One of the worst things about summer is the endless supply of flies and mosquitoes eager to become part of your day, to add you as a friend on Facebook. The intensity of these insects, however, pale in comparison to what summertime Scotland has to offer. First up, they have something called clegs. These things […]
Derek Daly
Derek Daly is a freelance journalist, semi-retired DJ, former cinema owner and part-time double-glazed window-seller. In 1990 he won the Cape Argus Award for Best Writer in a School Newspaper. He was invited to do record reviews, but his articles all were banned, possibly due to the supplement's close proximity to the Jellybean Journal. He has the dubious honour of accidentally deleting a semi-completed travel novel.
Posted inNews/Politics
Pete Townshend and the missing paedophiles
There’s something uncannily similar in the eyes of the faces that have allowed themselves to be seduced by child pornography. Look, for instance, at the faces of Pete Townshend and the recently convicted British actor Chris Langham. There’s an icy hollowness there that looks like a soul that has erased part of itself. Townshend, the […]
Posted inLifestyle
With (or without) the Bee Gees
It started as a normal British chat show. It was 1997 and host Clive Anderson was fielding a few questions to the Bee Gees live on prime-time television. The band of brothers had walked in to generous applause from the studio audience, smiles aplenty as Anderson said “Good to see you” and ushered them to […]
Posted inLifestyle
Tiresome time in Bob Dylan’s mind
There’s a movie out soon modelled on the artistic persona of Bob Dylan. One of the four “Dylans” is played by Cate Blanchette, in an Oscar-tipped performance. Unfortunately this is reawakening Bob’s-a-genius nonsense. The revival of the singer’s fortunes can be traced back to 1997, when he emerged with an album called Time Out of […]
Posted inLifestyle, Media
A very blind date
No, luckily not something involving me, but rather a horrible live-on-air incident that happened on a show called Blind Date in the UK in 1997. We all know the format: a guy or girl chooses a partner for a blind date by listening to the responses of three “invisible” hopefuls. In Blind Date, the losers, […]
Posted inMedia
The emergency anchor man
This tragic incident occurred in the Eighties live on the SABC’s TV1. It was the 8pm news and the newsreader, either Michael de Morgan or John Bishop, had called in sick. In a mad scramble to find someone to read the news with less than an hour to spare, the producers settled on an unassuming […]
Posted inLifestyle
My very own private ‘lang-arm’ adventure
I have a morbid fear of “lang-arming”, that traditional Afrikaans dancing synonymous with certain folk music. For the life of me, I’ve never been able to figure out the moves. The town that I live in has a lang-arm club as its biggest night-time attraction. The venue, next to an Epol factory in the industrial […]
Posted inLifestyle
Doing them for a fiver
Walking around Brixton in the United Kingdom trying to sell overweight filofaxes to old ladies doesn’t exactly give you that “holiday” feeling. But sooner or later, if you’re a young South African on a working holiday (as I once was), you have to start working — preferably while you can still afford a travel card. […]