This was the very last Ben Sherman I ever bought, in the spring of 2000. Having already made a solemn vow never to buy another Ben Sherman ever again, this purchase represented a temporary falling off the wagon. But it was such a delicious shade of olive green, and I'd never seen any olive green Bens before, and...well...just one more couldn't hurt, could it?

Just over a year later, I wore this shirt when appearing as a contestant on the Channel 4 quiz show Number One. It didn't bring me luck. For this reason, I shall never be wearing it on television again.

Chig, would you now step forward please.

You've been indulging in a few choice Anne Robinson-isms yourself recently, haven't you? Dismissing world famous performers with a couple of lethally chosen barbs? In which case, I think it's time to mete out some karmic justice.

Chig, you are now...Off The Project. Off you go, and take your Guinness Book Of British Hit singles with you.

Back, by popular request: my dolly old eek. Ooh, and he's even forced a smile out for once...



Could this possibly be another Ben Sherman? It could indeed. In fact, there was a time when my loyalty to this particular brand practically bordered on the fetishistic. My only defence: they were cheap. And easy to iron.

There's more to come...much more. It's becoming quite an endurance test, isn't it? Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of the button-down check shirt, I shall fear no evil...

Time for early doors at Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem. Have a good weekend, y'all.

How nice of you to ask.

Well, I'm basically fine, now that my two-week old cold has finally disappeared. However, life has begun to feel rather static. At work, I continue to be severely under-employed. This is great for surfing and blogging, but it's not so great for the soul. Maybe I do have a residual Protestant work ethic after all. Or maybe it's just that my working week now lacks any form of structure and direction. Still, I think I'm doing a reasonable job of filling the void, all things considered. I'm not the only one in our office who finds themselves in this current situation, and I'd rather be doing something intellectually stimulating - and interactive - than merely sitting around playing Minesweeper for hours on end.

This period of enforced indolence has produced some identifiable knock-on effects. Firstly - and unexpectedly - I'm now finding it more difficult to blog than I used to when I was busy. This is probably because I work best under pressure. When the writing seeps out of the cracks of my working day, then it is somehow more driven, more urgent, more necessary. In this frame of mind, the words come much more easily. Conversely, when the hours stretch ahead of me, then that old procrastination instinct kicks in, big time.

Which leads me to my next point. All this free time is making me mentally flabby. So much so, that when I do have a task to perform, it seems like a really big deal. Even if it's just sitting in on a conference call, or paying a newspaper bill, or remembering to buy some more teabags, these all start feeling like Major Challenges. I am ultimately reminded of something of which I have been aware for a long time: that I need a degree of externally imposed pressure in order to perform. Self-discipline was never a strong point. I need that whip hanging over me.

There are compensations, though. Of course there are. For one thing, I can once again have Big Boozy Nights Out in the middle of the week, without worrying about getting up too early in the morning. As we now spend nearly all of our weekends in rural seclusion, and as the city centre is a considerably more civilised place to be during the week, this is all working rather well. Although I really do need to wean myself off that blasted podium in the middle of the dancefloor at NG1. Last week, Liberty X - this week, Justin Timberlake. Have I no shame? (Actually, no - I don't. And it's quite fun up on that podium, if truth be told.)

This is an unreal situation to be in, and I have to be careful not to fall into the trap of feeling permanently guilty about it. In any case, we have been regularly reassured about the security of our positions. New work is just around the corner, so they say. There have been a few training opportunities along the way, and a few little bits of this and that to keep us ticking over. In a few months time, when I'm rushed off my feet with some demanding new project, I will undoubtedly look back on this period as some sort of idealised Golden Age. The trick is to make the most of it while it lasts.

I have this recurring problem with music blogs. I keep stumbling across new ones, and getting all excited about them, and then, just as quickly, losing interest in them again. Which is perplexing, as given my unnaturally huge appetite for discovering new music, you'd think I would be munching my way through the things morning, noon and night.

However, I do very much like the look of Analog Roam (discovered via Parallax View). In particular, there's a review of the pleasant yet ultimately disappointing new album from Badly Drawn Boy, which chimes in almost exactly with my own views (and saves me the effort of putting them into words). In fact, the whole "reviews" section of this site is excellent. What's more, you can even download an MP3 of Camper Van Beethoven's minor classic, Take The Skinheads Bowling, for which I am truly grateful.

