The Corona Diaries

This week's TCD (sorry Lucy) reminds me of when you take a drive to somewhere you travel to often. Not a quick-round-the-corner to the shop kind of trip, more a journey that you know well but maybe takes an hour to two. Sometimes you arrive at such a destination, not really remembering exactly how you got there. You know you have been in the car for a couple of hours, and that you have covered 103...

It’s the end of an era, sort of. Back on the 27th April, 2020 the first episode proper of TCD (sorry, Lucy) was published and we have been chucking them out every week for well over four years. But with 212 that streak comes to an end, because as of next week we are changing our cadence.  I don’t think either of us expected to still be doing this after 50 episodes, let alone 200, and of cours...

Apologies for missing last week (though very soon you will know why) This one was a little tough in prospect but alright once we got going. It sounds a bit different owing to Ant not being able to get his tech to work (post Spanish-holibobs) and having to use the USB mic instead of the flash one he normally uses. Having said all that, in many ways it is an archetypal episode of TCD - bawdy seaside...

Well it's been a bit of a palaver this week, trying to get TCD (sorry, Lucy) ready for the outside world. The recording seemed to go well, but when I was putting it together it became apparent that Ant had forgotten his trademark 'and we're back' after the diary reading, so I had to crowbar one in from a previous episode. Actually on that point, the first person who can correctly identify which of...

I am properly losing track of what I am reading every week in the diary section. Even since we finished Volume II of The Invisible Man (1998-2014) I have been scrabbling around on my hands and knees (figuratively speaking of course) under the lid of my MacBook trying to locate odd bits of stuff to read out. And because I keep stumbling on stuff, we have lost all sense of chronology in terms of wha...

We don't very often about the technical side of producing The Corona Diaries (see what I did there Lucy) mainly because we don't want to be seen to be blowing our collective trumpet, and partly because it isn't that interesting. But it is slightly relevant this week so here we go. Most weeks, usually on a Tuesday, Ant sets up a Zoom call and we congregate - rarely on time, and never before ten - t...

It doesn’t really matter which of the many metaphors you choose, win or lose, the ups and the downs, the peaks or the troughs. The fact is that when we started this run of AHBID themed episodes we kinda hoped by roping in members of the band we would be able to provide a broader collective on the making of that particular record. Alas it hasn’t really worked out that way, so although we have manag...

There is something about being in a room (or indeed on a Zoom call) with Trousers that is one of life's great pleasures. Let me clarify that, because it is all about the capitalisation. Being in a room with trousers is a fairly mundane occurrence for many of us, but being in a room with Trousers is a joy. The fact is, he is really funny. Mike Hunter thinks so, Ant thinks so, and I am sure after li...

Well we have only gone and ruddy well done it... It might have evolved slowly as an idea, but you can't say that we haven't upped our game a little and actually delivered. Assuming that you are up-to-date with your TCD listening (sorry Lucy) you will know that instead of recoding a load of episodes about FEAR (which as it turns out we have already done...) we are moving onto some chat about AHBID....

It runs out the best way to throw your fellow podcast host off his axis, is to turn up to his house and proclaim “I’m here” with outstretched hands. After a couple of hundred of these over Zoom, there are consequences in jumping in the car and heading up to Heckmondwike for a face-to-face. Firstly there is no obvious improvement in the depth or quality of the content, and all that happened is that...

What can I tell you about this this week's TCD (sorry Lucy)... Well if it is randomness you are after, then we have it in the kind of quantity that would require a sturdy barrow to transport it about the place. In fact we start in a random place and then we proceed to meander, seemingly unchecked by social convention or common decency. Which is why we go from football, to snooker, to Warren Close,...

The story of TCD this week (sorry Lucy) has an awful lot to do with two questions and one piece of re-direction. The first question, and let me tell you neither Ant or myself were able to proffer any kind of definitive answer ourselves, is whether or not a number can be classified as a palindrome. The second question is also a recognition that something Ant said may well be wrong. He asserted that...

There is most definitely a sense of meander about this week’s TCD (sorry Lucy). After all the excitement of Cruise to the Edge, I needed a little bit of a reset so Ant took pity and let me empty my head of the all things that had made an impression over the course of the trip, without worrying about whether they were in order, were said more than once, or indeed made sense. The only caveat to that...

