"The Gift" by Velvet Underground...

... turns out to be based on a true story, which had happened a couple of years before the song was recorded.

The only real embellishment was that in the song, Marsha's friend Sheila tries to break open the box by stabbing it with a sheet metal cutter and accidentally kills Walter. In the true story, Reg Spiers managed to arrive safe and sound.

"Nick Clegg booed off stage in Nottingham"

From the BBC and the BBC:

Liberal Democrats have grown used to disappointing poll ratings but Nick Clegg reached a new low when he was booed off stage and had pints of beer thrown at him at a concert with his band The LibDem Underground in Nottingham.

They've lost many hundreds of councillors since 2010 and ten MEPs since 2009 and have now been reduced to playing Velvet Underground songs with EU-themed lyrics and kazoo solos. Nick Clegg has said before that you have to have a thick skin in politics and when I interviewed it was clear that he was feeling the pain of having beer thrown at him.

"Why are you throwing those?" Clegg asked the crowd at the Rock City venue. "I'd rather drink them." Exhausted, red-eyed and pale, Mr Clegg lasted only 15 minutes before being forced to flee the stage.

"Thank you so much Nottingham," he tweeted later. "Sorry that a couple of UKIP voters ruined it for everyone. OK, 4.3 million, to be precise."

Clegg, 47, is best known for his childhood role as a Liberal Democrat Member of the EU Parliament between 1999 and 2004 and a little remembered stint as Deputy Prime Minister from 2010 onwards.

He formed The LibDem Underground in 2012, performing parody songs such as “An appeal for an open-minded, generous-hearted Britain” (Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side) and “Going head-to-head with UKIP leader Nigel Farage in a TV debate” (Velvet Underground's All Tomorrow's Parties).

Mike Flower of Mike Flowers’ Pops is said to have gone into hiding after his 1996 recording “Velvet Underground Medley” was rediscovered on Spotify.

Fun Online Polls: Velvet Underground albums & Poppies

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Apart from "The Velvet Underground & Nico", which are your favourite Velvet Underground albums?

White Light, White Heat - 12 votes
The Velvet Underground - 6 votes
Loaded - 4 votes
Live at Max's Kansas City - 3 votes
Squeeze - 1 vote
1969: The Velvet Underground Live - 4 votes
VU - 2 votes
Another View - 4 votes
Other, please specify - 5 votes

Thank you everybody (all 31 of you) who took part.

So now we know. I find that you've got to be in the mood for "White Light, White Heat", the other albums you can listen to any time.
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I am pretty sure that when I was a kid, people only wore poppies for the last couple of days before 11 November. Nowadays some people (especially broadcasters, politicians and people who are on trial for phone hacking) start wearing them up to two weeks beforehand.

It hasn't been as bad this year as in other years, but a bit annoying nonetheless.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll: "When is it appropriate to start wearing a poppy?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Plebgate & The Velvet Underground

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll are as follows:

Plebgate: Who is lying?

Andrew Mitchell - 2%
The police - 36%
Probably both - 60%
What is "Plegbate"? - 2%

A good turnout, thanks to everybody who took part. Glad to see I'm with the majority on this one.
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Everybody has turned out in force to sing the praises of Lou Reed (1942 - 2013), and rather irritatingly, the BBC kept playing Perfect Day which was a relatively unknown Lou Reed song (and deservedly so) until they brought out that ghastly everybody-join-in version for Children In Need. Playing a quarter of an hour of Sister Ray would have been a lot funnier and more to the point.

But his solo albums were pretty inconsequential as a whole, the good ones were the Velvet Underground albums, of which most people only know the first one.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll: "Apart from The Velvet Underground & Nico, which are your favourite Velvet Underground albums?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.