Good - no, great - to see that East/West is back at last, with a radically different new look and feel. It's not even what you could reasonably call a weblog any more; instead, it self-describes as an "urban American online magazine for lifestylers." (Cool! Now can I be an urban online lifestyle magazine too, please? Bored of being a blog now...)

This alarmed me slightly at first (I've always been a bit crap at the whole "embracing change" thing) until I started clicking around, and realised that all the things I liked best from the previous incarnation were still there - just ordered in a different way. The new format reminds me slightly of prolific.org, in that the main page divides into three columns: Major Writing Pieces are on the left, with cultural reviews in the middle, and quickfire weblinks on the right.

The new site also retains a comments system - thus allowing me to share with the East/West readership my personal strategies for avoiding PUR (Pre-Urinary Retention, or Pee Shyness if you will). Because you needed to know, right?

Hmm...I do seem to be getting marginally better at this MP3 editing malarkey. These things take bloody forever to do, though. Had we but world enough, and time...

Sadly, the final Top Ten will have to wait until after the weekend. To tide you over until then, here's the fourth MP3 in the series, containing excerpts from the following tracks:

20. Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights
19. Procol Harum - A Whiter Shade Of Pale
18. Oasis - Don't Look Back In Anger
17. T.Rex - Get It On
16. The Verve - The Drugs Don't Work
15. Blondie - Atomic
14. Abba - Dancing Queen
13. Marvin Gaye - I Heard It Through The Grapevine
12. David Bowie - Space Oddity
11. Human League - Don't You Want Me

Update: Sorry - you weren't quick enough. These MP3s are no longer on my server. I generally make them available for a week or so (sometimes less) before substituting them for new ones. Better luck next time!

Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the UK singles charts. If you'd like to mark the occasion by viewing a list of all the Number One singles from the past 50 years (at least up to September 2002), then I've got one right here.

Meanwhile, as Chig prepares to reveal his readers' favourite Number One single of all time (and it's so going to be Hey Jude, as I seem to have been saying on an hourly basis for the past couple of days), perhaps it's time that I published my own annotated top ten, as mailed to Chig back in September. Although having listened to 49 of the 50 selections over the past few weeks, I think this would already be an entirely different list. Fickle does not begin to describe me, I'm afraid.

By the way - this is a list of my own personal favourites. It isn't a list of what I objectively think are the "greatest" or "best" singles. That would be quite a different list altogether.

1. Oasis - Don't Look Back In Anger

Like a lot of people, I first realised this was a classic at the end of the final episode of the TV series Our Friends In The North, when it was perfectly used to sum up the mood: people looking back at their youthful lives with mixed emotions, and achieving a sense of resolution. It's one of those songs whose lyrics look all wrong on paper, but which work brilliantly on record, where they evoke a powerful series of emotions in quick succession.

The song took on new levels of personal meaning for me three years later, after the death of my stepmother (also called Sally), when I had to work through something of an emotional crisis, re-analysing everything about the direction my life had been taking, and my attitude towards my sometimes troubled past. I found something reassuring and redemptive in this record, which went above and beyond anything that its creators could have envisaged for it. That's part of the wonder of great pop, though - although seemingly ephemeral, it can have this almost accidental capacity for transcendence.

2. Abba - The Name Of The Game

Hard to pick just one Abba song, but this one cuts deeper than any other. It perfectly captures the state of excited, nervous, somewhat bewildered optimism that can accompany the first stirrings of attraction to someone new. Is he/she "the one"? Dare I dream? As such, I found myself living its lyrics on more than one occasion in my late teens and early twenties.

3. Ian Dury & The Blockheads - Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick

Christmas 1978, and I attend my third concert: Ian Dury & The Blockheads in Kilburn, North London. My first two live experiences (a crappy local punk band, then Bowie at an atmosphere-free Earls Court, so far away that we needed binoculars) had been disappointments, but this gig completely blew me away. The Blockheads were at their artistic and commercial peak, with Rhythm Stick already in the Top 5 and heading for Number One in January 1979. They played, faultlessly, for nearly two and a half hours, and thrilled me to my very soul.

My life was on a cusp at that point - crippling teenage angst and self-consciousness was on the point of melting away, and the first shoots of independence were coming through. This song soundtracks the excitement I felt, right at the beginning of that period of transition.

4. Beach Boys - Good Vibrations

Too young to be aware of it when it was actually Number One, this is a record which I grew to love over time in my early to mid-teens. Its melodic swoopings and soarings, the painstaking intricacies of its arrangement, its sense of vaulting ambition and its overriding sense of "anything is possible" joyfulness all contribute to its almost universally acknowledged classic status. If you had to pick just one pop song to illustrate just how great the medium can be, this would be a perfect choice.

