Picture from Happy Nice Time People

When I fire off a letter of complaint I expect to get a reply at least, an apology and a promise to sort out whatever it was that I got annoyed about for the benefit of future customers, and maybe some free stuff or a voucher like Cadbury did when they incurred my wrath. Although I don't do what I do for the free stuff, some free stuff might be nice although I wouldn't want it to cloud my judgement and put me under obligation to express a less than honest opinion. When I presented The Sunday Alternative on Trent Sound with Erik Petersen (one of the times he turned up, I never had much luck with consistent co-presenters) we went through a phase of discussing pork pies and that resulted in a butcher knocking on my front door one Sunday morning with a freshly cooked and delicious pie to eat on the show. People in my line of work used to be sent free records, t-shirts, get taken out for meals by pluggers and phoned up asking if they fancy touring the world with a band, I got a pork pie. 

At this point I should show some gratitude to Paul who occasionally sends me the joker from decks of cards, something I collect.

So while I have never been treated to a free breakfast as a result of my writings, nor have I ever been sent free crisps in my capacity as the UK's number one crisp critic (number one/only, tomato/tom-ay-to). I did however get a reply from Asda customer services about my complaint that they had the wrong colour coding on their crisp packets. To be honest, I don't think they can see what a terrible mistake they made.

Dear Mr Oliver

Thanks for getting in touch with your feedback about the choice of colour on our Smart Price crisps.

I've passed your feedback on to my colleagues in the Technical Team, so it can be taken in to account next time the product is reviewed. We're always happy to hear what customers think of the products we sell. We also have a Facebook page where you can post your feedback too.

Whilst I appreciate you are unhappy with the choice of colour, I would say that Walker's use the same colours as we do on their own brand crisps*.

We have a 100% guarantee with all of the food we sell. Should you be unhappy with any food item you buy from us in future, please return the packaging (not the contents) to your local store. We'll refund or replace the item, and should it be an Asda brand product, we'll refund and replace.

Thanks again for getting in touch.

Yours sincerely

Tony Dixon

Asda Service Team

*They have missed the point here, Walker's Crisps are WRONG!

I do feel that my complaint hasn't been addressed in this letter at all.

The Sunday Alternative #50 is available from here.

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August housekeeping

We are now in the eighth month of the year and at a standstill as far as work is concerned. In unrelated news, it is my birthday on the 27th of this month so a nice present would be a donation using the PayPal button. This would be spent on creating podcasts, documentaries, short films, comedy sketches and various other entertainments that I will make available to enjoy online for free.

The above t-shirt and bag is also available to buy, all the money goes to the same creative fund. They are on my shop page.

I'll play you a kazoo song request, find out how here.

Letter of complaint written for you for £2, here.

steveEoliver@gmail.com

@SteveOliver76

Apart from a large amount of music for review or podcast play I don't tend to get many perks besides guest list places for gigs. The days are long gone when record companies and PR firms would fly you round the world getting you drunk and sticking Ferrari keys through your letterbox, and the Internet has almost killed the press-pack containing t-shirts and other such treasure (apart from Dick Venom and The Terrortones who are the kings of the press-pack in Nottingham). I can't even remember the last time I received a band t-shirt or badge. Last year the postman delivered David Nolan's book about Jake Bugg as interview research and for review I was sent Danny Baker's and The Chuckle Brothers autobiography, but apart from that the gifts have been very slim on the ground. The last time I had a gift was the Sunday delivery to my front door of a freshly cooked pork pie from a local butcher when Erik Petersen and I went through a phase of discussing them on The Sunday Alternative.

To be perfectly honest I don't worry too much about it (apart from the band t-shirts, where are they?) so it is nice when you get some incentive to carry on what you're doing. On the other hand it might cloud my judgement and stop the freebies coming full stop. Take my writings about breakfasts in cafes for example; I have never been recognised in a cafe for writing about them, despite the looks I sometimes get for taking my pad and pen out of my pocket and making notes.If I was given a free breakfast as an incentive then I would feel obliged to write nice things about them in return which would mean that I sacrificed the one thing that my writing is based on - honesty. However, maybe it would be nice if I was offered a free meal on a return visit. I don't do it for such tacky rewards though, I am a consumer champion.

