"Bu-dum Bu-dum"

The third episode of "7 Ages Of Rock" was the best one so far in the series, this week focusing on Punk and on areas such as the divides between the US and UK punk acts.
A key example being when Patti Smith was having success with her LP "Horses" and Johhny Rotten before a Sex Pistols gig ranted to the audience "orses?, orses? orse shit more like".
The programme also looked at artists such as the Buzzcocks and how they made one of my favourite punk records "Boredom".

This was a record that I've known for a long while as it was the soundtrack to many long car journeys on a C90 tape that my dad recorded of a selection of his punk 7"s.
It turned out that the comedy elements of the song were intentional such as the song going silent at random points and the two note guitar solo which sent up the concept of guitar solos overall.
This lead on to how Punk ended up being what it was against in the first place, predictable and uninspiring with the Sex Pistols breaking up and the Clash moving on to explore other genres such as reggae and dub on their groundbreaking "London Calling" LP.

Whilst the programme itself was very informative they left out a few acts from the genre including the New York Dolls, and female lead UK act X-Ray Spex although they did feature the Slits and Sixouxie and The Banshees; Sixouxie Sixoux being one of the women in the audience for the infamous interview that the Sex Pistols took part in for Thames Television, and they even showed the station ident in the programme as well!

After seeing the one who didn't look like Jason Donovan getting booted out of the search for Joseph, we had a gander at the final edition of Have I Got News For You with Moira Stuart in the chair coming across really well. A good but not spectacular end to the series with Marcus Brigstocke making a welcome return as a guest. One of the highlights being Paul Merton's interpretation on the unfortunately named European TV Station R.C.T.V.

There was also a re-hash of a joke originally done on the show in 1998 about Peter Mandelson where just as Moria was about to give her own opinion on the man who shut down a television station they flashed up Test Card F.
That's a sight I wouldn't like to see when least expecting it.