5. Human League - Don't You Want Me

At student parties and discos in the early 1980s, this record was The Big One for our particular gang. This was the one that would always, always get us all dancing in a big extended group, mouthing the words and performing various synchronised hand gestures (didn't everyone do that "holding a cocktail tray up" thing at the beginning?)

6. Barry White - You're The First, The Last, My Everything

Didn't think much of it back in 74/75, but this gradually became one of my Top Tunes during the 1990s - probably as a result of the massive 1970s disco revival that seemed to last for most of the decade. Again, this is another "everybody on the dance floor now!" anthem of mass communion. And let's forget all about Ally MacBeal, shall we?

7. The Beatles - Hey Jude

Like Abba, it's hard to pick a tune from the other Great Pop Act Of All Time, but I have loved the melody of "Hey Jude" for almost as long as I can remember. This was also a track on the very first album I owned: The Beatles 1967-70 "blue" album.

Only much later, in the early 1990s, did I read the theory that McCartney wrote the lyrics for Julian ("Jude") Lennon, and that they were aimed at getting him to let his new stepmother Yoko Ono into his life. I had always disregarded the lyrics entirely, assuming that they were throwaway nonsense. The next time I heard the song, I listened to the words with this theory in mind - and experienced the song in a whole new, much more personal light. Like "Don't Look Back In Anger", this has that reassuring and redemptive quality which is so rarely found.

8. Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody / These Are The Days Of Our Lives

On its own, "Bohemian Rhapsody" would have been a clear candidate for inclusion. On its re-release with the poignantly valedictory "These Are The Days Of Our Lives", it becomes a dead cert. One is a immense piece of massively entertaining bombast and spectacle, which I used to sing to myself in order to get through the abject misery of school football matches ("only two more Bohemian Rhapsodies to go, then it will all be over"). The other is a touching farewell note to the world from a dying man - a love letter to his past life - which was only made public after his death, in an amazingly bold coup de grace which forced a collective reassessment and reacknowledgment of his talent. Two opposing sides of the same performer, which sit together perfectly on one single.

9. The Four Seasons - December '63

The sound of the junior common room in the Spring of 1975. I was madly, hopelessly in love with a boy in the year below, never daring to reveal my emotions and so loving him secretly from afar. By chance, he and I had both bought copies of this single on the same afternoon, which was then played to death on the communal gramophone in the corner of the always crowded room. In my mind (and maybe in his - it was always tantalisingly impossible to tell), it was "Our Tune". Hearing it now always brings back good memories of that first flush of intense, idealistic romantic longing, untainted by memories of all the suffering which it also entailed.

10. Jimi Hendrix - Voodoo Chile

I loathed this record for many years. Messy electric guitar "freak-outs" - yuck. Give me Slade, or Mud, or Abba. Like gin, oysters and goats' cheese, Jimi Hendrix is an acquired taste for the more mature, developed palate - and well worth the effort. The sound of an incandescent genius at work.

Oh, and my least favourite Number One single of all time? Funnily enough, it's Oasis again, with "D'You Know What I Mean". A shocking squandering of talent, which seems to last about 12 hours.

So may the best tune win!

It's a Ben Sherman. It's orange. It's ancient, but it still gets worn.

A number of people have commented - with some measure of mild dismay, gratifyingly enough - on the absence of my face from the current run of exciting adventures in plaid. Is there a reason for this, I have been asked.

Well, no - not particularly. Like just about everything else on here, I'm merely acting on random impulses. And you thought every posting on here was artfully pre-meditated, did you? Nah. Would that it were so! However, I've never been much good at thinking ahead. Which is one of the reasons why I'm such a terrible chess player.

Where were we? Oh yes, I remember. Well, I did rather fancy a break from seeing multiple images of myself plastered all over the shop. I think I must finally be discovering the limits of my narcissism.

Also, I wanted you to see the nice check patterns close up. Because, you know, it's all about the shirts, innit?

Also, this run of photos has come out rather disappointingly dark and fuzzy - and life is too short for re-shoots.

Also, I'm sporting a rather annoyingly cheesy grin on most of these, from which I feel you need to be spared. Just look!



I rest my case.

