The Shropshire Star reports on Lembit Opik's appearance on This Morning talking about the surgery on his jaw, which was broken in a paragliding accident 18 years ago. (Lord Bonkers visited him in hospital, according to his Diary at the time.)
He told Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield:
"It’s given me space to think. I’m 50 now, I feel like I’ve been given a second life, perhaps because I feel so confident about being symmetrical."
When the deaths of Dale Griffin from Mott the Hoople and Glenn Frey from the Eagles followed that of David Bowie, people tweeted things like "I wonder if God is starting a band in Heaven, he's collecting awesome talent from us."
The truth is more mundane. Rock's Golden Age in the 1960s and 1970s was a long time ago and figures from that era have been dying off pretty regularly for a good while now.
My own favourites, the Spencer Davis Group, appear to be the only important British group of the Sixties where all the original members are still alive.
It's just that the extraordinary media attention given to Bowie's passing has made us notice these deaths in the past few weeks.
Anyway, today's choice was going to be a tribute to both Bowie and Dale Griffin - Mott the Hoople singing All the Young Dudes.
But after posting that song I noticed that it had already appeared as a Sunday music video. So here is a different Mott the Hoople song
I love blue-eyed soul, but you have to admit there is something silly about it.
Steve Winwood has said in interviews that when he was making his wonderful covers of Black American records as a teenager with the Spencer Davis Group he did not always understand the words he was singing.
This record from Paul Young, a cover of a Marvin Gaye song, turns the silliness up to 11. Far from being the sort you cannot rely on to be there when you get home, he is such a sweet boy that he will have put the hoover round and have supper in the oven.
I suppose Young is a bit of a guilty pleasure - it was his misfortune to be at his peak in the naff Eighties - but he has a lovely voice.