One of the main focuses of my consumer championing is the world of crisps, technically they are snacks rather than crisps but you know what I mean. I often tweet a photograph of the freshly finished packet of snacks with a 140 character opinion. Rather than report on the obvious brands I try and find some lesser known items, usually produced by KP, Golden Wonder, and Bobby's. These are found in small Londis shops and are certainly not mainstream names. I refuse to buy or review Walker's as I (along with every other person who spent their childhood in the 1980s) object to their lack of conformity when it comes to colour coding; it is green for cheese and onion, not a difficult thing to understand you would think. Today I received a direct message on Twitter from a crisp/snack company asking for my address for some samples. Although I won't let this influence writing about what I think of these snacks, I had to sit down and smoke a John Player Special (blue, king size - will have superkings if that's all there is) cigarette and make a cup of PG Tips tea, quite possibly the best tea on the market, while I tried to imagine a Rolls Royce parked outside the house.

Related reading here.

No podcast this week.

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May housekeeping 

Please consider making either a one-off or regular donation using the PayPal button above this blog. Every penny will be used to fund creative projects that will be made available for free.

The Sunday Alternative is a free weekly podcast. I am aiming to start making this podcast in a studio with live bands in session. This will cost at least £50 per episode so please give whatever you can.

52 podcasts and 365 blogs a year must be worth something to you?

The Sunday Alternative bag is on sale now. All you need to do is click on the PayPal button and donate £6 (or more if you're feeling generous), then email me at the address below with 'BAG' in the subject line and your name and address in the email.

(All money from the bags goes into the fund to create free online entertainment)

steveEoliver@gmail.com

@SteveOliver76 

Thanks to some very generous sharing, my blog about changing footwear style was the most read blog this week (so far, although I promise that this one will be quite dull). I hope someone from Converse gets to see it and decides that I should be granted a lifetime supply of freebies. After the money I’ve spent on their trainers and bags over the years it would take some time before I benefitted from it but it would be a nice gesture that I would do my best to take advantage of. Maybe they’d like to sponsor the podcast?

Talking of which, I have only just realised that we have come close to the third birthday of The Sunday Alternative. If I get time I will make a bonus podcast for Thursday 11^th September, but this year the official birthday will be Sunday 14^th. Given that third and fourth  anniversaries aren’t a massive deal (although they will of course be celebrated), my thoughts idly turned to working out when the show’s birthday would fall on a Sunday and was delighted to see that the show will be five years old (in 2016) on the right day – Sunday September 11^th. Of course it is rather too early to be thinking about it but there’s a lot to plan and knowing my luck I’ll forget about it until a week before the event and it will be too late. With the Sunday as the focal point I might try and organise a gig on the evening with some of the acts who have played on the show (not All So Reckless though), and I might try and organise an afternoon screening of the documentary with a Q&A afterwards possibly featuring past co-presenters. It’ll be difficult to sit on these plans for a year and a half, but at least I have time to get everything right.

The documentary is on my work list in a few weeks time as I still haven’t finished it. I have to leave a lot of room for manoeuvre regarding the interviews and ‘talking heads’ so I might just do a load of filming followed by some major editing. It would be nice to have the involvement of everyone who has been connected with the show, although I doubt Erik Petersen will manage as he moved back to Florida this year. Having said that, I doubt I could have trusted him to turn up and take part if he still lived in Nottingham. If we do a Q&A with past presenters I might get a cardboard cutout of him to stand on the stage, symbolic of his contribution to the show.

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The recent campaign on Indie GoGo didn’t really take off for whatever reason, but it isn’t going to put me off making a documentary about The Sunday Alternative. I’ve been working on it a bit today, preferring to attempt to concentrate on one project at a time and see how that goes. I am writing it very loosely as I want to leave it open to improvisation when it comes to the interviews with the people involved, so am only really writing the narrative bits. As the show developed from the show I did on Sherwood Radio I am going to include that in the film along with talking about my lifelong love of radio, making it a sort of autobiographical story of my route to radio. My original plan as far as this project was concerned, was to make it a spoof documentary reminiscent of The Office or I’m Alan Partridge, but I get enough criticism from people who actually think I really am like that and have no concept of ironic humour. If I acted the part of the arrogant radio personality that I used to play on NottinghamLIVE then it would convince the idiots that I really am like that. This is why I stopped doing it on the radio, so it would be a backward step to recreate that persona. I take radio seriously and I now try to reflect that on air.