The third MP3 in the series features the following songs:

30. Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
29. The Beach Boys - Good Vibrations
28. The Rolling Stones - Paint It, Black
27. Enrique - Hero
26. Deee-Lite - Groove Is In The Heart
25. Madonna - Like A Prayer
24. Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls
23. Pet Shop Boys - Always On My Mind
22. The Walker Brothers - The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore
21. Dexys Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen

Update: Sorry - you weren't quick enough. These MP3s are no longer on my server. I generally make them available for a week or so (sometimes less) before substituting them for new ones. Better luck next time!

A quiet day on Troubled Diva, as I have been spending a fair bit of time sorting out World Of Chig, in readiness for tomorrow's Grand Finale of the 50 Number Ones Project.

I've also been spending time splicing together the official soundtrack MP3 medleys - of which more below. If my calculations are correct, then all five MP3s should eventually fit onto one 74 minute audio CD. Fifty years of pop, in badly edited soundbites. Stars On 45 had nothing on this, you know...

However, there's always time for this...



Cerruti 1881, at least eight years old, and still looking as good as new. Wish we could say the same for its owner.

Lynn, your time has come. A middle-aged woman can certainly be interesting (why, some of my best friends...), but she's not getting her hands on one of my shirts. At least, not today.

Lynn, you are now...Off The Project. Toodle-oo.

Hurry hurry hurry! These MP3s won't be available for long.

Here are numbers 40 to 31, featuring the following songs:

40= Tubeway Army - Are 'Friends' Electric?
39. Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse Of The Heart
38. Kylie Minogue - Can't Get You Out Of My Head
37. Blondie - Heart Of Glass
36. Dead Or Alive - You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)
35. The Righteous Brothers - You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'
33= Shakespear's Sister - Stay
33= Gabrielle - Rise
31= Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water
31= Take That - Back For Good

Update: Sorry - you weren't quick enough. These MP3s are no longer on my server. I generally make them available for a week or so (sometimes less) before substituting them for new ones. Better luck next time!

They're nothing fancy, and you can hear the joins all to clearly - but over the next few days, I'll be splicing together a series of five MP3s which will hold edited mixes of all the songs listed in Chig's 50 Number Ones Project. Because I thought it would be quite good fun to listen to them all in sequence.

So here's the first one, containing numbers 50 to 41. (Well, kind of. Tied positions and all that.) It's 13 megabytes, and lasts just over 14 minutes. The songs featured are as follows:

49= The Kinks - You Really Got Me
49= Abba - Knowing Me, Knowing You
48. David Bowie - Ashes To Ashes
46= Ian Dury & The Blockheads - Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick
46. Unit 4+2 - Concrete & Clay
45. Soul II Soul - Back To Life
44. Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas?
43. Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Two Tribes
40= Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg - Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus
40= Ronan Keating - If Tomorrow Never Comes

Update: Sorry - you weren't quick enough. These MP3s are no longer on my server. I generally make them available for a week or so (sometimes less) before substituting them for new ones. Better luck next time!

Yes, the pattern really is that dark...



A birthday present from my mother, two and a half years ago. From Jaeger, no less! This was given to me just at the point when I had made a solemn vow never to buy another button-down checked shirt as long as I lived (for I was descending into self-parody by this stage).

Never mind. Always room for a couple more, eh?

Another day, another victim. In fact, this is the fourth of a five day consecutive run.

Caitlin, my fellow Naked Blog Tag Board regular, it grieves me to tell you this - but you are now...Off The Project. Ta-ta the noo!

26. Lord Nelson
11 Thurgaton Street, Sneinton, NG2 4AG

Although this delightfully unspoilt pub has been here since the dawn of time, we only discovered it for ourselves over the summer. A traditional “local” of the old school – and as such, one of a rapidly dying breed. Best of all, there’s a fully enclosed and substantial beer garden, which lets you temporarily forget that you’re in Nottingham altogether. As good beer gardens are few and far between in the city, this ranks as something of a hidden treasure.

27. Lord Roberts
24 Broad Street, NG1 3AN

Over the years, I have probably visited the Lord Roberts more than any other pub in Nottingham. Once upon a time, it was another traditional “local”, which attracted a strange mixture of elderly working class regulars, and “arty types” from the Broadway cinema next door. Gradually, this mixture was added to by an increasing proportion of gay men. Eventually, about five or six years ago, the pub changed hands. After being completely gutted and re-fitted from scratch, it re-opened with a gay landlord and staff. The elderly regulars loyally trooped back (and were welcomed by the new management), but still found themselves increasingly squeezed into corners by the large new influx of gay men. After a while, the pub finally dropped the pretence of being “mixed”, and became known as an officially gay venue.

