with the American roots of their music. No more is this exemplified than Think Of England, which evokes “supposedly better times”, according to Barracuda. “An England gone forever. An England of fizzy bitter, Marc Bolan and Randall and Hopkirk. It's the Dukes' national anthem. 'Lie back, think of Eng-er-lannnnd!' One for the teenagers…,” he giggles. The song makes references to “back seats at the Odeon”, taking the “last bus home and change out of a shilling”. Resolutely old imagery, but imagery that takes a welcome baseball bat to the latent neanderthal tendency in Britain today that views a return to the 1970s of The Sweeney as being a healthy one. Don’t, however, see this as a Richard Digence-style reminiss about Spangles, Bazookas and Knock-down Ginger. Or see the Dukes as any kind of revivalists. In fact, there’s more going forward for them than going back.

The Soho Dukes will play the 'Camden Rocks' all-day event at Club Kolis (The Lounge 666), 1 Archway Road, London N19, on 29 February - Leap Day. Their three-track EP Three Sheets To The Wind can be downloaded from www.sohodukes.com.  

My favourite aunt

I owe a great deal to the BBC. My late father worked there for 35 years (that's him, behind the camera). I was brought up in a BBC household, rarely ever watching ITV (remember, kids, there was a time when there were just three - THREE! - channels...) appreciating what the corporation provided the nation and even the world, via its television and radio output. There was also its authority. It’s journalism was beyond question, its presenters peerless. And, best of all, you could watch a film at Christmas without interruption from adverts. As a child, I was able to visit Television Centre often, thanks to my dad. I’ve sat ‘in’ Daleks, been on the Blue Peter set, met the legend that was Brian Cant and still is Johnny Ball, Crackerjack presenters and Roy Castle, and was able to get precious tickets to be in the studio audience of Top Of The Pops. OK, all that was privilege, but they still emboldened my appreciation for the institution that is the BBC.

So, I’m naturally biased towards Auntie. However, within that very nickname lies the reason it, today, comes under attack from every direction like never before. Just look at the last six weeks: politicians from both sides have accused the BBC of editorial bias towards one side or another and, now Boris has landslid into No.10, the murmurings and mutterings have begun again about the sanctity of the TV licence fee, which funds everything from the Beeb’s television output to five of the UK’s 13 symphony orchestras. Paying for a licence is therefore considered to be a contribution to the national cultural fabric.

The inescapable truth, however, is whether this is still relevant. The days when the ever-cheerful Christmas Day episode of EastEnders drew audience figures of more than 20 million - somewhere close to a third of the population - are long gone. Ditto big-budget dramas and variety shows. Even a big draw like the Strictly Come Dancing final this year lost a million viewers from 2018. Thishas nothing to do with the quality of the BBC’s output (as the profoundly anti-Beeb Daily Mail would have you believe) but, simply, the continuing drain on so-called “terrestrial” audiences (an anachronistic phrase given the availability of most terrestrial programming on catch-up services) from other places. Kids, in particular, are just as likely to be consuming television in bite-sized chunks from YouTube, mainlining Jack Whitehall box sets on Netflix, or glued to TikTok*. And with that particular service commissioning ever more ambitious series and co-investing in semi-theatrical films like The Irishman, plus the inroads made by Amazon Prime to original programming of its own, the television landscape has shifted further than I think many people with a traditional view of it realise.
*A teenager reliably informs me

30 years ago I was involved in the last great revolution in British broadcasting, the launch of Sky TV. Then, on 5th February 1989, five new TV channels were added to that landscape on a single day, just seven years after the UK had gone from three to four. Today there are around 460. Something - quite a lot, actually - has to give: if you’re watching Lisa Snowdon’s Jewellery Collection on QVC you won’t be watching Pointless on BBC1. And yet you still need to have a TV licence to watch La Snowdon flogging her sparkly wares. No wonder there have long been Tory murmurings about the licence fee (most recently, the idea of decriminalising non-payment, a thin end of the wedge), but while inevitably some of that will be down to vindictive intent, some will also be the result of free market thinking. The topic of the BBC’s funding comes up periodically, and it is always regarded by noted beard scratchers as an “existential threat”. But with the return of a weaponised Conservative government, empowered like never before and driven by belligerent strategists like Dominic Cummings, that threat is actually, now, looking very real.