All the people who have been involved in the show will be invited to appear as ‘talking heads’ on the film, as will various different commentators from the music business. I have written an opening to the doc, with scenes in Bulwell and around the studio building. The filming I did on my camcorder of the live bands and singers will be also interspersed along with audio of conversations between the various co-presenters and me.

The little village of Ollerton will also be one of the locations, as I will be going right back to the start of my radio career at Sherwood Radio and reliving those moments. This won’t mean that I’ll listen back to the shows as research as they make me cringe. I was a terrible radio presenter back then, having never appeared on the radio before, so the shows do make an interesting piece of history. This is why I have put them online, as they are a fascinating way to document my radio career. New listeners to The Sunday Alternative might be interested to listen back to see that I wasn’t always a competent broadcaster.

The money thing is still an issue though, not that the documentary will have a massive budget of course. It will hopefully be screened at a small cinema in Nottingham and London for free entry, (and I am open to suggestion if anyone else wants it somewhere else), which I will introduce and take questions afterwards. This depends on how much money is left after the filming, as it might only be Nottingham that gets the screening (I won’t have to pay for travel you see, I have a tram pass that will cover it). Part of me wants to have another go at the big crowd-funding campaign, but I don’t have the time to be constantly tweeting and Facebooking about it, which of course would annoy people. If you’re reading this blog you can help by making a donation using the PayPal button.

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If you’ve enjoyed reading this, please consider showing your appreciation by way of a donation using the PayPal button above this blog. Every penny will be used to create free online content. There are currently plans underway for a comedy sketch series, an online cookery and music show, a video version of The Sunday Alternative, and plenty more including documentaries, short films, and podcasts.

Send a blank email to blogcastmonthly@gmail.com to receive my exclusive new podcast, only available by email. The first edition of BlogCast will land in your inbox on the last Friday in April.

The Sunday Alternative returns as a fortnightly podcast on Sunday May 4h (anyone doing Star Wars Day jokes will be taken out and beaten up).

I recently wrote the following passage in my notebook:

The Sunday Alternative needs to be much tighter. Although it is always evolving there are areas that I find distressing. Today’s show went very well in terms of music and guests, but there were too many holes.

There are other notes, but I wrote the above lines while listening back to the show later that night. I don’t like listening to myself but have decided to give the show a listen every week as a post-mortem. The show has evolved over the years but I don’t really know how, and can’t really pinpoint specific turning points. In my head I know what I want the show to be, and as good as it is, it will always be open to intense scrutiny from me. I am my own worst critic which I imagine is a good thing as it means I can never become complacent. If I had the time I would listen back to every show and write up a detailed essay on the good and bad points of the show and what I could have done better. However, I can’t be bothered so if anyone wants to do it for me then go to the Mixcloud page and start from the beginning if you want to listen to just over two years worth of shows.

For the last few weeks I have been doing the show alone, mostly with a live music guest. At first I was reluctant to do the show on my own as I like to have someone there to bounce ideas off, but I am growing used to the show being my solo project. There have been four co-presenters since the show started, each bringing a different style to the show. Chris, Erik and Penny were all a great deal of fun to work with. They all had a little problem with turning up on time, if at all, but listening back occasionally brings me fond memories of the life of the show. With Erik we talked too much and turned it into a comedy show, with the music gradually being sidelined, so I brought back live music so as not to totally lose focus. Gary has been great but he has been unavailable for the last few weeks for a variety of reasons that I will respectfully not go into. I feel that I can only do the show on my own if there’s a live guest, because otherwise it is just me basically saying “that was a record, here’s another one, that was a record, here’s a longer one because I’m going out for a fag” for two hours. Obviously the music is great, but as a whole it isn’t great radio.

I’m not sure about the future of the documentary as the Indie Go Go campaign hasn’t really taken off, it will still be made but I can’t really commit to a definite ‘when’ on it. Just lately I’ve been toying with developing the filmed element angle and maybe doing a purely filmed version of the show as a weekly or fortnightly video series featuring live music (obviously) and short interview segments. Maybe a comedy sketch or two could be included, and the whole thing (which for authenticity I would actually film on Sundays) will be made available the following Sunday. This is a project on the list of things I hope to get off the ground before the end of the year, along with some other ideas. Promoting live music in a variety of different visually interesting ways is something I’m looking into, possibly dusting off my proposed but immediately discarded cookery series to include a musical element.

