Am I the only person to greet the news that Coffee Republic has gone into administration with the response that at least some good has come out of the recesssion? I love coffee, but I hate paying through the nose for it. I can't recall the last time I bought one 'to go' from a high street coffee emporium. I think it was when I worked in London and hadn't yet worked out the art of avoiding needless expenditure. Work in an office? Buy a cafetiere for the same price as a double shot skinny Americano with blue jeans and chinos, or whatever the Cribbins they call it, and keep it in your desk drawer, along with a reclosable bag of ground coffee from the supermarket. Sorted. I'll only be truly happy when Starbucks does a Woolworths.

Are Michael Jackson fans the most unhinged followers of any pop culture icon? Yes, if some of the comments on YouTube concerning Jacko's run-in with the mighty Jarvis Cocker are anything to go by.

"Jarvis Cocker you are only a poor idiot.
it was better that you died.
M.J. THE KING"

Ah, but Jarvis Cocker hasn't died. Thus he wins.

"Jarvis Cocker youre a fucking twat. Don´t try to steal the KING Michael´s shine. Don´t need to know who he is, any money he has listened to Thriller one time or another and enjoyed it and that goes for anyone of you Michael Jackson haters. 110 million people can´t be wrong."

Ah, the 'if a lot of people agree on something it must be right' fallacy. Cobblers. Also, you can enjoy Thriller (although Off the Wall is a far superior album) and still think that the Brits performance of 'Earth Song' was an over-blown, self-aggrandising pile of cack.

"He told a story in that song a story that is in fact a reality of how fucked up the world actually is.

He at least tried to bring to the attention of us what was actually happening in the world.

On that note jarvis if you ever have the misfortune to meet me you will regret it. You jelous commercial fame seeking cunt.

Be warned the next time your in London keep your eyes open. "

Jarvis Cocker is well known for walking around central London with his eyes firmly closed, so the above advice will be a welcome wake-up call to the erstwhile Pulp frontman. Let's not dwell on the unpleasantness of the threat. It's easy to be a bullying fuckwit when you're sat at a keyboard, hiding behind a made-up username. The likelihood of this numpty ever getting to duke it out with Cocker is so small as to not even register.

The message, such as it is, of 'Earth Song' (and I think it's unbearably trite, twee and obvious, if well-meaning) is one thing. Appearing to think you're Jesus is another. Oh, and how can "commercial" be used as an insult when you're defending one of the most commercially successful and shrewd artists in the history of popular music? I can't believe either that Jacko's record sales didn't get a welcome boost from the coverage of this little fracas. The performance would have got a few headlines in its own right, because of the 'Jackson with ver kids' angle, but nowhere near as many as it got.

To close, my personal favourites:

"so, ho w is coocker?
ah the guy that invedes this performance...
oh great.

and who is michael jackson?

th king of pop...

poor coocker...."

and

"jarvis is a dick rider thats about the only talent he has as he even begged lil wayne and akon to ride there dicks.Thats why is last name is cocker lol.Jarvis is the king of dick riding and if u like him that means your a dick rider."

Well, that's him told...

Watching Blur closing the Glastonbury Festival on BBC2. Two things are obvious: 1) They've upped the tempo of each number, presumably to cram in as much as possible and 2) Alex James doesn't get anywhere near enough recognition as a bass player. Now excuse me while I kid myself that I'm a 20 year-old borderline alcoholic with quite a lot of hair again.

Merciful release. Nice day out, isn't it?

One of my worst fears is the loss of unique, irreplaceable material through technical failure. Seven years ago, I found with horror that an interview recording on minidisc had screwed up. Fortunately, the interviewee was someone I knew well enough to ask if we could start again. When a similar situation occurred yesterday, as part of the research for my forthcoming Les Dawson book, I had no such luxury. The interviewees had given me 40 minutes of their soundcheck time before a concert. As my wife drove me back home, I scribbled down as much as I could remember from the conversation, in case the recording proved beyond repair.