Picture: BBC

The argument over the TV licence’s relevance in an age of streamed entertainment is a strong one. I’m relatively happy at paying for one, and between Sir David Attenborough documentaries, Countryfile, Mock The Week, Gavin & Stacey, Rick Stein’s foodie travelogues, Radio 5 Live and my mate Gary Crowley’s shows on Radio London (plus of course, much, much, more), I couldn’t be any happier at effectively paying a subscription fee to the BBC. Given one option in the future, with a licence fee replaced by a pic’n’mix model, I would continue to pay for BBC programming, such is the quality of its output. But with the arrival of Netflix as a producer, not just a rebroadcaster, and Sky planning to invest millions in new original productions at its forthcoming new studio complex in Elstree, programming choice to dilute BBC viewing figures is only going to increase.

Daring to mention the general election just gone, those with an agenda against the BBC have been gifted a fresh grinding wheel for their bilious axes. The accusation of editorial bias is one that I’ll defend any broadcaster from. Generally the rule is that if both left and right are accusing you of political bias, you’re getting it right. The online and even institutional bullying that broadcasters like the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg and Sky’s Kay Burley received during the election campaign was at times beyond toxic. The far left accused Kuenssberg of being a shill for the Tories, and I’d accept that her comment about postal votes looking “grim” for Labour in a live report was ill-advised. Interestingly, though, both Labour and the Conservatives have had a pop at the BBC’s election coverage, something robustly defended by election night anchor Huw Edwards in a LinkedIn blog post: “You are expected to deliver a results programme which upholds the BBC's reputation for quality and fairness,” he wrote, “but you're doing so in a world where toxic cynicism and accusations of bias (from all sides) are adding to the pressures on the entire team. And you realise yet again that the real purpose of many of the attacks is to undermine trust in institutions which have been sources of stability over many decades. The apparent purpose, in short, is to cause chaos and confusion.”

Edwards pointed out, validly, that unlike journalists working for certain newspaper and website proprietors (“where regulation is risibly weak and blatant propaganda can be passed off as 'news’”), broadcast journalists are obliged to adhere to strict laws on impartiality. Political interests might not always like that - such as the Tories’ petulant complaint to Ofcom over Channel 4 replacing the absent Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage with melting ice statues during a televised leaders’ debate on climate change - but on balance, the BBC in particular gets it right. Occasionally, it will get it wrong, or appear to do so, such as Kuenssberg’s gaffe and that by political correspondent Alex Forsyth, who referred to Boris Johnson winning “the majority that he so deserves” during a live broadcast. This prompted shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald to say the BBC was partly to blame for Labour’s defeat last Thursday. “I’m very worried about our public service broadcaster,” he told the Today programme on Radio 4. “I’m really worried about the drift. You’ve seen the catalogue of criticisms that [Labour is] making,” adding, “if the BBC are going to hold themselves out as somehow having conducted themselves in an impartial manner, I think they’ve really got to have a look in the mirror. We’ve got a lot to say about this.”

Labour, of course, have other things to consider when it comes to their “period of reflection” on the election defeat and, frankly, the BBC should be the least of their considerations. The Conservatives, too, should lay off the BBC. Their victory had nothing to do with the BBC and, in what was most certainly a clear strategy, in spite of the BBC. I’m as uncomfortable with Boris Johnson evading scrutiny as anyone else, but swerving Andrew Neil in favour of doing selfies with Phil and Holly on This Morning was as belligerent a dismissal of the BBC as Jacob Rees-Mogg’s “disappearance” from the election campaign was a deliberate policy. Time will tell whether Johnson’s media performances in the election will come back to haunt him (hiding in a fridge to avoid an ITV reporter is not a good look, and despite his permanent ‘bumbling oaf’ comedy persona - honed on Have I Got News For You - he is as terrible a communicator as his predecessor, Theresa May). The Fourth Estate exists for a reason. The trick is how you engage it. Refusing it is counter-productive.

