Offbeat takes on music, life & nonsense
Somewhere between a kebab and a churchyard, the N1 becomes Britain's least likely debating chamber. I rode it from midnight to dawn to meet the shift workers, the mystics and the man who definitely knows the driver.
Every British town has a carnival in summer, when the weather is nice and the sun exists. One small town holds theirs on a Tuesday in October, out of spite and tradition in equal measure. I went to find out why.
Somewhere between a pirate ship function room and a parrot with a better repertoire than me, I realised Britain's novelty pubs are national treasures on borrowed time. This is a love letter, an obituary-in-waiting, and a plea to the landlords holding the line.
Nobody teaches it, nobody names it, yet every Brit over the age of twelve can perform at least four distinct versions of the recognition nod. We spent months observing the phenomenon in petrol stations, garden centres and one particularly tense Tesco car park.
I spent a Saturday at the Nelson Institute watching three comics, one bingo caller and a singer called Baz keep a whole community ticking over for the price of a meal deal. Here's what Britain loses when the last working men's club pulls its final pint.
I handed my phone to a different stranger every morning and let their playlist dictate my entire personality. What followed was prog rock, nan-core, and a minor identity crisis in a car park in Rotherham.
Every British karaoke night follows the same predictable arc, from the bloke who 'doesn't do singing' to the 11:47pm rendition of Wham! that unites the whole room. Frank Popp charts the full descent.
One minute I was looking for the quiz, the next I was bellowing 'South Australia' with eleven strangers and a man called Dave. An investigation into how sea shanties quietly took over Britain's coastal pubs, and how I stopped laughing about it.
Armed with a bag of 50ps and a spreadsheet of rumours, I went looking for the last working vinyl jukeboxes in British pubs. What I found was landlords who treat a 1962 Seeburg like a family member, and locals who still believe choosing a song in public is a form of conversation.
Britain doesn't just love queueing — we've elevated it to a civic religion with no god, no doctrine and no exit strategy. I joined four queues in one Saturday to find out what, exactly, we were all waiting for. The answer, universally, was nothing.
'Dad rock' is a myth invented by people who don't own a Vauxhall Zafira. The real canon of British car music lives in the boot — sun-bleached Now albums, a Chris de Burgh hits collection and one unlabelled disc that's all sea shanties. I conducted the research. The findings are damning.
Nobody teaches us the rules, yet we all know them. From the jet bridge ovation to the 'cheers driver' whisper, this is an anthropological survey of the British clapping instinct — and why it might be our greatest national achievement.
For one week, every decision — dinner, arguments, whether to text the ex — was settled by whatever song my music library spat out first. The results were chaotic, occasionally wise, and frankly biased towards Meat Loaf.
Frank Popp spent four consecutive Saturdays eating his way through every kebab shop, chippy and burger van within stumbling distance of town centre. The results are scientific, defamatory and possibly actionable.
Everyone in the car gets their own playlist now, and everyone in the car is alone. Frank Popp pours one out for the kitchen radio, the Top 40 countdown and the noble art of the passenger-seat DJ.
Britain never learned to talk about feelings, so we planted them. A road trip through the nation's most eccentric traffic islands — the model villages, the floral feuds, the roundabouts with names — and what they reveal about us all.
Everyone hates the herring gull. Frank Popp disagrees, loudly, with chips. A mock-serious defence of the coast's most feared criminal, plus a definitive ranking of the boldest chip heists ever committed.
Frank Popp banned himself from spending a penny on entertainment for a month and lived off library lectures, back-room open mics and whatever Margaret's pottery club actually is. The result is a ranking of the five free events hiding in every UK town — and a surprising amount of feeling.
There was a time when the second track on a record was a lawless wilderness — a place where The Smiths recorded jazz poems and Blur put a bagpipe on things. Frank Popp mourns the algorithm-approved monoculture and asks whether Bandcamp is quietly rebuilding the hidden gem.