Observation: The music played on Sounds of the 70s on Radio 2 isn't what it was when Johnnie Walker was in the chair. Hunch: Bob Harris is playing older, gutarrier records. Hypothesis: He plays more records from the first half of the 1970s than the second half. Research: I went back to the oldest Sounds of the 70s still on BBC Sounds, listed all the records played and noted down their year of release. Songs included Metal Guru by T Rex (1972), Hotel California by The Eagles (1977) and Top Of The World by The Carpenters (1973). Method: I looked up all the records in the Guinness Book of Hit Singles to see when they first charted. If they weren't hit singles I checked their release date using Google and Wikipedia. Data: (click to view) Results: 1973, 1976, 1974, 1977, 1977, 1972, 1971, 1977, 1977, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1979, 1972, 1975, 1973, 1973, 1973, 1978, 1972 Rearrange in chronological order: 71 71 72 72 72 73 73 73 73 73 74 75 75 76 77 77 77 77 78 79 Analysis: 20 records were played. 11 were from the first half of the 1970s. That's 55%, a slight majority. Interpretation: Actually that's a lot of mid-70s. 16 of the 20 records were from 1972-1977, i.e. 80%. The start and finish of the decade barely got a look in. Supposition: Bob Harris was the host of the Old Grey Whistle Test from 1972 to 1978. Maybe he's biased towards that period. Further research: Obviously it makes sense to gather more data. Five shows are available on BBC Sounds. Best get data from all of them. 18/5/25: 71 71 72 72 72 73 73 73 73 73 74 75 75 76 77 77 77 77 78 79 25/5/25: 70 70 70 70 70 71 71 71 72 72 74 74 76 76 76 77 77 78 79 79 79 01/6/25: 70 71 71 73 73 73 73 74 74 74 75 75 75 76 76 77 78 78 78 79 08/6/25: 71 71 71 72 72 72 74 74 74 75 75 75 76 76 76 77 77 78 78 79 79 15/5/25: 70 70 70 71 71 72 72 72 73 73 74 74 74 75 76 77 78 78 78 79 Overview: That might be more balanced. I should tally up all the years and draw a graph. Insight: OK that's really quite well spread out. 102 songs were played so you'd expect ten songs from every year, and in fact every year falls within the range 10±2. Verdict: There is no significant disparity in the years represented. It seems the producers of the show are trying to be pretty balanced. BUT: What I did notice while compiling the data is that 41 of the songs played weren't in the Guinness Book of Hit Singles. That's 40% of the total. That's a very high proportion not to have been UK hit singles. Conclusion: Bob Harris is playing a lot of album tracks (and US hit singles). That'll be be why I'm enjoying the music less. Sounds of the 60s. ...and that is definitely unbalanced. Further observations: See also my in-depth 2020 analysis: Is there any pattern to the years picked on Pick of the Pops? Datasets for future consideration • The chronological spread of Radio 3's Composer of the Week • The geographical spread of locations for a) Any Questions b) Gardener's Question Time • The work schedules of the Radio 4 Today Programme presenters • The balance of history to science and culture on In Our Time • How often the same adverts come round on Greatest Hits Radio • How long since Smooth Radio last played True by Spandau Ballet • Locations for Radio 3's Choral Evensong • The most played games on I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue • The proportion of successful challenges that are hesitation, repetition and deviation. • The average score on The Easiest Quiz On The Radio • Frequency of Radcliffe & Maconie interstitials

Route 241: Royal Wharf to Hackney Wick (Here East) Location: London east, cross-Newham Length of bus journey: 8 miles, 50 minutes route 241 was extended from Stratford City into the Olympic Park. No fuss was made, no hordes descended. Buses which would normally have terminated outside Westfield instead continued via a wilfully tortuous route to the multi-storey at Here East, inevitably rammed with empty seats. The extension is designed to deliver a bus service to the East Bank, the cultural waterfront whose landmark buildings are currently half open. It also delivers a bus service to Sweetwater, one of the five post-Olympic neighbourhoods where currently nobody lives because not a single flat has been built. Arguably it's still too early for the extension to be useful and yet the change has been in the offing for well over a decade waiting for the right moment to launch. I first blogged that route 241 might be extended across the Olympic Park way back in July 2010 when the idea appeared in planning documents for the Orbit. Instead when Westfield opened in 2011 the 241 was merely extended across the railway to Stratford City bus station, leaving the 388 to take responsibility for travel to the top of the park. A specific extension to Here East first appeared in a consultation in December 2012, at this stage an aspirational change waiting for the Olympic Media Centre to be reopened. A firmer proposition appeared in July 2017 as part of a wide-ranging review of routes connecting to Crossrail, but bosses ultimately decided not to proceed. The emergence of a free shuttle bus for Here East employees in May 2017 likely delayed things somewhat, and a proper 241 extension consultation only emerged in May 2024 when Carpenters Road reopened. And now finally here we are, 15 years on, mostly needlessly. entire route, not just the extension, all the way from flat-stacked Royal Wharf. It wasn't terribly busy at that end either, this being another extension circa 2022 on a much-tweaked route. If the Thames-side incomers want to go to Stratford they take the DLR rather than slum it through Custom House and Plaistow, and only on reaching these parts do passenger numbers really start ramping up. I'm pleased to report that timetables at bus stops all appear to have been updated, or at least I never spotted one that hadn't. A yellow poster has also been added explaining the extension into the Olympic Park, not that I can imagine anyone in south Newham ever wanting to make use of it. Our accumulated load started disembarking at Stratford Broadway, poured off at the station and fully emptied out at Westfield, this being where the 241 formerly stopped. The twisty-turny extension starts here. ridiculously twisty, this the fault of the post-Olympic road network which never quite links up in an optimal way. Crossing from one side of the station to the other has already taken 7 minutes and now we face another loop to get from 'up here' to 'down there'. The