Picture courtesy of Huw Edwards/LinkedIn/Jeff Overs, BBC

At the weekend Lord Grade - Michael Grade, the former BBC chairman and scion of one of British entertainment’s most influential families - wrote that Neil’s rant-to-camera, goading Boris to come on his leaders' interview show, was petulant. “The situation appears to be bordering on open warfare – in which case I’d advise all concerned to take a step back and remember that it’s normal for governments and independent broadcasters to be at loggerheads.” Grade, writing in the Mail On Sunday, reminded readers that government enmity towards the BBC is nothing new, citing Tony Blair’s press secretary Alastair Campbell “declaring war” on it over the ‘dodgy dossier’ row, and Margaret Thatcher’s attempt to appoint sympathetic governors to the BBC’s board following alleged negativity towards her over the Falklands War and the miners’ strike. During this election, however, Grade said that the BBC got things wrong. “I’m a huge fan of Mr Neil’s intellectually rigorous style,” he wrote, “and have been for 40 years, ever since I oversaw his selection as an unknown presenter on a London Weekend Television current affairs show. I am not a fan, however, of the way journalists such as Neil hijacked the airwaves, using humiliation tactics in a bid to force the Prime Minister to face their questions. This was a serious abuse of one’s position, and I have written to Ofcom requesting an urgent review to ensure it does not happen again.”

“The issue here is impartiality, and broadcasters have a statutory duty to respect that,” Grade continued. “It is not their job to use the airwaves to cajole and try to coerce politicians into interviews – or to shame them publicly if they exercise their right to refuse. British viewers do not want to see blatantly biased political reporting on mainstream television such as the Americans get with the Right-wing Fox News. But I fear that’s the way we are going.”

Senior Tories are now said to be staying away from Radio 4’s Today, too, ironically now that John Humphrys, and his uncompromising approach to interviewing, has retired. Nick Robinson, one of Today’s presenters, was even president of the Oxford University Conservative Association while a student. But he is still one of the most capable of political interviewers. Avoiding him is not the answer. If I had one criticism of the Tory election campaign (and I’m not going to get into lies and deceit here), it was the flimsy nature of some of the people they put up for broadcast interviews. With Rees-Mogg benched after five minutes of play over his awful Grenfell Tower remarks, the likes of Nicky Morgan and Matt Hancock were deployed, both lightweights. In fact, on one day of media campaigning, Morgan had to be augmented by Hancock. Where were the heavyweights, like Michael Gove and Sajid Javid? (I’d include Dominic Raab here, but he, too, was clearly - and correctly - judged to be too cold and toxic an Alan B’Stard to go anywhere near any broadcast outlet of influence).

But back to the BBC’s future: Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Rishi Sunak, has said that the BBC’s funding model is something the government “should look at”, targeting the iPlayer service as one particular area of focus. He has also said there would be wider consideration of licence fee when the BBC’s current Royal Charter ends in December 2027. “The media industry is changing,” Sunak has said. “How people consume media is changing and it’s of course right that we continue to look at those things over time.” For once, I agree with someone from this government, up to a point. That point is where a government - any government - adopts frankly dystopian tones about the BBC. Funding is one thing, but censoring by stealth is something else entirely.

In another piece for the Daily Mail, John Humphrys has also weighed in on the darkening skies gathering over the BBC. “Much more worrying are the threats emanating from Number 10,” he wrote pointing out - as Grade did - that Downing Street leaning on the media is nothing new. “I can't think of a single prime minister in the past half century who would not, at some point in their career, have despatched the BBC director-general to Devil's Island if they'd thought they could get away with it.” But, he ended, senior BBC executives come and go, but the corporation “tends to sail on regardless. When Mr. Johnson raises the question of the licence fee, though, we are entering infinitely more dangerous waters. Make no mistake, this is an existential threat to the BBC.”

