Month: April 2015

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30 years ago Gilles Peterson was broadcasting from a room in Crystal Palace

Picked up from Gilles Peterson’s facebook page.

gilles_peterson_obs_1985Thirty years ago I did the first national newspaper interview with Gilles while he broadcasting on K-Jazz (UK Pirate).

GP: On Sunday there’s a free event at Southbank QEH, all about London’s pirate radio movement of the 1980s. Interviews from Kiss FM founder Gordon Mac, and Dave VJ/Lindsay Wesker discussing their book about the period. Plus, old school sets throughout from DJs Sarah HB, Dave VJ and Jasper The Vinyl Junkie.

Although I can’t make it down, it’s worth a look if you’re down supporting the marathon crew!

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MI5 vetting of the BBC – 30th anniversary

The story keeps popping up. It’s 30th anniversary is in August but I find there is still interest in the story David Leigh and I wrote, ably assisted by Mark Hollingsworth, revealing how MI5 vetted the BBC staff.

Mostly recently Michael Rosen mentioned it in a letter to the London Review of Books. He had been blacklisted as a result of vetting. Jean Seaton has suggested it was good thing in her latest official history of the the BBC!

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Continue reading →

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Lashmar on Hatton Garden and its sinister side

Lashmar on Hatton Garden and its sinister side – in the Independent – a blast from the past

Paul Lashmar
The Independent, Tuesday 11 August 1998

Jewellery and junk

For centuries Hatton Garden has been London’s quarter for jewellers and goldsmiths, not to mention fencers and fraudsters. But now the drug money launderers have moved in. And things are turning ugly

Hatton Garden is famous as London’s gold and jewellery quarter. Here, Oasis’s Liam Gallagher came with Patsy Kensit to buy a wedding ring. In January, the Foreign Secretary Robin Cook bought his girlfriend Gaynor Regan an ornate, 18-carat ring with diamonds, for £600. Continue reading →