Monty Python — or the realisation that humour didn’t need to be dumb at least.  It’s probably the ‘Marxism Today‘ sketch that helped me decide that there we no barriers between “high” and “low” culture.

That has lead to me annoying the hell out of people I’ve been in bands with, and made my writing a mess of references that only I would get all of – but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Grammar School — grammar school taught me a lot of things.  Some, like atomic numbers are only useful in quizzes and particle physics (of which I do very little). Some,  such as my firmly held beliefs about how wealth and influence is handed around, have proved very useful indeed. Some, such as how it “taught” me to be uncomfortable around women (by being a boys school) weren’t so much use. But being an outsider, poorer, from a different area to my school and most of the boys there, made me able to do stuff on my own — to start stuff that was interesting and to form networks around that. Spectrum fanzines, then music and football ones were things I wouldn’t have got involved with had I been “popular”.

Bad Wisdom — Bill Drummond and Mark Manning’s book (know now as ‘The Lighthouse on Top of the World, since the second book in the trilogy came out). It’s a mess of fact, fiction, rumour, lies, spunk and shit. It’s probably my favourite book.

Birmingham in the 80s — there was very little to do in Birmingham in the eighties. Actually, I’m sure that there was very little to do in Britain in the eighties, particularly outside of “normal trading hours”. The “very little to do” lead me to be the sort of person that creates stuff, that doesn’t stop at having an idea but does it.

The Manic Street Preachers — before the internet, the only way you found out about new things was through your friends, but that took ages. One quicker was was the music press, but while you might find out about bands from, say, Simon Price — the real cultural horizon expander was the stuff that bands were into. This was of course, back when bands were into stuff. These days the music press just covers the latest conveyor-belt stage-school “indie” nothings beloved of Blair’s 50%.

The Manics, and yes we’re talking up-to Holy Bible era Manics, spewed working-class intellect like no other band before or since  — yes it was partly six-form iconogrpahy, Ché, Plath, etc, but for a young boy mistakenly taking science classes it was a valuable in to the world of culture. And self-harm, and military fatigues as fashion.

What made you weird?

“Each Typewoman is created entirely with type (letters, punctuation, ligatures) in the typeface of their namesake and sit atop a pattern created with the same. No letterform has been skewed, stretched, flipped or any other bastardizing technique — just scaling at rotating. So the letters are pure as the driven snow!”

I’m completely indifferent to marmite, or vegemite, although I quite like twiglets (which are nought but stale marmitey wotsits). I don’t love it or hate it.

I do hate people who say “I’m like marmite me, you either love me or you hate me”, mainly because the sort of people who say it are failed reality show auditionees. It’s a fair indication that the person hasn’t had an original thought for years, and that some people do hate them.

I now hate Jack Straw, and John Humphrys’ (why no ‘e’?) publishers who thought that this was a great and witty pull out quote for the front of this book.

Oh and I hate marmite’s advertising agency for sullying the wonder that is Paddington Bear.

I almost burst in the hurry to make this one.

Pete Best

Stuart Sutcliffe

Brian Epstein

George Martin

George Best

Billy Preston

Murry The K

(actually there are tons on this Wikipedia page)

“He didn’t like it up him earlier this week when we did a mass protest. Tried to make out Panic by the Smiths was his favourite record….Really???

Monday @ 11am

text your favourite lyrics from “panic” by the Smiths…. “hang the dj” comes to mind

email: george.6music@bbc.co.uk

text: 64046″