The music is quieter here than in the other gay pubs, the atmosphere more pub-like and less bar-like (with some decent beer on tap), the clientele somewhat older and more relaxed, and the cruising discreet to the point of non-existence. As such, it remains a favourite destination – mainly because you are nearly always guaranteed a seat. God bless the dear old Roberts.

28. Luna
23 George Street, NG1 3BH

Purveyors of original Fifties and sixties retro goods, including coloured glassware, telephone sets and lighting. Small but well-stocked. Elisabeth’s kind of place, without a doubt. See also the splendidly named Daphne’s Handbag on Mansfield Road.

29. Mandarin
23 Hockley, NG1 1FH

Our favourite Chinese restaurant in town - although the Man Ho on Pelham Street gives it a good run for its money on Sunday lunchtimes, with an absolutely superb (and dirt cheap) selection of dim sum.

Okay, so the dining room looks like a mid-1970s hotel banqueting suite. Never mind about that. If you can persuade the owners (Alan and Wendy) to let you loose on the Chinese menu (which isn’t even written out in English), and if you’re an adventurous carnivore without an ounce of squeamishness, then you’re in for a real treat.

Alan and Wendy sometimes take a good deal of persuading, mind you. They find it difficult to appreciate that there are any English people who really want to eat this stuff (with good reason, it has to be said), and will still try and guide you towards the sweet-and-sours and the black bean sauces. Be politely persistent. It’s worth it.

30. The Maze
270 North Sherwood Street, NG1 4EN

A nifty little live music venue, tucked away round the back of the excellent Forest Tavern on Mansfield Road. In amongst the usual “tribute bands” which fill their schedules, this is also where you’ll find all the latest obscure acoustic Americana, as championed by the likes of Uncut magazine. Ryan Adams played his first ever UK gig here, almost exactly two years ago. On such nights, the venue attracts an attentive, respectful crowd of serious musical aficionados. Like me and Dymbel, in other words…

Jump to next section.

Labels: mynottingham

All is not lost after all. The Atlas Delicatessen on Pelham Street remains open, but under new management as from today. And the coffee is still excellent.

More than with most other rock bands, an Oasis concert is a truly communal, collective event. It's about the crowd every bit as much as it's about the band. In this way, the atmosphere inside the Arena (electric but not oppressive, enthusiastically good-natured, no pushing and shoving, smiles everywhere, with everybody leaving enough room to leap around) reminds me slightly of a large dance event. It also reminds me that, as much as they might be a classic rock band, Oasis still have roots in that whole acid house / Madchester / baggy / rave phenomenon. It's there in the egalitarianism, the universality, and the sense of hedonistic immortality that runs through much of the older material.

So this isn't really the sort of event which lends itself to musing on the finer nuances of the band's musicianship. Which, considering the rather sludgy acoustic of Nottingham Arena, is a good thing. But if you really want to know, the playing is fine: solid, if unspectacular. It gets the job done. It doesn't take liberties with the original recorded versions. It doesn't try anything too new or too flash. It goes chug-a-chug chug chug, chug-a-chug chug chug. Or it goes der-der-DER-der, der-der-DER-der. It steals classic rock licks, quite shamelessly, and it doesn't care who knows it.

Oasis as the new Status Quo, then? Quo-asis? Oh, undeniably. But, you know, so what?

We get a little bit over an hour and a half, including encores. The set mixes stuff from the first two albums with healthy dollops of the new material on Heathen Chemistry. The new stuff stands up remarkably well, and goes down a storm - particularly a terrific version of The Hindu Times, early on in the main set. You realise that Heathen Chemistry really is the band's long-awaited "comeback" album, even if they can never quite hope to re-capture the glory days of 1994-1997. Significantly, not one single song from Be Here Now is played, and there is only one selection (Go Let It Out) from Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants. Oasis know full well when they Had It, and when they Lost It, and when they Got It Back Again. No point pretending otherwise.