first stop on the new extension is outside the Aquatics Centre, a stop in use since 2013 and now served by three different routes. It might feel like overkill to serve a swimming pool and a skatepark, but the opening of a whopping university campus alongside in 2022 means that 16 buses an hour is sometimes justified. OK, now the new bit. a grimy backroad lined by mucky businesses nowhere else wanted. Originally the 276 ran along it, mainly as a quick route to Hackney Wick, but was diverted through Bow instead in 2007 when all this was sealed off to build the Olympic Park. After the Games Carpenters Road reopened as little more than a service road, this time with the 339 wending its way through, this until December 2018 when the road closed again to enable the construction of the East Bank. Neither the 276 nor the 339 have ever returned and the backroad is now the province of the 241, whisking students and punters to all things cultural. A pair of brand new bus stops await. Onwards. map in the recent consultation, only two more round the corner that don't yet exist. 339 remains the better option if you're heading canalside. And when the bus finally climbs up to Marshgate Lane the really stupid thing is that construction teams painted BUS STOP on the road back in 2021 in readiness for this weekend, but no bus stop has been added. They even added an annoying kink in the adjacent cycle lane in readiness for a shelter, squishing the pedestrian gap to a bare minimum, but it turns out they needn't have bothered. next stop is a longstanding one, immediately outside the Copper Box on the main drag of Westfield Avenue. This time there are flats nearby, also flats under construction, also regular sporting events, a large food court and a shortcut across the river to Hackney Wick station. The 388 stops here and what's more it takes the direct 4 minute route to and from Stratford, not the circuitous 8 minute safari we've just endured. There's then no further stop until the terminus at Here East, even though it might be useful to fill the 600m gap to serve for example the new V&A Storehouse and adjacent facilities. Instead it's all the way or nothing, turfed out kerbside between yet another university and a multi-storey car park. Was it really worth it? It will be worth it one day, when the East Bank is finished and 1500 unstarted flats along the extension are complete. This is just TfL getting in early, while simultaneously getting in 13 years later than they first suggested. A fine balance needs to be struck, and somebody has judged that now is the time to push things further with three extra vehicles on the route, even if initially they carry mostly empty seats. In the meantime the 241 extension is a round-the houses route that doesn't yet go round any houses, thus generally unnecessary, and you're unlikely to be riding it any time soon.

I've been to see some art. Serpentine Galleries Giuseppe Penone: Thoughts in the Roots (until 7 September) [exhibition guide] Arpita Singh: Remembering (until 27 July) Serpentine Pavilion 2025 by Marina Tabassum (until 26 September) medical capsule, much enlarged, chopped up into four ribbed slices. The chops help embrace the open air but also let the rain in, as I discovered when I dashed inside during a cloudburst and realised I was still getting wet. The interior feels a bit like a waiting room, all peripheral seating plus the obligatory hot drinks offering at the far end. Vision 1, Functionality 0. Play Pavilion (until 10 August) White Cube Richard Hunt: Metamorphosis – A Retrospective (until 29 June) Richard Hunt. I really liked his late period plantlike spikes but could have done without the formative prequels. It's so purely presented that Richard and his oeuvre only really made sense once I'd watched the four minute looping video showing him hard at work in a cluttered industrial workshop. National Gallery The Carracci Cartoons: Myths in the Making (Room 1, until 6 July) (on a practical note the horrific queues that blighted the gallery last autumn have all died down - I waited no seconds whatsoever at the main entrance) National Portrait Gallery Stanisław Wyspiański: Portraits (until 13 July) Lines of Feeling (until 4 January) Photo Portrait Now (until 28 September) Newport Street Gallery Raging Planet (until 31 August) The Power and the Glory (until 31 August) visited recently and found it uncomfortable, not especially artistic and eminently skippable. I left reassured that all the photos were from before I was born so we've learned since, and unnerved that we might not have learned at all. Tate Modern UK AIDS Memorial Quilt (until 16 June) UK AIDS Memorial Quilt, created to commemorate lives lost in the 80s and 90s, is out of long-term storage and back on view for one weekend only. The Turbine Hall is the perfect place to lay out 42 colourful twelve foot panels remembering 384 people who died in the AIDS epidemic, commemorated here with love and creativity by their friends (and sometimes family). Some were well known names - Robert the photographer, Mark the activist, Christopher from Blue Peter - others shone brightly in their own corner. Each panel is unique, from simple symbolism to complex reminiscence, with red ribbons, rainbows and teddy bears frequently seen. In most cases you can only guess at the backstory from pictorial clues. It's the dates that really hit home, so many born in the 50s and 60s cut down in their 30s and 40s, and a few babies lost at barely two months for added shock. Some who've come to Tate Modern to see the quilts plainly remember the struggle first time round, and in a sign of quite how far things have moved on I also saw a teacher leading her primary class round the fabric cemetery and pointing out names and memories. If you can't pay your respects in person several panels are explorable on the Memorial Quilt's website. Bow Arts Gallery Bow Open: Connections (until 31 August) well chuffed to have had his systematic imprint selected. The most fun work by far is Campbell McConnell's 90 second video of medieval actresses repeatedly overacting. The space out the back is totally wasted. Try not to tread on the fabric snake. Halcyon Gallery - 146 New Bond Street Point Blank by Bob Dylan (until 6 July) The Beaten Path, which was also exhibited here, and there was his reinterpretation of my snap of Blackpool Pier on page 228... and 229... and 231. You have to smile, and I did just that all the way back out onto the Mayfair streets.