A little late (to be fair, we did warn you it would be) but we actually made it to the big number. Three years, 10 months and 12 days ago the first episode proper of TCD (sorry, Lucy) was published and there probably isn’t a one of us that would have thought we would be here, 1414 days later, offering up a bi-centennial chapter whilst aboard a boat. And in all honesty this one was about as wacky a...

Believe it or not #199 was actually quite a tricky one to pitch, because it is difficult to focus on the job in hand when you know that an episode with a significant number is just around the corner. Of course TCD (sorry Lucy) has a secret weapon that can be deployed in just these circumstances, and so we pressed the big red button marked ‘slipshod’ and powered on through. And even when we are bei...

As you would expect after a couple of weeks of content-heavy TCD (sorry Lucy, and big tens to Captain Hunter) we regress to a more predictable episode complete with a heavy dose of wheezy laughs and surreal notions. The reading this week is an almost forgotten recollection of my 100th gig, somewhere back in the hazy days of Seasons End in a disco. Thanks to Roger H for the inspiration (and the cop...

As you can expect Ant and I were very pleased when the face of Captain Hunter appeared on the Zoom screen for the recording of this week's TCD (sorry, Lucy). He had said he was happy to come back and talk a little bit more about 'With Friends' and being the fine upstanding fellow that he is, he was as good as his word. Of course that DID mean we moved onto the rather more delicate subject of the p...

There are so many positives about having Mike Hunter joining us on TCD (sorry Lucy) and just one slight downside. The positives are so obvious that they almost write themselves, I mean let's start with sheer bloody congnisance. It was such a joy after three previous attempts (and numerous aborted run-ups) to actually put some proper narrative and understanding around the 'With Friends' project. Mi...

On behalf of Anthony and myself, I want to begin by issuing a disclaimer about this week's episode of TCD (sorry Lucy). You could be forgiven for assuming such a decision could be down to a more than excessive use of bad language, or an inadvertent turn of phrase that in hindsight was a little unfair or unkind. Or maybe even that the accuracy of the material contained within was so far wide of the...

Ant’s in L.A. Jet-lag, gin and an eight hour time lag what could possibly go wrong? Actually against all the odds (and yes I appreciate that most of the odds we face at TCD are self-inflicted) we have managed to get an episode together this week. It’s very much a free-wheelin’ west coast vibe, that touches on some of the stuff we have been talking about recently as well as lifting the lid on one o...

With last week's ill-health safely in the rear view mirror, we were back up to what passes for normal in the curious world of TCD. If you have been listening for the past few months you will be familiar with the fact that we take to the recording process, the way some people take to using a treadmill, and what I mean by that is that we take 5-10 minutes to get up to speed. So after focussing on th...


I haven't been well. What's more I haven't been well and I am going to tell you about it. Which means there is going to be some fairly detailed description of my symptoms, and you might want to take that into account if you are sensitive to matters around vomit. Whilst I am happy to warn you, I make no apology for its inclusion. What can I say, I am someone that overshares. Anyway it knocked me b...

The vibe of #191 is very much around easing into the new year gently. I am not sure how the return to work has been for you, but for Ant & myself it felt like we needed a little bit of a soft nudge into 2024. So today is somewhat chatty and loose - but at least you get to find out what I have been up to over Christmas. On the subject of what I have been up to, if you have tickets (or plans to...

We had a Livestream and it was bloody lovely. All the Purple folk were invited and Ant managed to persuade Film-Maker extraordinaire Tim Sidwell and Manager extraordinaire Lucy Jordache to join us for a pre-Christmas natter. And because it all went off so well we decided as a special treat for Christmas Day we would take the highlights, stick holly in the top and serve them up warm with lashings o...

What a strange thing time is… Is it linear or is it, as Doctor Who suggested, a little bit more sort of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey. Let me explain… When we recorded this on Monday I had already been to Liverpool, but unless you had been there, you won't have heard about it yet. I hadn’t been on a Zoom call with a group of purples at that stage, but now I have, and although you haven’t heard that e...