1. The Australian book you’ve finally got time for: On the Beach by Nevil Shute
‘I often wonder how many people bought On the Beach when it came out in 1957, assuming it was a novel about a group of gorgeous, sun-kissed surfers catching breaks all summer long. On the Beach is instead about a bunch of miserable Melburnians waiting to die slowly and horribly from radiation poisoning after the world has been annihilated in a nuclear holocaust started by the Albanians.’
2. My favourite game: Swindon reach the promised land – thank Hod
‘When Ardíles left to manage Newcastle in 1991, it felt as though the ropes had loosened on a slow, inexorable drift back to, well, where we are now. But then: Glenn Hoddle. It was like signing a unicorn; one with a magical left hoof. First he kept us up, then we narrowly missed out on the play-offs the following season. And then it clicked.’
3. Is the Coalition’s gas nirvana just an attempt to have its fossil fuel cake and eat it too?
‘Ten years ago, when Australia’s climate and energy botch-up was still in its infancy, politicians used to talk up the virtues of gas as a transitional fuel, and they used to talk about carbon capture and storage as technology that governments needed to invest in. The great botch-up is now well past infancy, and Australia’s record on climate and energy is a disaster so profound it’s still traumatising backstage protagonists years after the stadium rock wreckers have left the crime scene.’
4. The perfect vegan sausages from a dry mix: what other meat-free joys of the 70s did I miss?
‘I stopped eating meat five and a half years ago after getting close to a lamb in Turkey. I only spent a few minutes with this lamb, whose name, translated, was Courage. But, as these were the closing minutes of the poor lamb’s life, the bond grew very strong, very quickly, before being severed by the knife of its killer. Perhaps, though, the bond is actually as strong as ever, given that I think about him most days.’
5. Sing Backwards and Weep by Mark Lanegan review – touring, recording, drugs
‘Lanegan’s recollections of Liam Gallagher as “reckless, witless, despotic” and an “unbearable minor-league dictator … In my thirty-one years on earth, I had never encountered anyone with a larger head or tinier balls” make for bracing reading.’
6. Jane Roe’s deathbed confession exposes the immorality of the Christian right
‘The Rev Flip Benham, one of the evangelical leaders featured in the documentary, apparently has no moral qualms about how McCorvey, who was clearly vulnerable, was used. “She chose to be used,” he says. “That’s called work. That’s what you’re paid to be doing!” Ah yes, I remember reading that in the Bible: thou shalt pay others to cravenly lie.’
7. The 100 greatest UK No 1s: No 13, Frankie Goes to Hollywood – Relax
‘In 1983, Margaret Thatcher swept to general election victory on a moralistic platform of “Victorian values”. The Victorians are well-remembered for their culture of sexual repression, and – as a direct result – their obsession with sex and erotica. So perhaps Thatcher should have seen it coming: mere months later, the country’s No 1 single was the most gloriously filthy in chart-topping history.
8. I’ve never seen ... Notting Hill
‘Audiences in 1999 got whisked away to England and to heart-stopping infatuation, but a viewer today also time travels. Their tentative courtship makes 20 years ago feel remote and accessible, in the same way that something such as Miss Congeniality perceptibly returns its audience to a pre-9/11 paradigm. In the case of Notting Hill, its sense of time predates the overhauling of the romcom-industrial complex.’
9. What checks will there be on goods crossing Irish Sea?
‘The government has finally conceded there will be extra checks and paperwork on some goods trade across the Irish Sea after Brexit. So why, on what, and when will they begin?’
10. Peter Gallagher: ‘One of the most toxic things in the world is success’
‘Critiques of Gallagher’s performance often linger on his looks. They seem integral to the cocksure ne’er-do-wells he plays: from a vengeful spouse in Altman’s Short Cuts, to a lawyer sleeping with his wife’s sister in Sex, Lies and Videotape, to the braggadocious “real estate king” in American Beauty. Altman said he cast Gallagher as a shortcut to character, just his face communicating “handsome, vain, sleazy”.’
How we create the antidote
Every day we measure not only how many people click on individual stories but also how long they spend reading them. This list is created by comparing the attention time with the length of each article, to come up with a ranking for the stories people read most deeply.
