I like growing stuff on my allotment.
The cowboy emergency plumber who deliberately sabotaged my central heating system, then demanded £700 from the safety of his mobile phone to repair the damage, and I'd like to have a baseball bat handy.
Bob Dylan (Freewheelin, Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde On Blonde, John Wesley Harding, New Morning, Blood On The Tracks, Desire, Street Legal, Infidels, Time Out of Mind) Primal Scream (Xtrmntr, Evil Heat) Prince Far-I (Jamaican Heroes, Dubwise, Dub To Africa, Silver and Gold) Augustus Pablo (Original Rockers, Eastman Dub, King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown) Leonard Cohen (I'm Your Man, Ten New Songs) Califone (Roomsound, Quicksand/Cradlesnakes, Heron King Blues, Sometimes Good Weather Follows Bad People) The B52s (Cosmic Thing) Mikey Dread (Beyond World War III) George Benson (In Flight) Van Morrison (Live at The Grand Opera House Belfast, Common One, Into The Music, Hardnose The Highway, Beautiful Vision) The Avalanches (Since I Left You) Bebel Gilberto (Tanto Tempo) Miles Davis (Kind of Blue) Stan Getz (Bossa Nova) Bob Marley and The Wailers (Natty Dread, Rastaman Vibration, Survival)
Good Night And Good Luck, Cinderella Man, Glengarry Glen Ross, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, Mike Bassett: England Manager, Casablanca, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Lion in Winter, Broadway Danny Rose, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, True Stories, Out Of The Past, Macao, Duck Soup, A Night At The Opera, The Maltese Falcon, Love And Death, The Big Lebowski, The Life of Brian, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Groundhog Day, The Couch Trip, The Shining, The Shawshank Redemption, Chinatown, Stir Crazy, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Cheech and Chong Up In Smoke
The 700 Club, Real Time With Bill Maher, Family Guy, American Dad, Seinfeld, The Sopranos, Fawlty Towers, Rab C Nesbitt, The Likely Lads, Barney Miller, University Challenge, Gardeners' World, Still Game, Frasier, Cheers, The Munsters, The Simpsons, Kath and Kim, Married With Children, Porridge, Up Pompeii, Keeping Up Appearances, MASH
Londonistan - Melanie Phillips, While Europe Slept - Bruce Bawer, American Fascists - Chris Hedges, Atheist Universe - David Mills, Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Christ Conspiracy - Acharya S., The Islamist - Ed Husain, God Is Not Great/The Missionary Position - Christopher Hitchens, The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins, The End of Faith/Letter To A Christian Nation - Sam Harris, Hitler's Pope - John Cornwell, The Holographic Universe - Michael Talbot, Stalking the Wild Pendulum - Itzhak Bentov, Power vs Force - David R. Hawkins, The Crisis of Islam - Bernard Lewis, The Will To Meaning - Victor Frankl, The Nature of Personal Reality - Jane Roberts, Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C. Clarke, Downward To The Earth - Robert Silverberg, Foundation - Isaac Asimov, Maximum City - Suketu Mehta, The Four Agreements - Miguel Ruiz, The Last Of The Wine - Mary Renault, Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut, The Story of Philosophy - Will Durant, A Separate Reality/Journey To Ixtlan/Tales of Power - Carlos Castaneda, Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes, Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates, The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens, Middlemarch - George Eliot, A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway, The Likes of Us - Michael Collins, Chronicles - Bob Dylan, Autobiography of A Supertramp - WH Davies, Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell, Where I'm Calling From - Raymond Carver, The Six Wives of Henry VIII - Alison Weir, The Empty Space - Peter Brook, Mother Tongue - Bill Bryson, Karl Marx - Francis Wheen, Treasure Island/Kidnapped - Robert Louis Stevenson, The Source/Hawaii/Centennial - James A Michener, Palestine Twilight - Edward Fox, The Prince - Nicolo Machiavelli, The Way of Zen - Alan Watts, Listen, Little Man! - Wilhelm Reich, Living The Good Life - Helen and Scott Nearing, The Star of The Sea - Joseph O'Connor, From The Holy Mountain - William Dalrymple, Collected Stories - Richard Yates, Burning In Water, Drowning In Flame/Love Is A Dog From Hell/War All The Time - Charles Bukowski
Heroes are for zeros. But my favourite comedians are: Lord Buckley (especially the live version of The Gasser), Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Rodney Dangerfield, Groucho Marx, Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, George Carlin, Lewis Black.My favourite composers are: Beethoven (everything), Sibelius (Violin Concerto), Parry (An English Suite/Lady Radnor’s Suite), Elgar (Cello concerto).And my favourite footballers are: Denis Law, Jimmy Greaves, Rodney Marsh, Matthew Le Tissier, Paolo di Canio, Gianfranco Zola, Eric Cantona, Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry, Henrik Larsson, Juninho (the one who played for Middlesbrough), Paul Gascoigne, George Best.