Dave Simpson reviews Spooky live at The Banks of the Tiber, Rome and David Bennun reviews Kenickie live at The Zap, Brighton, 13th July 1996

Dave Simpson reviews Spooky live at The Banks of the Tiber, Rome and David Bennun reviews Kenickie live at The Zap, Brighton.

Well well, who’d have thunk it huh? As Bennun swoons over the gestating Kenickie from the outset, halfway through, there’s this paragraph;

“Just assuming that you can’t justify a band on banter – and if you ever could, this would be the band – how about the fact that they’re stylish, sexy, funnier than life itself? And yes, most of the male music journalists I know want to sleep with them.”

With the benefit of hindsight that really is most amusing as one of them rather famously went on to do just that. You lucky sod.

But that banter was as real and intoxicating as Bennun describes. You just couldn’t help but fall for it. And yet now Lauren Laverne has transformed herself into the de facto face of all things cultural for the BBC, it’s easy to forget quite how intelligent and spunky she used to be.

I’m aware that I need to be respectful when talking about individuals here who could easily be reading, however the sad fact remains; the prettier Laverne gets, the less relevant she becomes. Her personality has now been diluted, flattened and pummelled to a shadow of its former self in order to make her palatable for a mainstream audience. What’s so wrong with allowing women to be intelligent, witty and feisty? Let her be herself. Closest thing these days is her radio show on 6Music but it’s still a pale imitation.

This clip from Planet Pop shows how good she was, and probably still is, despite the annoying editing and her rather lank, greasy hair. But hey…that’s showbiz and these are the compromises it seems you have to make if you’re gonna get on in the world of TV.