I’ve been writing online since the late 1990s in all sorts of forms: small sites, blogs and longer pieces that interested me. I enjoy the act of writing, and publishing is an incentive to type. Much of the blog writing now struggles to be relevant, or even informative, as it came from a world where cross-blog linking drove conversations; now many of those other sites have vanished (only some of which have been saved for the future, thanks to the Wayback Machine and similar initiatives).

Recently, I’ve been slowly reviewing old material, wherever it lived, trying to find my “best bits”: the end-of-reality-programme showreel. It’s been an interesting exercise, and after 31 and a half years of writing, I’m gradually curating my favourites. I don’t always agree with my past self, but it’s been fun.

  • Mine is the last voice you will ever hear — Frankie’s Two Tribes was the sound of the end of term. We played it loud.
  • Piccadilly magic — Piccadilly Radio: my childhood’s loudest imagined universe set to an 80s pop beat.
  • Dark of the Moon — We got tickets for an implausible supernatural story that explored intolerance with a rock-god soundtrack.
  • Moscow: war & advertising in a week — I went to Moscow to plan an ad-serving implementation as war broke out between Russia and Georgia. My parents were trying to get out of Tbilisi.
  • Autograph cards — We used to collect pictures of radio presenters we'd never met. A world of local celebrity, station budgets, sponsors and the culture of pre-internet radio fandom.
  • Two minutes silence — The street outside my Holborn office fell still and silent after the 7 July bombings. London: a vast, diverse city united in remembrance.
  • Beetlejuice: It’s Showtime — My review of the production’s best local jokes: does a memorable song also make a memorable show? Just don’t ask three times.
  • Review: Palladium Panto 2026 — Now a London institution, the Palladium panto risks leaving first-time visitors outside the joke. Just be warned.
  • A blog is like concrete shoes — After a while, a blog becomes like a pair of concrete shoes. It weighs you down and you begin to sink. That’s what happened at one point on my sites. I wanted to post daily. I wanted to build that sense of personal history. But I couldn’t. It was too much, so it faded.
  • Beverley Knight: Storytelling Soul — Beverley Knight was Born To Perform, and I saw her in Blackpool. It was a concert organised around Beverley Knight’s life story, connecting soul, survival and musical theatre.
  • Festival diaries 2026, day three — A hot final day at the festival brought disappointment from Suzanne Vega, unexpected joy from Level 42, and new discoveries away from the main stage.
  • Trusting Technology: Programmatic Advertising and Digital Locks — Do you trust a digital lock? Do you trust programmatic advertising? Did anybody ever believe anybody would write that sentence?
  • High bar for tech — Something useful is heading for the big technology graveyard: a defence of Meta Portal and a reflection on useful technology killed for being insufficiently enormous.
  • Stretching from slumber: morning light — Travelling to the airport one early morning, I took in the journey, watching the changing lights and half-awake streets come to life. The journey was very much part of the travel experience.
  • Starlight Express — A new version of Starlight Express: it’s nostalgic and immersive, with an impressive cast, but I have mixed feelings. Still, I loved it in the end.
  • Jesus Christ Superstar: A Game of Two Halves — The new Palladium Superstar feels flat, despite later flashes of second-act brilliance.
  • Buenos Aires: four days, four stories — What began in chaos turned into a celebration of Argentina’s food, warmth and effortless charm — proof that even the most delayed journeys can lead to perfect adventures.
  • Japan Vacation Retrospective Part 2: Kyoto — A second collection of words and pictures that sums up my 2017 visit to Japan. In this part, I get to ride the bullet train.
  • Reading challenge 2025 — A reflective review of the books I read in 2025. It was a wide-ranging year in books, and my strongest recommendations connect directly to work, place and personal experience.
  • Happy birthday BBC Shropshire — It was my first proper after-school job. After 32 years on the air, there’s still something special about BBC Local Radio in Shropshire.

For the authentic blog experience that’s only just being resurrected from a distant time, you might want to see musak.org.