This 2008 DVD is a TV-style talking head documentary that mainly covers the early years of stadium rock band Pink Floyd, and inadvertently reveals how they used the British counterculture to hitch a ride to success. The Floyd themselves come across like a bunch of talentless drama students in the pathetic promo films that are cut into the main feature. Sound wise they vary from seeming like a pleasant if not entirely convincing imitation of The Who (“Arnold Lane”), all the way down to prefiguring a lot of really bad indie bands (“Scarecrow”). There is also some far more interesting archive material on here, but most of it is rather too familiar.

After 806 Woolworths shops closed their doors in the UK over the past few days, which British high street chain will be the next to go? According to “The Times” of December 29, 2008: “Begbies Traynor, the insolvency expert, predicted only days before Christmas that up to 15 retail chains would crumble by the middle of January… PwC has already calculated that 4,000 empty shops will appear on Britain’s high streets if only 10 per cent of the nation’s retailers hit financial problems over the next 12 months.” What would you like to see go first? Here’s my anti-capitalist top ten wish list!

Did you know that Neoism is a Nigerian money scam? On the one hand you go to those poetry sites where people cut and paste words and phrases together to form post-modern nonsense then, on the other hand, you get all this spam coming through which uses exactly the same technique to fill out the body of the email and avoid the spam filters, while sticking in an image which is an ad for some Venezuelan gerbil-farm’s stock offering. It’s great. I can’t get enough spam, which is why I spend all day submitting my name to as many goofball spam sites as I can.

Why do you write? To create laughter. Where do you write? Anywhere there is space for a computer: I don’t write, I type. Which person in history do you most admire? Myself. What do you consider to be the most important moment in literary history? The publication of my novel “Memphis Underground” on 26 April 2007. 5 What is your favourite quotation? “Bad poets borrow, good poets steal” or “I learn nothing from the dead art of living men, I learn everything from the living art of dead men, long live the dead!” Which writer (living or dead) would you most like to have dinner with?

In recent weeks I’ve heard a lot of chatter about Iain Sinclair and Audi. The car manufacturer puts it this way: “Author Iain Sinclair joins filmmaker Chris Petit as they take an unusual trip though the North West of England. Available on The Audi Channel SKY 884.” Richard DeDomenici sent me this message the other day: “What do you think of Iain Sinclair’s Audi advert? I have mixed emotions. Surprise, disappointment, and jealousy.” I replied: “Oh I have no problems with it… except I don’t like cars (everyone should use public transport)… but we all have to live out the contradictions of capitalism and Sinclair has paid his dues and deserves to be where he is… and he needs the money… I mean what can you say… He’d probably rather be doing something else but has to pay the bills….