I had intended to do more with filmed content for the show, including the live sessions and interviews but also incorporating behind the scenes footage and items for camera only. This was to be uploaded as a weekly video uploaded to YouTube and Vimeo. As things stand though, this hasn’t been possible as we are on borrowed time as far as live music is concerned at Trent Towers (not an actual tower) so I didn’t want to start something I would have to abandon as it gathered momentum.

Another idea I had was to ditch the daily blog, as it can be a bit of a drag (to write I mean, figures show that it is still considered a good read, unless one person reads it five hundred* times of course. To replace the blog, and the daily commitment of having to find something to write about, I have been giving some thought to doing a weekly podcast. In this I would talk about my week and play some of the music I have been sent that I didn’t get time to play on the radio. It could also include guests and live music sessions, but as I would do doing it in my house that could be a bit unworkable.

*daily average 

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Mandi once again had chosen to work today as she wants to make the most of overtime being available; it’s quite good as she gets to choose her hours when working at the weekend. There’s also the fact that you get time and a half that helps to sway her. I went to town with her in pursuit of blank CDs or DVDs to embark on the start of what will become an ongoing task, copying my audio archive to a physical format.

Since my old laptop conked out I’ve been wanting to back up my work into physical, as I no longer believe that anything digital is especially future-proof. I went round my dad’s house at lunchtime and worked through my USB sticks and moved a load of stuff. My American radio show, The Sound Of Nottingham UK (Fridays 11pm and Sunday 1pm EST, Saturday 4am and Sunday 6pm UK), is only an hour long so fits onto a blank CD, and today I copied twenty five of them and filed them away in CD wallet I had bought for the task. Once I had copied them I put the disks in my laptop to make sure that they actually had recorded before I deleted them from the USB sticks. The Sunday Alternative is mostly two hours long, (apart from the brief flirtation we had as a three hour show) and has to be kept on a blank DVD. Every show from 2011 is now safe and sound, which even in the snippets I heard while testing the recordings sounded interesting. It was weird hearing Chris Underwood and Erik Petersen in the co-presenter’s chair, and the way the show seems to have changed over time. The space that this has created on the memory sticks enables me to temporarily move stuff from the computer so I don’t have another episode as I had yesterday.

I feel the need to copy my blogs to Word documents and possibly print them out; once upon a time I thought that anything posted on the Internet was there to stay like a tattoo on the ether. However, if I hadn’t moved my older blogs onto Blogger and had instead kept them on Myspace I would have lost them all when they made the disgraceful move of deleting everybody’s blogs, photos, and videos. Just because nobody uses Myspace anymore (mores the pity, it was the best social networking site in its 1.0 heyday and it still amazes me how people abandoned it for Facebook), I’m pretty sure that people at least liked to think that their old writings were still safe.  I am also digging through the sticks to find my newspaper articles and reviews to print out and put into an old fashioned box file. No electrical fault will cause a box file to lose everything stored within it, unless it’s an electrical fault that causes your house to burn down.

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Any money donated to the PayPal account above will be put to good creative use, find out more here.

Sunday 8th December

I’m really getting to grips with the idea of being a daytime radio presenter; The Sunday Alternative suits the time slot in a way that I could never have imagined when I started doing it in 2011. I was of the opinion that the late night slot was the one for me as it suited the romantic notion of the Play Misty For Me style of presenting. Of course there’s the fact that the show is still not bound by any rules and I can still play whatever the hell I like, although as I now visualise the show as one for the family I am a lot more careful about the content and won’t play songs with swearing in. It would upset me to think that a family consisting of mum and dad, a grandparent or two, and some children were enjoying the show while sitting around the Sunday lunch table, reminiscent of the time of Billy Cotton’s Band Show, and the mood of the moment suddenly getting ruined by an errant ‘fuck’ polluting the airwaves.

The only problem I am having is the availability of bands and musicians to come in and perform on Sunday lunchtime to play live. I had originally intended to have live music in every week when The Sunday Alternative first started, but I have had large periods of time without a guest. When I did the show with Erik Petersen we fell into a bit of a trap of turning into a comedy act, (although to be fair we did work well together but the show wasn’t meant to have taken that direction) and so I brought music back in an attempt to make the show a serious music show once again. If I can, then I want to have a live session every week. I’m not necessarily chasing Nottingham bands for this show as I do enough for the Nottingham music scene on my other radio shows, and it is cool to be able to introduce other acts from around the country on the show. The Sunday Alternative isn’t a Nottingham show essentially, in the same way that NottinghamLIVE and The Sound of Nottingham UK is, as we have a much larger range. That was my beef with Fiona Sturgess from The Independent and her refusal to write about the show in her column, she dismissed it because it wasn’t national. She missed the point totally as just because we broadcast from a local station we do have a good national following and listeners abroad. On the other hand, it is logistically easier to get a Nottingham band in.

