Terry Wogan couldn't have written a better introduction had he been alive today. I think it might have been penned with a tear in his eye and a crystal ball on the table, the one he used on a regular basis to tell my future, as you'll soon discover. What he couldn't know is that I would write and publish this book. Most of my friends say they will buy a copy so that should boost the bank balance by about a tenner, if I'm lucky, which I have been during most of my life, and that theme, plus a deep love of music, permeates this tome throughout. I wouldn't say it's a rags to riches story but I can still hardly believe that a little lad from the back streets of Manchester could have had the fun journey I have enjoyed. I hope you'll travel with me through childhood and teens to the Swinging Sixties in London and Manchester, where I briefly found employment as a schoolteacher and civil servant, through my time as a singer/songwriter/record producer and pop star in Norway (Oh yes I was!). From the seventies onward the BBC was my main focus as a producer with thirty years before the mast on the Good Ship Radio Two working with some of the all-time great broadcasters like Jack Jackson, Simon Bates, Sir Terry Wogan, Jimmy Young, David Hamilton, Kenny Everett, Wally Whyton, Anne Robinson, Michael Aspel and Ken Bruce. The cream on the top during those years was meeting my heroes Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, The Crickets, John D Loudermilk, Neil Sedaka and Roy Rogers. Did I mention The Beatles? The great northern city of Manchester was an education, an inspiration, an introduction to my two great passions - music and sport - and a springboard to explore the wider world, which I did on many occasions from a very young age, being regularly parcelled off to stay with relatives in Yorkshire, and once to friends on the Isle of Man. All this before the age of twelve when I took matters into my own hands and began a love affair with Vienna and Austria by taking part in a student exchange programme every year until I was 18. Maybe my parents were relieved to be rid of me for a period of time – this is not a misery memoir, but things were less than easy. And I certainly enjoyed my holiday visits away from home. It was always a great adventure, which is how most of my life has been ever since. In January 2020, I made one New Year's resolution, to start writing this book. I started compiling and collating dates to bring the memories into focus, and as I did, I realised... It all started with a bass guitar. A Fender Precision Bass, to be exact, about which I knew nothing at the time I bought it, but which put me on a trajectory to a life-long involvement with popular music and the rarefied atmosphere of stars and celebrity. I could have called this book "All About That Bass" but Meghan Trainor beat me to it! So it became "Easily Led And Hard On His Shoes" which were a couple of the many things my mother used to call me, the first for being a little naïve and credulous and the second for my inability to resist kicking anything in the street, be it a stone, a stick or a tin can. She also told me I had a mind like a butterfly. So let's focus, shall we, and get on with the story?

This fascinating new book plots five millennia of the most powerful of all tools of persuasion.

Here are the nineteen baseball teams from the whole of the 20th century with the most dominant single seasons. The criteria for selection include leadership in winning percentage, runs scored, home runs, ERA, and differential runs. When the requirement of winning a World Series title is added to the criteria, only twelve teams meet the standards, but the author also includes seven other prime contenders. The introduction and Part I describe the selection process, the teams that made the cut--the 1927 Yankees, 1944 Cardinals, 1939 Yankees, 1937 Yankees, 1903 Red Sox, 1955 Dodgers, 1936 Yankees, 1984 Tigers, 1938 Yankees, 1905 Giants, 1917 White Sox, 1976 Reds, 1974 Dodgers, 1995 Indians, 1921 Yankees, 1906 Cubs, 1952 Dodgers, 1953 Dodgers, and the 1982 Brewers--and the teams that did not. Parts II though V discuss the game over four periods from 1901 through 2000 and provide in-depth discussion of the dominant teams. Part VI shows how difficult it is for teams to emerge dominant in today's game.

This is a candid, sometimes controversial study of the psychological or other flaws of political, religious and economic leaders from ancient times to the present day: from Rameses II to Colonel Gaddafi, from Genghis Khan to Stalin and Hitler, from Buddha or Saint Paul to Martin Luther or Ron Hubbard, from bipolar, insecure, asthmatic or sex-addicted presidents to alcoholic prime ministers, mad kings, obese emperors and kleptomaniac dictators. Amongst their followers we find psychopathic police chiefs, gay generals, crazed philosophers, epileptic prophets and ludomaniac business- men. We look at how the minor personality disorders and health problems of the few have led frequently to considerable misery for the many.Without slavish adherence to the latest psychiatric fashions the author uses at least some of these concepts to help analyse the anti-social behaviour traits of leaders past and present and to assess the degree to which their mental or physical state contributed to most of the world's worst man-made disasters: wars, genocides, famines, persecutions, enslavements and recessions.We consider the questions: How many millions died because the Archangel Gabriel supposedly appeared to both the Virgin Mary and Mohammed? How many millions died because Napoleon was bullied at school, because Hitler failed to get into the Vienna Academy, because Stalin had an alcoholic father or because Mao suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder?

The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson through Executive Order 11130 on November 29, 1963 to investigate the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy that had taken place on November 22, 1963. This book includes the Commission's report, which was based on the investigation, as well as all the supporting documents collected during the investigation, and the testimony or depositions of 552 witnesses.