In the short term, it is something that the ‘temporary’ Minister for Culture, Digital & Sport, the newly ennobled Nicky Morgan, will no doubt be looking at as she arrives back at the desk she vacated to stand down as an MP at the election. Some on the left will regard any threat to the BBC from this government as karma for the supposed bias during the campaign. But politics aside, by 2027 when the BBC’s charter is renewed, the media landscape will have changed even further. 5G, for example, will have arrived (and even, according to the wonks at my old employer Nokia, 6G), transforming how and, notably, where media is consumed ubiquitously. Even with the BBC’s embrace of online technology, it is still largely a construct of the broadcast industry it invented almost 100 years ago. It is still, though, whether hawks like it or not, a national institution like few others, save for perhaps the Royal Family. It’s motto “nation shall speak peace unto nation”, adopted on 1 January 1927 by the newly formed Corporation to signify its purpose, was a latent symbol of a decaying empire, an empire that itself would come under existential threat 12 years later and the outbreak of war. The BBC’s purpose has clearly shifted since then, and even if people who dress up in red, white and blue to wave flags at royal weddings still see the BBC as a projection of Britain and British values, that function has long since ceased to be relevant. At the end of the day, we should just want Auntie to keep producing the best of British television and radio. We just need to figure out how to pay for it, first.

The longest road accident in history - and it’s not over yet

Picture: BBC

It is Friday, by my reckoning, which means it is now a week since news surfaced that Prince Andrew, Duke of York, KG, GCVO, CD, ADC(P) and Vice-Admiral, Royal Navy, had granted the BBC an interview that would hopefully clarify his relationship with the now-deceased paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. One week on, the news cycle shows no signs of abatement. In the interim, Andrew’s interview with Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis has gone to air and, rather than quelling interest in his association with Epstein, has opened up a whole world of hurt about the duke’s lifestyle, expenditure, domestic arrangements and health, and afforded Woking a publicity jaunt that it was rather hoping would have just been provided by the launch of the Beeb’s new dramatisation of The War Of The Worlds, which kicks off just outside the Surrey town.

Standard Operating Procedure for anyone in the PR business is that when a reputational crisis breaks, you do all you can to reduce its impact, to diminish its effect, to get a grip on the news agenda and hopefully tackle the subject matter so that it runs out of steam of its own accord. Well, that’s the theory. What has happened with Prince Andrew is the media equivalent of an Atlantic hurricane gaining strength and even acquiring new energy somewhere over the Azores. The big difference is that normally such storms are reduced to torrential rain and winds causing disruption to the rail network by the time they reach British shores. In the case of Andrew, this tropical depression has spiralled out of control.

As someone who has spent the last 25 years (bar the last month or two...) in corporate communications it’s easy to be the ‘Monday morning quarterback’ on a story like this. But, sometimes, a crisis is so heaving that it never goes away. That is probably where we are in the case of Prince Andrew. Those of us who ply their trade in PR will have been in nodding unison over the last seven days at how all of the best-practice wisdoms of the industry have been blown into the gutter like autumn leaves as Andrew's attempt to repair his reputation backfired spectacularly. Indeed, anyone (including me) who has crowbarred into a PowerPoint presentation Warren Buffet's much used quote about reputations taking 20 years to build and 20 minutes to destroy will have been grinning sagely at the smarts of such a notion of the fragility of public perception.

It must start with the decision in the first place to do the interview with Maitlis. 2019 is clearly turning out to be another annus horribilis for the Royal Family, what with the Duke of Edinburgh’s automotive tribulations, his grandson Harry’s self-declared war on the media (somewhat justified, given the weirdly obsessive attention afforded he and Meghan by the Mail group turning themselves inside-out to find another angle) and the reporting of a certain froideur between the Cambridge and Sussex households. The last thing the 93-year-old Queen needed was her somewhat casual second (and, it is rumoured, favourite) son becoming embroiled in an association with a particularly repellent individual like Epstein, replete with compromising photographs of the duke with his arm apparently around the waist of Virginia Guiffre, née Roberts, who, she alleges, was trafficked by Epstein for the sexual gratification of his associates (“He knows what he has done,” she has said of Andrew, whose own comment on the alleged incident was: “It didn’t happen. I can absolutely categorically tell you it never happened”). In the words of Dickie Arbiter, the veteran royal correspondent and former Buckingham Palace spokesperson, it was an “excruciating” interview. “My guess is that he bulldozed his way in and decided he was going to do it himself without any advice,” he told the BBC. “Any sensible-thinking person in the PR business would have thrown their hands up in horror.”