As an eleventh hour booking, my friend and former radio colleague Bainy offered his services on Friday with his band Blue Vulture. The two of us have taken the piss out of each other for a long time now, playfully dissing each other’s work in some form or another. My current thing is to keep referring to his band’s music as “quite good” in an attempt to have it quoted on their CD sleeve (it already appears on their Reverbnation page). The story of how the band came to be is an interesting one, as Bainy came up with a band name, set up the social media pages, and then set about actually recruiting the band. The end result is really brilliant quite good.

It wasn’t the full band that appeared today though, just Bainy singing and Dave on guitar to perform four of their songs acoustically. A lot of the time I get frustrated at how little a band have to say, both in interviews and in between songs during live radio sessions, but thankfully Bainy’s radio experience helped a great deal as he not only introduced the songs with ease but also provided something of a back story thus making it interesting for the listeners.

I dropped a bollock right at the end of their set when I switched the microphones back on and turned to Gary and said “absolutely brilliant”, which I immediately retracted into “quite good” but it was too late as Bainy heard it and said he now had a new quote.

The show is especially enjoyable with Gary as co-presenter, so I hope he is able to make it a more regular thing. He is a school teacher during the week and has a lot of work to do in his own time, which is why he stopped doing the show in the evenings. This week he brought his guitar into the studio as it was in his car, but I couldn’t persuade him to perform on the show. I will keep at him, especially as I have invited a very special guest in next week and said that I will let him sing with Gary on guitar.

If the very special guest turns up, it will be quite good.

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Today is 'wear a skirt like a ballerina' day. 2/2

Last night I attended, in my capacity as reviewer for The Nottingham Evening Post, (as I still call it) a gig called Setlist. A handful of big name comedians performed stand up routines about subjects that appeared on a screen behind them. Billed as 'comedy without a net', it was comedians showing off their improvisational skills to whole new limits. Below in bold and italic, is the first draft of my review, before I had to snip it to 300 words:

For a well established stand-up with a full diary, the concept of Setlist should on paper be something to avoid. Billed as ‘comedy without a net’, this is where those carefully written routines that have travelled the country get left behind, and a routine gets created on the spot using random words that appear on the screen behind them. Imagine karaoke where you don’t know the song and you’re almost there.

The first comic, Matt Kirshen, seemed nervous at first, but soon showed himself to be a skilled improviser, flitting effortlessly between subjects as the screen changed. Paul Foot was next, this concept seemed tailored for his surreal style, and his slow rambling delivery appeared to be providing him with thinking time as he went along.

Tom Stade was sadly the low point of the night, with sections of the crowd laughing at the shock factor rather than anything funny being said, he came across as the annoying kid shouting ‘bum’ in school to impress his classmates.
The biggest cheer of recognition so far came for Rufus Hound, who proved that there is much more to him than all those TV panel shows he has trouble saying no to. He was the most relaxed performer of the first half, and obviously a seasoned improviser, helped along of course by being impossible to dislike.

Adam Bloom was perhaps the less well known of the bill, after an admittedly nervous start he found his stride with a filthy routine that was one of the funniest of the night, although sadly no detail of his act can be quoted in this review. Brendan Burns recognised a member of the audience from a prior gig, and bemoaned his lack of fame, saying that even 8 Out Of 10 Cats didn’t want him.

The headliner was Rich Hall, who started as he meant to go on in his shouting rambling style. Opening with a slogan for The Cornerhouse that their PR maybe won’t want to use, he directed his entire set at a student in the front row, punctuating with ‘don’t look around like I’m not talking to you’. Such was his apparent disdain for the Setlist concept, that his final punch line picked from the bucket got passed around the crowd, so we could each have our own private laugh.

My final draft, with a few editorial changes that I didn't make, can be found today on the website for The Nottingham Evening Post, (as I still call it). It will be in tomorrow's paper. That's how it works, get home from the gig, write about it, email it, website next day, print the day after. It's here anyway.

