I always wanted to be a juvenile delinquent but my parents wouldn't let me

Happy new year people. As is custom at this time of year, the past month of liquids has been one both hard and heavy, particularly as we have gone through Christmas like a hot knife through a delicious loads of cans. Last month it seemed fit to have a drink at literally every moment. Are you eating crisps? Have a pint. Is that a sink you're scrubbing? Here's a gin. Ah so you're sweeping the floor? Enjoy this bottle of Merlot. Here's what we've seen and can't remember. Now it's all about the resolutions, the new dreams and aspirations. We are going to clean the window sill. We might even get the boiler to work. And stop flicking snot around the room. Maybe...

Soz. Fam

The best bit of the supermarket

Way back in

Way back out

Game changing

Work Christmas dinner is served 

Post Xmas Gregg's breakfast - the 2015 bake in all its glory... 

#crapmas

The posh, unaffordable flat in Spaced. At night

So solid brew bruv

Essential xmas reading

Essential xmas drinking. Watch out for the widget crew

Fam going 3d

Silsden after the floods

Ilkey's waterfall. Bit boring

Lost in Ilkey

Trying to find Sue James' box. Even with the map, and the size, we failed to locate the precious box. 

Contemplating a career change

Brap

On the set of Death Becomes Her

Hangover breakfast with a pair of ghosts and a sweetcorn fritter. Spare the fritter

Westwood going in

#newyearnewyou

The monsters were the best friends we had

I love eggs and I love faces. Well I don't really like the latter that much but blending eggs with faces seems to be a real vibe. Now that the work canteen no longer offers scrambled eggs on toast as an option, I've started working from home one day a week so I can get my fix of being a culinary Dr Frankenstein. In doing so, it seems only right that these meals should have personalities, addictions and idiosyncracies. Otherwise, it'd be boring... here's a line up of who we've been eating in 2015...

All I wanted was to look like Elizabeth Taylor

November has been big - we watched Psychic TV play live, drank a lot of craft, went to Brighton to the Mutations Festival and drank a lot of craft. Here are some bits... 

Craft beer is everywhere. We were there first

Tapas in London in November

Big guns

Terrible rules

Dive in

A very unhealthy meal

Alfresco WC

Best TV moment of 2015 - watching Murs fuck it up

Pintz

#stopbeingacunt

Nob rot

Butterflies in the pop up Museum of Food

Pre-Psychic TV Wetherspoon's din dins

Josh T Pearson giving it some in Brighton @Mutations Festival

Freaky fingers

Chicken cam

Mike Skinner is my hero

You might have noticed the ongoing trend for bands reforming is currently reaching ever greater and deeper lows.

As we gaze fondly towards the new hopes of 2016, it's now very much the fashion for older, not hugely successful Britpop outfits to dust down their guitars, polish those stage pants and start preparing to get back out there for one last musical hurrah. You can kind of just about stomach this self-perpetuating taste for nostalgia when it's the likes of Fleetwood Mac ironing out their differences and returning to the stage. But over recent months, bands like Space, Cast, Kula Shaker, Garbage, even Marion have either played or announced new gigs. It's like they've just cynically realised they've got more chance of paying the mortgage off by being mates and playing together than being adversaries. Which in some ways, gives cause for despair. Many of these bastards were totally shite to start off so it's hard to imagine now they're 20 years older, grey of hair and pot bellied that they'll be any more cop.

With all this aural shite flinging going on, it's ace to see someone like Mike Skinner being willing to throw caution to the wind, dump his past and live properly in the here and now. Not least because he could quite easily be one of those currently cashing his chips in. Over the course of numerous albums, he earned the tag of genius via a bedroom soul sound hybrid blending garage, house, hip hop and grime that got him in the cooler ends of the music press and also, refreshingly, in the higher end of the charts. 

Now, after some time away, he's dipping a toe into the biz again, this time with his label and party Tonga. Handily, it goes on just round the corner from ours and we went for our first trip just the t'other month. Refreshingly, our second jaunt was just a sweaty and as stupid as the last one we attended. All hail Skinner and all hail those willing to leave their pasts behind and keep it totally future... 

It's a rave dave

Pre-Tonga Saturday night power juice

Lost in the rave clouds

Arresting Murphy

Many a time the phrase, 'don't met your heroes' has been uttered by folk both stupid and wise. 'It'll only lead to disappointment' is the consensus offered up by the vibe police but sometimes fate throws them at you and it'd be downright rude to not interact.

So it goes in me current journo job where interviews with interesting and not so interesting folk are always popping up. As an interrogator, sometimes your heroes let you down, but on other occasions those you didn't give much thought to offer you enough wisdom to attain hero status. It's certainly a case of swings and roundabouts but with Roisin Murphy it was a no brainer about chatting. And lo, although we only met via the phone, it proved to be a suitably weird 30 minutes veering from cock jokes to high art. 

Click here to read the whole interview.  

Take me to Chicken Town

If you want to eat fried chicken, then there are few better places than stinky old London town. Apparently there are something like 8,000 fried chicken joints clogging up the arteries of the capital as well as those of its eaters. From Perfect Fried Chicken to Roosters via Dixie and the Chicken Cottage, all the poulet is here, being plucked, fried and dished up in greasy cardboard boxes. Plus, it tastes fucking amazing. It does - our tongues know full well, from about two years dining out in Hackney's Carolina Pizza and their infamous Chicken Lover (same price without drink mate), that it's fucking delicious. The saltier and greasier the better although your bowels will never forgive you for it.

So, with this deep-rooted appreciation of chicken lodged sloppily in our guts, you can imagine how excited we were when the Viking-like prince of prime electroclash Batty Rymer announced he, and agency Create London, were teaming up to set up a social enterprise dealing in, and you guessed it, fowl play. Their new eatery Chicken Town launched in Tottenham in November and is aimed at ensuring that the teenagers of the area will not kill themselves through their love for chicken. Instead, the team, all sourced from Tottenham, steam the chicken, cutting out the salt but keeping the flavour to offer a healthy alternative.

Having backed it in the Kickstarter campaign, one of our crew treated us to the works - a full chicken meal, coleslaw, mac and cheese, kale and a shitload of Beavertown all soundtracked by Winston Hazel's Jive Turkey mix. It was glorious - you should go, get down and stuff some steamed chicken in your life...