Highlights
Nearly half a bicycle
The atomic theory in Kilburn This place (on Kilburn High Road) has been morphing steadily from dry cleaner’s to bike shop over the last few years. I remember being surprised one morning to see a few kids’ bikes lined up for sale outside but I’d say the shop is now approaching 50% bike shop. You […]
Where is my patriotism?
Come, love of country, fill my heart… I do love Britain. I guess I love England more. London most of all. I hope that in my life I’ve honoured the place I live and not disgraced it or undermined it (I support England and GB in sporting events – I fly a little flag on […]
Some bullet-points about regulation
In case you’d got the wrong idea about how the ’regulatory state‘ is supposed to work UPDATED 23 May 2025. I could update this thing daily. Regulation is always a news story in the UK (Search any news service for ‘regulation‘ right now and you’ll get a long list of current news stories about regulating […]
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Bowblog is ten years old today
I adapted the name from Kevin Werbach’s Werblog, which seemed like a cool thing to do at the time. I’d been blogging for a few years before that (since the…
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Best job in Britain
Last week I used one of the days of ‘community leave’ the BBC gives me to spend the day interviewing candidates for deputy head at the junior school in Hertfordshire…
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I cold-called the man who invented the World Wide Web
1984. I’m well into my fourth ‘gap year’ (in fact, I’m redefining the term ‘gap’). I’m working at a telesales place in Queen’s Park. This telesales place is different from…
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Igor Stravinsky, Tupac Shakur and the uncanny
(a post from 2012, which is pretty uncanny in itself) The Player Piano was the Tupac Hologram of its day. The most thrilling of our inventions are the ones that…
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Noisy beds
I love a bed. I should leave it to a radio production expert to explain what I mean by a bed, but since I don’t have one to hand, a…
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You know, actual curation
Everyone’s going on about curation these days. We’re all curators now. But yesterday I witnessed some of the old-fashioned variety, the kind they do in art galleries, and I was…
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Total radio – six reasons BBC Radio 3’s ‘Spirit of Schubert’ was awesome
The ‘Spirit of Schubert’ finished a week ago. It was Radio 3’s biggest ‘takeover’ yet – over 200 hours of output devoted exclusively to the work of Franz Schubert. Every…
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What would I print if I had a Little Printer?
Some disagreement out there about what BERG’s Little Printer is for. I don’t have any special insight but I think it’s a charming and clever thing and I badly want…
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Not understanding Greece
UPDATE: April 2022. It’s kind of embarrassing reading this 11 year-old blog post now. It seems callous and ignorant. But then thinking about it, the post dates from before we…
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Steve Jobs and everyone’s fork in the road
Robert Scoble’s got a touching video on his blog today. He’s outside Apple’s Cupertino HQ and talking about his first encounter with an Apple computer. He talks about unboxing an…
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A new job – and an afternoon of undiluted pleasure
In a few weeks time I’ll be heading back to BBC radio, where I’ll be taking over the job of Interactive Editor for Radio 3, the Proms and the performing…