La Cabina (The Phone Box), 1972, Spain {English Subtitles}

   I certainly don't think anyone who views this will feel the same way about phone booths ever again. Whilst I couldn't help but become attuned to an apparent evocation of our great modern malaise (trapped and helpless on the Planet of the Pudding Brains, where compassion comes in last place to hedonism and self-interest), other commentators readily held up La Cabina's narrative as emblematic of the days of General Franco and all the eliding of human rights that went with it

   I suppose that one just had to be there

Cathal Smyth - A Comfortable Man, Live, October 2014

   To Wilton's Music Hall in East London last night, on the invitation of my old friend, artist Andrew Hancock, where I produced a set of photographs of the man we still call Chas Smash of Madness, resplendent amongst a sonorous orchestra, a songbird in black and the work of 50 contemporary artists directly inspired by Smyth himself. Nice work, if you can get it

   What bodes well for this album launch, which has two further nights at Wilton's to go, and indeed, the album itself is that the roguishly avuncular Smyth (who made your author, at least, feel as if in the company of the favourite uncle who casually turns the air blue and quickly moves along before the matriarch tweaks his ear) somehow managed to start out strongly and end on an even better finish. I suspect the builder's tea that he periodically topped up from with the appetite of Popeye

   Madness is one of this country's most resonant (and entertaining, lest we forget) bands. So, for anyone who may be in attendance tonight or tomorrow, or plans to be, I can assure you that rarely do you get a safer pair of hands to guide you through his new and warmly folkish material. Anticipate big choruses, assiduous charm, precision timing, band crushes and one big, open heart

   For you'll need every ounce of that goodwill whenever you try to get served at the Mahogany Bar