Colin Randall writes: last Saturday, as deputy editor Andrew Curry reported here that morning, he and I took time off from Salut! Live duties to join 82,000 people at Wembley to watch our team Sunderland win a thrilling Championship playoff... Read more →
Andrew Curry writes: In the second part of our end-of-year review conversation, with its ‘Something Old, New, Borrowed, and Blues’ format, we’ve moved on to the Borrowed and the Blues. You can read our Old and New selection on the... Read more →
Colin Randall writes: On first hearing of the Pitmen Poets' new album Re-union, experience told me to stand by for a rebuke from Bob Fox. Twenty-four years ago, when I made Fox's Dreams Never Leave You my Daily Telegraph folk... Read more →
... there’s something appropriate about seeing Pitmen Poets this year, the 40th anniversary of the British miners’ strike, since they are all steeped in the songs and culture of Britain’s coalfields. Read more →
Colin Randall writes: an anniversary worth noting is that of protracted miners' strike of the mid-1980s. For musical illustration, I have chosen Ed Pickford's lament for a vanishing trade, Farewell Johnny Miner, by Dick Gaughan, Blackleg Mining Man by Pitmen... Read more →
Just when I thought I had one solution to the failure of my attempts to showcase Ed Pickford's noble anthem in appreciations of ordinary people, The Workers’ Song, as sung by the Pitmen Poets, a much better one popped along.... Read more →
