Attention, Tory MPs and reactionaries of every stripe! You thought you hated the Olympic opening ceremony? Then brace yourselves for the arrival of The People's Songs on Radio 2 (yes, that's state-funded radio), in which flop-fringed fop Stuart Maconie will construct a history of modern Britain through 50 popular (though not always pop) songs. So far, so list-culture inoffensive, right?
Well, kind of: except the first 10, revealed ahead of the series, to be broadcast in January, might ruffle the feathers of those on the hunt for more Boyle-inspired "leftie multicultural crap". Not We'll Meet Again, obviously, nor probably even She Loves You, which Maconie describes as an embodiment of post-austerity dynamism.
But Millie Small's My Boy Lollipop, the first ska song to become a smash hit? Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus, with its Frenchified naughtiness? That's before we even get to the Sex Pistols and God Save the Queen or the Shamen's house classic Ebeneezer Goode, once banned by the BBC and now feted by its most traditionally conservative radio station.
(Will Maconie reflect on the lyric "Has anybody got any veras?", a request for cigarette papers derived from slang that rhymes the aforementioned "Vera Lynn" with "skin"? Your call, Stuart: I just think it would make a nice little link.)
Sit in a room reading a book and the book takes you somewhere else. Play a song and the song becomes the room, or the street, or the riot. This is not to play one art form off against another, but to point out that the ambient nature of music, its ability to permeate and saturate, means that it will always provide us with a way to talk about politics, history and culture, even – and perhaps especially – when they don't overtly constitute its subject matter.
The programme's title, coupled with Maconie's appeal for listeners to get in touch with their personal stories and memories, lets you know that this is unlikely to be one for musicological purists; its presenter has already conceded that the featured songs aren't necessarily going to be "the greatest records ever made", adding that what he didn't want to make was "another one of those how Pet Sounds or Sgt Pepper was recorded" shows.
Fine: there are enough of those, although listeners might draw the line at the inclusion of Y Viva España simply to illustrate the cultural impact of the package holiday.
But what programmes such as these can show is the extent to which music moulds society as well as forming its soundtrack. One of the first tranche of songs named is Lonnie Donegan's version of Rock Island Line, an American folk song that transferred easily into the 1950s skiffle boom; from Arkansas prisoners to British teenagers mimicking Donegan with one-string basses fashioned from tea chests and broom handles. And what it should also demonstrate is that the diversity of popular culture is the glue that holds us together.
From Y Viva España to Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Two Tribes – neither of which would feature among my Desert Island Discs – popular music has continually morphed and mutated; often we forget that what now seems mainstream was once new and shocking.
At its best, what drives the form is ingenuity and restless recombination, something that a musician such as Damon Albarn, flitting between genres and countries and cultures, has understood only too well. At its worst, it is tired and lazy and derivative, perhaps best summed up by a friend who described the Olympic closing ceremony as "a depressing old dome-era shitbag of pop".
It should be like a circus. Let's hope that Albarn proves to be the ringmaster and the likes of Simon Cowell the novelty act.
Dear readers, an apology: I might've misread Joey Barton
The transfer deadline, which came and went last Friday night with the usual febrile mixture of rumour, rapture and recrimination – all of which emotions are swiftly succeeded by a terrible sense of anti-climax – saw the departure from these shores of one Joey Barton.
As he headed for Olympique de Marseille, tweeting his excitement and relief along the way, it was tempting to imagine him mouthing Malvolio's lines when he quits the stage: "I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you."
Like I said, it's a febrile time, but Joey B really does have me in a bind. Ever since I interviewed him for this newspaper earlier in the year, I've followed his progress with interest – and, on occasion, not a little alarm. When I met Barton, I liked him a lot; he was warm, thoughtful, funny and – especially in light of the hoops you'd have to jump through to get anywhere near most Premier League players – accessible.
I wrote about how he'd tried to rout his demons, about how he was coming to terms with his frailties. I also wrote about the snobbery with which people reacted to the sight of a man, born working class, going to an art gallery or reading a book.
I'll be truthful: I hoped that he'd stay out of trouble. I didn't really want him to get sent off on the last day of the season and get a 12-match ban for violent conduct that heralded the beginning of the end of his career at QPR.
I didn't want to see him on Twitter railing at the club for making him train, as he diplomatically put it, "with the kids and fellow Taliban members". Oh, Joey! I still like you, but you do make it hard sometimes. At the moment, there appears to be a truce in the air, with the ink drying on the transfer paperwork and conciliatory tweets; and today sees Barton turning 30 and the possible dawning of a new age of maturity. So, let us just say, bon voyage, bonne chance and please, please, try to keep hors de combat.
Can the Man With No Name save the Man With No Shame?
You can see what the idea was. In theory and on a good day, the guest speaker at the Republican convention might have delivered a lot of bang for your buck. Let's think it through one more time: you get the actor who most voters regard as the perfect embodiment of traditional American values. In the popular imagination, not only is he the scourge of bad guys at home and abroad, the cleaner-upper of crime-ridden cities and corrupt western towns, he's also been seen as an actual presidential bodyguard. What Mitt Romney needed to remember was that In the Line of Fire is a fiction and that entertainers are notoriously difficult to corral.
At least Clint Eastwood only chatted amiably, albeit bafflingly, to an empty chair. Let's not forget that, at the 1983 Young Conservatives conference, wild-eyed fun machine Kenny Everett urged the party faithful to bomb Russia and kick away Michael Foot's stick. (Incidentally, you're at liberty to have who you like once you've won: witness Bill Clinton spicing up the 53rd inaugural ball with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Kenny G.)
Romney must have hoped that Eastwood would function as, essentially, a walking manifesto. Added to which, he is what the presidential hopeful aspires to be – politically successful, determinedly his own man and beloved of the nation. What he forgot is that the jazz-loving, history-challenging (Letters From Iwo Jima, anyone?), transcendental-meditating Eastwood is, above all, an artist. And they, my friends, are simply not to be trusted.