Picture: BBC

This is not the first time that a member of the royal family has been embroiled in foul matters of the flesh (and that story about the true identity of Jack The Ripper has never really gone away), and given the track record of all our monarchs and their scions over the centuries, ‘Randy’ Andy’s alleged behaviour as the party prince will probably pale by historic comparison. Not that I’m endorsing or apologising for anything he is supposed to have done. But moral judgements aside, the bit I’m most interested in is the decision to take up the BBC’s offer of an interview to begin with. Ever since the first stories appeared of Andrew’s relationship with Epstein, there wouldn’t have been a television channel, radio station, newspaper, magazine or website that wouldn’t have wanted an opportunity to ask the prince to explain himself on the record. But even with the interest - and coverage - reaching cacophony level in recent weeks, even giving Harry and Meghan some respite from their own battles with the press, there was still no reason to cave in. 

Rightly or wrongly, the royals are never like us. They’re not meant to be approachable, accessible. They’re meant to exist as noble national figureheads. The accountability that other public figures - politicians, business leaders, senior clergy - are expected to provide has never been in the royal brief. So, whatever internal PR advice within Buckingham Palace was being offered or even imposed, someone - perhaps Andrew himself - stupidly ignored it and mistakenly agreed to sit down with Maitlis, some months, we understand, since Newsnight first proposed that they did.

If this was a choice based on the fact that alternatives - the atrocious egomaniac that is Piers Morgan comes immediately to mind - would have given an even more pugilistic encounter, they were patently wrong. In fact, Maitlis, a formidable interviewer, gave Andrew a fairly measured ride. And yet still he messed it up, chortling in some of his replies to serious questions about his friendship with Epstein, and making trite remarks about how he “kicks himself daily” for not ending the relationship sooner. And, still, no contrition at all about those Epstein is alleged to have trafficked and facilitated the abuse of, including the as-yet unexplained relationship with Guiffre-Roberts, who has recorded a BBC Panorama interview that is only going to extend the news cycle into a second full week. 

It was without doubt one of the worst interviews ever given by a public figure trying to extricate himself from scandal. In the meantime, Andrew has been withdrawn/is withdrawing from public duties. To all intents and purposes, his mum has sacked him, albeit - we read - with his elder brother’s influence. Charles, currently on a royal tour in New Zealand, could not have been flying the flag at a worse time. And with the Queen gradually handing over greater responsibility to her heir, it presented him with an opportunity to exert his authority. This might sound like fratricide, or even the sort of Machiavellian politics normally found in an episode of The Sopranos, but it perhaps proves that the House of Windsor has learned from the anni horribiles of 1992 and 1997 - the former being the original of the species, the latter being the year of Princess Diana’s death. As grim as those periods were, the royal family learned vital lessons in how they managed their PR, with the Queen herself proving to be more of a moderniser than anyone gave her credit for. And that includes her appearance with Daniel Craig in that James Bond skit for the London Olympics. 

The Queen’s decisive action to fire her own son is brutal, but effectively smashes the glass to put out a real fire that was in danger of doing serious damage to the entire royal operation. We might have sympathy for Andrew, but ultimately his lifestyle, and seemingly directionless career since he left the Royal Navy in 2001, brought this on himself. Choosing to address it on camera was the mistake that unravelled it. It certainly wouldn’t have been my advice to a CEO, knowing that the media properties of the notoriously republican Murdoch and Rothermere families would have erupted into a feeding frenzy that stupidly even managed to knock a general election no one wanted off the front pages. Actually, make that the front several pages, and counting. A week later.

Last Sunday, the front page headlines chimed in unison: “Not one single word of remorse” (Mail on Sunday), “No sweat . . . no regret” (Sunday Mirror), and “I didn’t have sex with a teen, I was at home after a pizza party” (Observer). A week on and even the normally impassive Times has run ten separate stories today on the duke’s denouement, including new angles and the outcome of a YouGov survey revealing that only 6% of the 1600 people questioned believed Andrew was telling the truth. No wonder corporate sponsors of the duke’s various philanthropic ventures have been quietly and not-so quietly walking away.

