Thursday 3rd September 2026. My 55th birthday is spent exploring Shoreham-on-Sea, West Sussex. Am here mainly to see the Art Deco airport, having been musing on a line that opens one of Douglas Adams’s novels:
It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression ‘as pretty as an airport.’
But surely, I thought, some airports are prettier than others. Hence seeking the one at Shoreham, which has been used for Agatha Christie adaptations. It is still operational, but is so small it can only handle helicopters and light aircraft.
Then to visit the indie bookshop Chapter 34, which is ordered according to its own categories: ‘Dark Matter’, ‘Nostalgic Narratives’, The Self Shelf’. I leave with Percival Everett’s Erasure, Richard Ayoade’s The Unfinished Harauld Hughes, and Truman Capote’s Complete Stories, with its gorgeous Richard Avedon cover.
I also seek out the ‘Rest and Be Thankful’ stone, an ancient seat by a footpath, to the north of the Brighton sprawl. I sit on it and am thankful. One can never have too many passive aggressive landmarks.
The local buses have tables on the upper decks, like the ones on trains.
**
Saturday 5th September 2026. To Kings Cross, now described as a ‘lifestyle district’, all bustling and monied and youthful. A man standing by the Wetherspoons bar at St Pancras station shouts “Oh. My. God” as I walk past. Still got it.
At the Kings Place concert hall I witness old friends being successful. The event is a live version of the podcast Chart Music, in which British music journalists discuss an old episode of Top of the Pops.
Sarah Bee, one of the podcast regulars, has put me on the guest list. I have known her for years. We were both zombies in Shaun of the Dead.
I have never listened to the Chart Music podcast myself. I believe, as Noel Coward did with television, that podcasts are for going on, not for listening to. But this one has been going for ten years, and given that the room is packed with 450 paying fans, is evidently a hit.
The other two speakers are Taylor Parkes, whom I used to see regularly when I lived in Highgate, and the host Al Needham, whom I don’t know but who turns out to be big and loud. He is not, I realise, the music journalist Alex Needham, whom I have met, and who is slim and quiet.
When the presenters walk on, the hall erupts into huge cheers, particularly for Taylor. I have always thought of Taylor as a good conversationalist, with his nihilistic wisecracks and friendly intellect. It also helps that he is good looking, in a tortured poet kind of way.
All three presenters have a sheet of notes to consult, which I soon realise is central to the show’s appeal. These are, after all, professional writers used to giving their words a decent amount of care before releasing them into the wild.
More podcasts should be like this: loose but with a good deal of polish and structure, rather than rambling and directionless. The most popular podcast in the world is The Joe Rogan Show, where each episode goes on for three hours. I could never be Joe Rogan. And this is why I will starve.
This live version of Chart Music is broken up with video clips from the Top of the Pops episode in question: November 1985. Cue lots of mullets and rolled-up sleeves. Mr Needham makes Proustian references to 80s school slang, like ‘skill!’ as a synonym for ‘excellent!’.
Taylor describes the TOTP presenter Steve Wright as ‘dressed like a four-year-old who owns a marina’. He goes on to criticise the title of the A-ha song ‘The Sun Always Shines on TV’: ‘pull the curtains, then.’
Talking Heads, meanwhile, ‘give meaningless pretension a bad name’. Some of the audience are a bit shocked at this.
Taylor goes on: ‘I like the early Talking Heads stuff, but after 1983 I can’t deal with their schtick. It’s like: get a proper suit, you c**t.’
There is a moment where Sarah stumbles over her words and makes a strange yodelling noise, not unlike the catchphrase of one particular TOTP presenter.
Sarah: I think I just went the full Jimmy Savile.
Taylor: Not the full Jimmy Savile.
Afterwards, to the nearby Star of Kings pub. I chat with one of the Chart Music fans, Sam V. She says that it’s like belonging to a ‘family’. Underneath all the jokes about bad haircuts and clothes, the fans have bonded through the need to make sense of cultural memory. Nostalgia can be comforting in a wholesome way, when used socially like this. It can give people a reassuring sense of their own life in history.
Sam recommends that newcomers to Chart Music should start with ‘any episode with Taylor Parkes and Neil Kulkarni’. Indeed, her love of the podcast extends to a tattoo that emblazons her arm. It is a quotation by Neil K, who died in 2024: ‘You’re here to set people’s heads on fire’.
Sam gets out her phone and shows me the full context of the quote, in an article by Mr K about how to review records. I would say his advice applies to writing about anything:
Accept that everything you say will be forgotten and ignored but write as if you and your words are immortal. Don’t just describe but justify – make sure the reader knows WHY the record exists whether the reasons are righteous or rascally. And always remember you’re not here to give consumer advice or help with people’s filing. You’re here to set people’s heads on fire.
**
Next: I watch a synchronised crowd of Kate Bush impersonators with the man who made the Wuthering Heights video
Notes:
The Douglas Adams quote opens his novel The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.
‘The Neil Kulkarni Guide To Being A Record Reviewer’ was published by the Drowned In Sound website, 13 July 2009.
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