Highlights? The obvious stuff, really. Cigarettes And Alcohol, Acquiesce and (of course!) my all-time favourite: Don't Look Back In Anger, which raises the roof. Plus the final encore: a rip-roaring, passionate rendition of The Who's My Generation, played to the accompaniment of flashing Union Jacks and Mod target signs on the gigantic screens which tower above the band's heads. Of all the rock singers I can think of, no-one could be better suited for this song than Liam Gallagher. He was simply born to sing it. He gives it his all, in what for me is his best, most committed, most gloriously snotty and attitude-ridden performance of the night. He might be a coarse twat, but he doesn't half make a bloody good rock star. And at the end of the day, that's all I really care about.

Omissions? There are several. Whatever, Roll With It, All Around The World, Champagne Supernova and most especially, Wonderwall - which is instead piped through the speakers as the audience file out. A good proportion linger behind to sing along with it anyway. Hey, who needs the band? We're gonna live forever!

Forget last night's TV programme - this is your list of essential must-sees, as recommended strictly from personal experience.

1. Vietnam
2. Cappadocia, Turkey (especially by hot air balloon, first thing in the morning)
3. The Azores
4. Sigiriya Rock Fortress, Sri Lanka
5. Banff to Lake Louise - the scenic route (Highway 1A, also known as the Bow Valley Parkway)
6. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg
7. San Francisco
8. Hatshepsut's Temple & the Valley of the Kings, Luxor (by donkey, at dawn)
9. Cephalonia
10. Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem
11. Ang Thong national marine park (by boat from Koh Samui)
12. Amsterdam
13. Jim Thompson's House, Bangkok
14. Burgundy (especially Nuits St. Georges & Beaune)
15. Empire State Building, New York (at dawn, walking home after a night out dancing)
16. Rome
17. Tate Modern, London
18. Prague
19. Malawi
20. Yosemite National Park (by car from San Francisco)
21. Jeu de Paumes, Paris
22. Berlin
23. Boston, Massachusetts
24. The hotel/restaurant at L'Epine (east of Chalons-en-Champagne)
25. Manifold Valley (Peak District)
26. Istanbul
27. Kettle's Yard, Cambridge
28. Moscow: the Kremlin
29. St. Ives
30. Siena
31. Stockholm
32. Washington DC
33. Hadrian's Wall
34. Ibiza Town
35. Barcelona
36. Zurich to St. Moritz (the train ride)
37. Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, North Wales (by narrow boat)
38. Ronda Gorge, Andalusia
39. Tallinn, Estonia
40. Cadiz
Runners-up: Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Paxos.

Oasis opened their UK tour last night, with the first of two consecutive gigs at Nottingham Arena. This marked the band's first appearance in town since their near-legendary gig at Rock City, back in August 1994.

Today, you can read what the Nottingham Evening Post thought of the first show.

Tomorrow, you can read what Troubled Diva thought of the second show.

YES! I'MGOINGTOSEEOASISTONIGHTANDIDON'TCAREWHATANYONESAYSCOSI'MDEADDEADEXCITED!

Wholly unexpected and awful news this lunchtime, as we all discover that the wonderful Atlas Delicatessen on Pelham Street closes its doors for the last time today. Or at least until it re-opens under new ownership, at some unspecified time in the future. The owner had been keeping the news under wraps until this, the very last day of business.

Not only did Atlas offer the best sandwiches around, it also offered the only proper cup of latte to be found in the entire city centre - at least to the best of my knowledge. So God knows where I'm going to go from now on. Is it time to return to Pret A Manger - or shall I try a few new places out instead? The latter, I think.

The quest for a decent cup of coffee in Nottingham city centre begins anew tomorrow, then.

Update: It now transpires that rumours of the death of Atlas have been greatly exaggerated. The place continues as before, but under the management of a new family, in fact, of the five people working there today, only one remains from the previous regime. And I am happy to report that the coffee is still excellent. Rejoice!

Another Major Project Milestone here, as we reach the first of the Ben Shermans. This one was bought on a whim one bright Sunday afternoon in 1997, from Clone Zone on Old Compton Street. Having stumbled out of Trade, soaked and stinking as usual, and needing something fresh to change into for Sherbet, this seemed to be the most practical solution on offer at the time. Off with the damp and smelly old Ben Sherman - on with the fresh and crisp new Ben Sherman - and on with the show. Ee, but I was proper Mad Fer It back then...

They're falling like ninepins now. Green Fairy, you too are now...Off The Project. Au reservoir!

A touch of Country Posh here, with this old-school Aquascutum number. All it needs now is the waxed Barbour and the green wellies. However, we have our limits.

Nigel R - former fellow Trade Babe and long-standing lurker - you know what? You are now...Off The Project. Cheerio.