Now, that is precisely what Andrew himself needs to do. His brutal removal from frontline royal duties means that he will now be reduced to cameos on the Buckingham Palace balcony during Trooping The Colour, though I imagine plans are already in place to smuggle him in to church on Christmas Day for The Firm’s traditional outing en masse. But, to return to the central premise of this post, it’s about PR, not royal duty. Andrew’s actions have affected the corporate reputation of the royal family, and that, in corporate or regal life, cannot be countenanced. The story isn’t over, still, with the very real risk of US investigators probing Epstein and his associates looming. “If push came to shove and the legal advice was to do so, then I would be duty bound to do so [be investigated],” Andrew told Maitlis in the interview. Again, no contrition, just a man sinking ever further into quicksand that was quite demonstrably signposted.

Be careful what you wish for

Picture: Tottenham Hotspur FC

What a time to be alive. Senior members of the royal family trying to grease their way out of guilt-by-association, doing it badly and keeping the news cycle going for almost a week; the leaders of our two biggest political parties showing themselves to be about as trustworthy as a balsa wood ladder in heavy weather; and then Mauricio Pochettino being sacked as Tottenham manager on the Tuesday night, only to be instantly replaced next morning by the high-maintenance, highly expensive and highly self-opinionated José Mourinho.

As a Chelsea fan I am supposed to be shocked, appalled, even, by this news. After all, Mourinho is the man who said, in 2015, he couldn’t manage Tottenham because his emotional attachment to Chelsea was so strong (though to be clear, after Roman Abramovich sacked him for a second time, he was legally prevented from managing another English club for two years. Ironically, that sacking came after an abysmal away game at Tottenham, at the end of which Diego Costa petulantly threw his training bib at the Portuguese manager, and Chelsea hovered over the relegation trap door). The truth is that I’m not shocked at all. Frankly, I don’t think that Pochettino had been doing anything particularly badly, but 14th place in the Premier League is clearly not where Spurs would want to be, given the talent at their disposal. But something clearly wasn’t right, and despite Tottenham’s persistent excellence, nothing ever came of it in terms of trophies. Oddly, there were parallels in Tottenham’s fortunes to Chelsea’s profile under Mourinho in his last spell there - overseeing a decline that took them from Premier League champions in May 2015 to 17th place by the beginning of December. Being a serial runners-up just doesn’t cut it in modern football.

Spurs’ decline isn’t anything near as bad as Mourinho's final denouement at Chelsea, but you’d have thought that going from a Champions League final in June to midway of the bottom half of the Premier League in November is hardly conducive to support from Daniel Levy, the Tottenham chairman. Rumours have swirled in recent weeks of Pochettino becoming progressively detached from his squad. It’s hard to judge whether this was simply the Argentinian running out of enthusiasm for a “project”, to use modern managerial parlance, that had, over five and a half years, seen him preside over Harry Kane’s progress as one of England’s best-ever strikers, the development of Dele Alli - as objectionable an individual as he might be - to be a forward of some lethality, along with the evolution of Dier, Eriksen, Walker and Son as players of great potency. It’s just there hasn’t been any product from it. Too many Spurs players have gone missing at vital moments. Too often the team has gone Spursy.

So, when considering the lack of any silverware to line the trophy room at Tottenham’s lavish new stadium in N17, it makes obvious sense to look at Mourinho, even more so than apparent left-field candidates like Eddie Howe, the star-on-the-rise Brendan Rodgers, or the experienced Carlo Ancelotti, who’d apparently hinted at throwing his hat in, should the Spurs job come available. It is, perhaps, too easy to point directly at an empty trophy cabinet and blame that for Pochettino’s frustration and subsequent departure. But there’s no doubting where Levy was coming from when he declared that: "In José we have one of the most successful managers in football" - 25 trophies spanning seven clubs is not a stat to be ignored. How he acquired those trophies is another matter.

