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It was all in my head - my father would play the piano and I would have a mental party in the hole in the ground.

Blair used Fatboy Slim’s “Praise You” as his walk-on song for the 1999 Labour Party conference. For some commentators, its lyric “I have to praise you like I should” represented Blair’s increasingly presidential style: a superstar theme for a superstar prime minister. The Independent’s Anne McElvoy was appalled. “It was pure führermusik,” she said.

Ian Sample

The thing from the agency said, “We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah-blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional”, this whole list of adjectives, and then, at the bottom, it said: “and it must be 3¼ seconds long”.

Brian Eno

Everyone has heard “Girl From Ipanema”; it’s one of the most popular songs in the world, after “Happy Birthday,” “Yesterday,” and “White Christmas.” It has become a bit of a lounge cliché, but try playing it using the original Jobim chords — it’ll kick your ass.

In one strip, he is trying to wheedle Lucy into reading a story to him. Exasperated, she grabs a book at random from the shelf - “A man was born, he lived and he died. The End!” she says and tosses the book aside. Linus picks it up reverently. “What a fascinating account,” he says. “It almost makes you wish you had known the fellow.”

Tom Shone

Audiophiles have developed incredibly acute – some might say irrelevant – but certainly very impressive auditory skills. They can hear all kinds of details that the rest of us can’t. It’s as if they’ve taught themselves to become irritated by poor audio quality.

How little we know, how eager to learn.

Sir John Templeton