the time is right for palace revolution

It's Friday, I'm a bit late getting to work, so it must be Desert Island Discs. This morning's guest was consultant forensic psychotherapist Dr. Gwen Adshead (no, me neither). I only had time to catch her first choice of tune, but top marks for selecting the Rolling Stones' Gimme Shelter, probably the absolute pinnacle of the Stones' late-60s sulphurous cloven-hoofed satanic majesty. So it's a great song, and the best bit is Keith Richards' sinuous and menacing guitar intro, which Dr. Gwen and Kirsty Young RUINED BY BLOODY TALKING OVER IT! Idiots.

While we're talking music, let me use the Gimme Shelter reference above to segue into a couple of incidental music spots: firstly the Stones' Street Fighting Man over the closing credits of V for Vendetta on the TV a couple of nights ago - a film I really want to like because of its admirable attempt to at least make some interesting political points, and also because it's got Natalie Portman in it (doing, to be fair, a halfway decent English accent), but ultimately can't get over the fact of its being, fundamentally, extremely silly. (Picture is from this amusing list of great movie masks).

Also, and slightly more incongruously, the intro to Television's late-70s art-rock-punk-new-wave classic Marquee Moon during the final episode of Junior Most Awful And Least Self-Aware Person In Britain (or, if you prefer, Junior Apprentice). The sensible thing to do then would have been to fade out the show and play the full 10-minute-plus guitarstravaganza, but they chose to do it the other way round, an editorial decision I can't honestly say I'm in full agreement with.