When he was appointed as Chelsea head coach for the first time, Mourinho had just won the Champions League with Porto in 2004. In between his first and second spells at Stamford Bridge, he won a league/cup/Champions League treble with Inter in 2010 and led Real Madrid to the La Liga title in 2012. Back at Chelsea, he won the Premier League, again. None of these achievements have been without their strife, and when Mourinho took over what had been pitched as his ‘dream job’, Manchester United, the dystopian spiral only continued.

Picture: Tottenham Hotspur

Which makes his appointment to Tottenham, while undoubted box office news, questionable. Yes, by reputation, he may bring Spurs closer to silverware than at any time since their last trophy, the League Cup in 2008. But this is assuming that Levy is prepared to bankroll the programme. Mourinho is already rumoured to be earning double Pochettino’s weekly salary, which means someone - presumably José’s agent - has managed to prise open Levy’s wallet wider than it had been previously known to hinge. And, as previous proprietors have found, Mourinho will want money to buy in Europe’s most expensive talents, a move likely to make Spurs’ accountants as nervous as the youngsters Pochettino blooded through, even if not to ultimate success. For his part, Pochettino was already harrumphing back in the summer about his lack of influence over club decisions in areas like player acquisition (the club failed to buy anyone new for two successive windows). Compare this with the £89 million Mourinho persuaded Ed Woodward to pay for Paul Pogba, or the £75 million for Lukaku. And look where that got him. It may be wise to stock up on popcorn before the January window opens.

Whatever happens, things around Tottenham Hotspur are unlikely to be dull for the next three seasons (the typical length of a Mourinho managerial cycle). One of football’s more enigmatic managers is now in charge of one of football’s more enigmatic clubs. Where this prospect might fall down is, crucially, on the field of play. Will Tottenham’s young stars, who have at least been afforded the freedom to be creative under Pochettino, adapt to Mourinho’s notorious brand of pragmatic football? We Chelsea fans put up with five-and-a-half seasons of jeers and jibes about parked buses, criticism that never abated as the silverware rolled in. In fact, it only increased, and it’s only now under Frank Lampard’s stewardship of youth that neutrals and the occasional rival are beginning to say nice things about the club. Not wishing to curse the coming months at, arguably, our bitterest London rival, I do wonder just what the José Effect will be. And just how much Arsenal fans might be breathing easier right now.

Size doesn't matter: Elbow's Giants Of All Sizes

With time on my hands, I've taken to perusing Elbow's press coverage on the occasion of their eighth and latest album, Giants Of All Sizes, finding its way into the world. And so, a casual Google galavant reveals a predilection for journalists to make reference to Guy Garvey's avuncular nature. "Cuddly", is an oft-repeated description, along with "bear-like", which all border on sizeist judgement of the bearded 45-year-old from Bury. Quite what Craig Potter, his brother Mark, and Pete Turner, the band's other members, feel about this is not known, but it's common for a band with a charismatic lead singer and chief lyricist, to attract most, if not all, of the attention. Peter Gabriel (one of Garvey's musical idols) built up similar internal resentment when lead singer of Genesis, to such extent that Phil Collins has been quoted as saying that they were in danger of being known as "Peter Gabriel and Genesis".

Why this is relevant is that despite Garvey's apparent ursine appeal, Elbow's eighth and latest album, Giants Of All Sizes is, according to the band, anything but cuddly. "It's certainly not an uplifting album," Garvey recently told a journalist, explaining that the band wanted to make an album reflective of both their mood, as well as the mood of the times. That doesn't mean a lot of ambient Thom Yorke-style droning in a minor key, however: at essence, Giants is still an Elbow album, with the warmth of Garvey's voice binding a band comfortable in its own musical skin, experimenting with sounds and instrumentation without going too far, mood without being too Enoesque. But within that experimentation and instrumentation there is certainly a darker tonality, even from the off, with opener Dexter & Sinister and its disjointed time signatures and non sequitur breaks addressing a number of things on Garvey's mind, from Brexit to bereavement (including the death of his father) and, in his own words, "the general sense of disaffection you see all-around at the moment". The track rings the keynote for the rest of the album, one which draws on a certain Lancastrian bleakness that has run through all their work, as it does with their great mates Doves and I Am Kloot. That's not a lazy southern trope, but think about it. I've never been entirely sure whether it is to do with geography, like the rain-soaked cobbles of Coronation Street, or something else, but it's there in almost everything coming out of the north-west, The Beatles' childlike acts of whimsy notwithstanding.

