Hammer O' The Boy

A "mate" of mine rang me from Lodon last night to kindly let me know that he's going to see Led Zep at the O2. He's knocking off some bird from Hello magazine and so has secured a free ticket.
Sickened.
He described telling me about it as "dancing in front of a fella in a wheelchair".
I still rate the night the Coff and I went to see Page & Plant at the Point as one of the best concerts I've ever seen. I don't think there's much chance of a tour as Plant seems to be, quite understandably, interested in other things. His new album with Alison Krauss is a humdinger.

Queer Dog

Good luck to Norman Mailer who passed over the weekend. I actually met him on two occasions and he was very pleasent to me when there was nothing in it for him. My favourite story about him is the one where he nearly lost his eye to some punk in the late seventies/early eighties. Mailer though the young ruffian had implied that his dog was homosexual (it was a poodle for christ's sake), "Nobody calls my dog a faggot!", Nice

Go and read;
The Naked and The Dead
The Executioner's Song
Oswald's Tale
The Fight (Best book on sports I have ever read, although that's a pretty short list)

here's a bizarre clip of Mailer biting off part of Rip Torn's (excuse me) ear after the actor has hit him on the head with a hammer. You are unlikely to see many authors acting the mick like this.

Radio Philo

Check out this great documentary on Philo from the BBC for one week only, still the greatest Irish rocker of them all.