This is the best Harry Potter book since Prisoner of Azkaban. I found books 4-6 very long and padded out, and they should have been edited more tightly. The last book is a fitting end to the story.

Sunnyboys were a fantastic band in Australia in the early 80’s. Wonderful power pop and would have gone onto bigger and better things, but unfortunately fell apart due to health problems of singer/songwriter Jeremy Oxley.

The Laughing Clowns were around when I was a uni student, from 1979 to 1984. They were great to see live, and I saw them many times. This 3 CD set which was released last year reminds me just how good they were.

I’ve read all the Harry Potter books so far. I think the Prisoner of Azkaban is best. I think the last 3 (the big fat books) have lots of padding that could well be edited out, but the publisher is not strong enough to tell JK Rowling to cut all the extraneous chapters out. Nevertheless, I’ll still read the last book when it comes out, just to see how the story is all wrapped up.

Neither the Two Towers nor the Return of the King was as dramatic and awe inspiring to me as The Fellowship of the Ring. They are still wonderful movies, but I think a lot of the wonder from the first movie about just how Peter Jackson would visualise Middle Earth was over by the second and third parts. In Fellowship, there was just such a lot of “wow” factor. ROTK I liked more than TTT. TTT was more a bridge between the others and less a story in itself. (I felt the same about the books, too.)

HH2G the movie was ok, but was rushed, left lots out, added extra stuff that they invented for the movie, and finished all of a sudden in the middle of nowhere. The TV series was pretty ordinary too. No-one has successfully visualised the story from either the books or the BBC radio series.