Had it been a cassette tape, there would have been no problem (apart from tape hiss and all the other reasons I moved to minidisc in the first place), but digital recording devices tend to use things called tables of contents that tell playback machines where the relevant bits are. If the table of contents isn't written properly, the audio is inaccessible. I knew it was there, as I'd listened to a little of it before turning the machine off, which is when the TOC gets written. I'd read online that it was possible to clone the TOC from a working disc to the failed recording, unlocking the material within, so I gave it a try. I felt like a cross between an expectant father and a bomb disposal expert as I waited to see if the technique would save my recording. I'm happy to report that it did. I'm hoping I won't have to resort to the bomb disposal method ever again, but if I do, it will be with a great deal less trepidation.

Now to transcribe the ruddy thing...

The coverage of the news that BBC Worldwide is to release the recovered soundtracks of several previously-missing editions of the Hancock's Half Hour TV series has been, at best, misleading. At worst, it's been utter bollocks. Take this line from The Times: "They are thought to be the earliest examples of a DIY audio recording made directly from a television broadcast". 'They are thought...' is a handy formulation. It enables a journalist to sound authoritative to the casual reader while admitting to those who know the way these things work that he/she hasn't got a bleeding clue. I can't be certain without making a few enquiries, but I'm sure I've heard of a number of DIY audio recordings from TV that predate these. There was a time when The Times didn't think. It simply reported, and was a better newspaper for it.

Meanwhile, Chortle, which should perhaps know better asserted that "The episodes were first aired 50 years ago, but thought lost forever when the BBC wiped the master copies so they could reuse the expensive tape and save on storage space". The shows in question never went near video tape. They were transmitted live, and telerecorded on 35mm film. These copies were repeated a few months after the first transmission and then junked. You don't 'wipe' film.

The coverage has also been full of the usual emotive nonsense that gets spouted about missing programmes. Back to the Times, this time from the paper's blog: "It's a scandal that the BBC let so much of its programming be wiped or destroyed in the past". Is it? At one time, the cost of repeating a show came close to the cost of putting on a new programme, and union regulations limited the number of screenings that a programme could have. Nobody foresaw sell-through video or multi-channel TV, and the renegotiation of the repeat agreements that eventually occurred. The pressure was on the BBC to use its funding as wisely as possible, and that involved making new shows, not recording and storing old ones that were, to all intents and purposes, unusable. It's sad that some programmes are missing, but it's not really a scandal. We should be glad when lost gems turn up, but retain a sense of perspective - in many ways, it's a miracle that we have as much archive material to enjoy as we do.

As I get older, I find myself less interested in my birthday. The last one I celebrated properly was my 30th, with a party in the back garden. For 32, I contented myself with shouting "Noooooooooooooooooooooo!" at the television as I watched Michael Jackson evade conviction on even the minor charges of giving alcohol to a minor, something he'd admitted to doing. Yesterday, when I turned 36, I ticked the no publicity box and celebrated with a swim in the sea, a takeaway curry and a dip into the bottle of single malt I received in the morning.

From now on, however, I have a real reason to celebrate on 13 June. In the Birthday Honours, an OBE was awarded to Brian Lomax, chairman of Supporters Direct and father of one of my dearest friends. Brian's a life force. He was instrumental in saving Northampton Town FC when the club hit the buffers in 1992, and, subsequently, has shown many football fans how grass-roots activity can see off inept and corrupt management of their beloved team. In the mid-1990s, he almost succeeded in getting me interested in football, after years of hating sport in any form. I liked the singalongs, the pies, the Bovril and Brian's excellent company in the nearest pub after the game, but I couldn't quite work up enough of an interest in the blokes doing things with the spherical doodah. After attending the play-offs at the old Wembley in 1997, and seeing the Cobblers despatch Swansea for a well-deserved promotion, I felt my work was done.

So, from this moment on, 13 June is Brian Lomax Day.