My interest and ambition towards the world of stand up comedy has recently started to glimmer again. Part of this is reading books by Stewart Lee, (How I Escaped My Certain Fate) and Richard Herring, (How Not To Grow Up), and part of it is down to working with Erik on the radio show. I know it is a rough business to get into, lonely and with little financial reward, but that is also what makes it sound exciting. When I briefly did comedy in my late teens, I mainly relied on character based stand up, (I had a character called Ronnie 'Chubby' Corbett, a hybrid comedian in an armchair who would start off by telling a seemingly harmless joke, before getting to the expletive filled punchline delivered in a Teesside/Geordie accent. It gave me chance to show off my Ronnie Corbett impression, and swear copiously), and sketches. I've never done actual stand up comedy, but it does appeal to me. Working with Erik on the radio has given me back the need to think on my feet and make the show funny. Once we get into making the podcasts, the comedy element of our partnership will blossom, hopefully. Maybe we should do a live version at some point, after all we are following the Collings and Herrin model, although BBC 6Music are yet to offer us the Saturday 10am-1pm slot.

Two writers on The Nottingham Evening Post, (as I still call it), Erik Peterson and Oonagh Robinson, have started a hashtag on Twitter dedicated to saving the Wimpy in Broadmarsh Shopping Centre. For readers outside Nottingham, if your town has two shopping centres, one higher end and one full of pound shops and stalls selling fake canvas paintings, the latter is your equivalent to Broadmarsh. Broadmarsh is emptying due to refurbishment, which will be believed when seen, and Westfield recently sold the place so the future is unknown.

People from outside Nottingham, Wimpy was a 1980s burger place. Actually, it had been around since the 1950s, but to my generation it was as much a symbol of our childhood as The A-Team. We still have one and apparently so do other places around the UK. I was amazed when I first saw it.

The article below the lines is my two penneth worth, which was turned down for possibly being libellous toward Wimpy. That wasn't my intention as I'm always careful never to write anything untrue, and I'm sure the MD of Wimpy sometimes wonders if it is still the 1980s?

NB- If you read the blog linked above, then I will save you the bother of accusing me of copying it. I wrote it to start with, and used it to write the article. This is why I do a regular blog, as it gives me ideas. Sometimes the lines between my personal blog and articles do cross each other. 

If you follow The Post's Erik Peterson and Oonagh Robinson on twitter, then you will be up to speed with their campaign/obsession regarding the branch of Wimpy in Broadmarsh Shopping Centre. While I applaud their public spirited pride in Nottingham, I cannot help but feel as if they have gone about it the wrong way.

I will not upset anybody by pointing out that Broadmarsh, and Collin Street in general is not a particularly attractive part of this wonderful city. Yes, it needs working on, if it was up to me it would be knocked down and replaced with the houses that were sacrificed for it, but I cannot see that happening. Now, shops are moving away from Broadmarsh in droves, (and weren't we all relieved to see the shoe shop monkey in a new home?) which is where Oonagh and Erik's crusade comes in. The Wimpy in Broadmarsh might close down.

There has not been an official statement from Wimpy management, so the campaign is based on fear. The fear that we might lose such an establishment, and with it would go part of a Bygone age.

I moved back home to Nottingham in 2007 and could not quite believe what I was seeing when I realised that our city still has such a place. Had I walked through a hole in time like Gary Sparrow in Goodnight Sweetheart? Surely, Wimpy vanished in the late 1980s, possibly early 1990s under a tidal wave of McDonalds and Burger King. We live in an environmentally friendly age these days, which is where Wimpy should perhaps jump in. With their plates, cutlery, glasses and cups, they have the 'green' whip hand over the big players that make you eat from paper bags. I will write your advertising campaign Wimpy!

Back to why I feel Erik and Oonagh have the right sentiment, but the wrong business plan. Wimpy can be the flagship eating establishment in my idea to revitalise Broadmarsh: A 1980s themed shopping centre. Nostalgia, despite not being what they used to be, is still big business. I will keep Wimpy upstairs, and downstairs you can eat at Spud-U-Like,, just don't go spilling 'special sauce' over your brand new C&A suit. After you have eaten, you can go record-shopping at Our Price, do your supermarket shopping at Gateway, and instead of Heron we will bring back Bejams. A nice bag of Woolworths Pick 'n' Mix will go down a treat on the bus home too.

The 1980s shopping centre, I am planning to get that Dale Winton chap from Radio Trent to open it.