I had a gig in Barking last week. I couldn’t work out if I’d been there before or if it just reminded me of the 1970s. Is the whole place a Heritage site where it’s illegal to update the shopping centre? And, if so, do they insist that all the people who live there are forbidden to update their hairstyles too? I felt like I was in “Life on Mars”. [...]

Winter comes and takes its toll on the elderly. I was sad to read this week of the death of William Stone, one of our last remaining World War One veterans.

Yet it’s incredible to think that anyone who was involved in that conflict is still around almost a century later, when so many perished before they had had the chance to live.

Closer to home, my Great [...]

I am in love with the guy who threw his shoes at George W Bush.

He is my hero. I love you Muntadar al-Zaidi and I hope that you are not punished for your brave and wonderful shoe based act. This is a protest. Shooting someone or blowing someone up is not way to go about making a point. By killing someone you only prove yourself as bad [...]

I am suffering from a medical condition that doesn’t get much written about it in the press – mainly because it’s a bit of a minor and rubbish problem. But tens of people around the UK are affected by it and I think they and I deserve some publicity and maybe a medal.

I have Benign Positional Vertigo, which affects the inner ear and can make the sufferer [...]

Last week this pathetic non-story broke in the tabloid newspapers, a new flood of self-righteous disgust, as if we hadn’t already been deluged with that enough already. Basically 42 kids who’d been round the supermarket on a school trip (and is it just me or the credit crunch, but haven’t the quality of school trips declined a bit of late? At least we got to go to the Welsh [...]

There has been some more furore about Spanish racism towards Lewis Hamilton. I hate racism and everyone in Spain is racist and so I hate them all. Which isn't racist, because the Spanish are not a race. What I am is xenophobic and generalising and wrong.

But not as stupid and wrong as ALL Spanish people. All right, let’s be fair – SOME Spanish people.

The recent Spanish stupidity has [...]

I took the train to Brighton for a performance of my retrospective on my adolescence, “The Headmaster’s Son” last Friday. The carriage was predictably packed and it was standing room only. Despite being hot and bothered and having chubby businessmen rubbing up against me, getting their frottaging kicks, I got my cheap thrills by observing my fellow commuters. It was faintly surprising to see the number of smartly dressed men [...]

So how do I feel about my boyhood hero, Johnny “Rotten” Lydon, appearing in an advert for Country Life butter?

Is it against the principles of punk rock? Is it the ultimate sell out? It's not exactly cash from chaos, unless you count the chaos of the milk churn. Is he, as Bill Hicks would contend, removed from the artistic world for all eternity?

I [...]

I hate politicians. They are idiots. Pretty much without exception. One has a vague feeling that there might have been some more honourable ones, in some bygone era, but in reality those George Washingtons and Mahatma Gandhis and William Gladstones were probably as hollow and rotten and transparent (not a good combination, as their festering emptiness is on full view to the world) as the ones we've got now.

As [...]

I am back in the news again. Just a casual mention in an Independent article about Lee Hurst breaking a punter's phone.

The relevant bit reads "In 2005, the comedian Richard Herring smashed an audience member's mobile. When the owner went on stage to demand £70 for the phone, Herring quipped: "I'm not giving you £70 for that. It's broken.""

The story was picked up (and slightly twisted [...]