24 Sept 2016

Does Mary Berry Like Reggae?

This week the tragic news hit that Mary Berry will be leaving The Great British Bake Off.

How will we ever cope?

In light of this news, there's one song that will do, and that's the new single from Bristol's Idles called Well Done. As well as Berry, and whoever the fuck Tarquin is, Trevor Nelson also gets a shout out which is always a good sign.

Well Done doesn't seem to be on YouTube or SoundCloud but the BBC has a stream. It's released on Friday 7th Oct 2016 and you can pre-order it on iTunes.

EDIT: There's now a video on YouTube...

Back to Bake Off for a second though, I got not one but two Guardian news alerts on the same day about it switching to Channel 4. Now it's a nice break from the alerts of bombs going off and black men getting shot in 'murica but were two updates necessary?

It might just be the thing that tips me over the edge and give up on the news altogether. I know I should be an active citizen, I should engage, challenge, be informed but I can see why people don't bother. Touching on Adam Curtis' Oh Dearism, it feels like 2016 has been a tsunami of shit times and that if I want to be happy maybe I should just stop reading the news, chuck some good tunes on, go for a walk, bake some fucking bread.

I've already detuned Radio 4 in the kitchen. I couldn't face yet another politician not answer a simple fucking question, instead engaging in all this newspeak, all this hot air rather than give a straight answer. I can see why they do it though.

I was watching Get Shirty last night, a great documentary about the rise and fall of sportswear company Admiral (designers of the iconic Welsh strip of the 70s). They had footage of someone from Thatcher's government explaining to the recently sacked seamstresses and other factory workers that they really should just suck it up. I think the line was if you really want to see the breadline, I'll take you to Africa. I'm sure the Tories still think this but hide behind the spin and dazzle of PR. Maybe for some it's better to have this charade. I'd rather the people in power were honest to our faces.

So that turned into a bit of a rant. Just make sure you listen to Well Done by Idles and buy it in a couple of weeks. And watch whatever the BBC makes to replace Bake Off. Or watch Bake Off on Channel 4... who gives a shit?