Musically, some might find Giants musically narrow, nine songs with a very similar range and notably lacking in the sort of anthemic bluster that made the nation fall in love with them via the album Seldom Seen Kid and their closing ceremony performance at the London Olympics in 2012, where One Day Like This seemed to supplant Land Of Hope And Glory in the nation's communal singing preferences. Frankly, though, this lack of width makes for a better album, one which accentuates the combination of Garvey's voice with Turner's at times McCartneyesque bass, Potter (C)'s keyboard washes and Potter (M)'s understated guitar work. Despite being more compressed and lyrically reflective than either Build A Rocket Boys! or The Take Off And Landing Of Everything, Elbow's last de facto albums, Giants is nonetheless immediately accessible, even when tackling some of its weightier subjects, such as the undertone of Brexit in Empires, with its fairground Wurlitzer stabs part of a layered fabric interwoven with such existential questions as "How can a bland unremarkable typical Tuesday be Day of the Dead?".  Others, like The Delayed 3.15, with its string section find melodic companionship with some of the less bonkers elements of prog rock, a musical genre often misunderstood and invariably mocked, but which had more in common with jazz as anything else. Doldrums even points back to prog's true origins, with a decidedly Beatles-like groove and Garvey's vocal treble-tracked to the extent it sounds like they were recorded in a broom cupboard. As a result, it's a track that, strangely enough, benefits from being listened to on headphones. The band's assertion that this is a bleak album is a bit of a misnomer, but paying close attention to the lyrics throughout reveals the true state of Garvey's mind. White Noise White Heat, for example, provides a stark reflection on the nightmare of Grenfell Tower and the injustices handed down to its victims, wrenching the song's emotional heft further with strings and brass. It is, perhaps, the closest Giants gets to a "soaring"™anthem like One Day Like This, should that be what you'd buy an Elbow album for.

If I might return to Garvey's avunicularity, it stems from his voice. With his Bury accent heavily inflected in the delivery, each song rings with autumnal comfort, no more so than the beautiful My Trouble, with the vocal perfectly mixed over a combination of bass, strings and the subtlest of drum machine rhythm tracks, building to a hymn-like chorus of "Come get me/Guide and check me/Sail and wreck me/Soak me to my skin." I defy anyone not to sing along at the top of their voice while driving along to it.

At the arrival of On Deronda Road, the penultimate song, I reached the point where I realised why I find Giants Of All Sizes so accessible. It's not because this particular song is notably catchy, there are no obvious hit-making hooks, and in some respects it's a somewhat brief interlude. No, it's the realisation that I'm listening to something from Trick Of The Tail-era Genesis. Now, don't baulk at that suggestion (trust me, naysayers, it's a quality album), but the vocal harmonies and textures hark back to that 1976 album's most beautiful moments, in particular, Steve Hackett and Mike Rutherford's 12-string guitars producing something ethereal on songs like Entangled and Ripples. In fact, this vibe continues with the closing track of Giants, Weightless, which takes inspiration from both the death of Garvey's father and the continuation of life with the birth of his son. It is a truly beautiful song and easily one of the best Elbow have committed over the course of their eight albums. Whether by design of sequencing or simply the way it fell out of the writing process, Weightless concludes an album written around gloomier themes with a sense of uplift, of hope and admission that, maybe, the world isn't all bad. Or, perhaps, Garvey is driving at a bleak future for his offspring. Either way, it's a song of balanced grace.

When not making Guy Garvey out to be some sort of Lancastrian Yogi Bear, media reaction to Giants Of All Sizes has been a little mixed. Some reviewers have (quite rightly) claimed it to be Elbow's best yet, while others are still just not sure. My view is that it is brilliantly intriguing, musically, and obliquely reflective, lyrically. If this is a key test to go by, I listened to it on repeat for most of Saturday afternoon, hearing something new each time, pulling it closer like a warm blanket on a cold, wet October afternoon, a comfort no Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks will ever fulfil.