Cool Cat Wild! goes all "friend of Dorothy" - we've been watching That's Entertainment III. Again.

In 1976, I landed two tickets to the London premier of That's Entertainment! Part II, a second compilation film featuring clips from the heyday of MGM musicals, with linking material provided by toupée-wearing old stars, many of whom looked as if they'd been embalmed. I can't now remember why I was given a ticket - something to do with my job as a publicist for the publisher, New English Library - but, thinking about somebody else for once, I had the cheek to request a second ticket, was promptly given one, and asked my mother to accompany me. Like me, she wasn't a great fan of musicals, but she'd been raised on a diet of Hollywood movies in pre-War Glasgow. Oddly - considering she was a former fashion model - she became flustered as we walked up the red-carpeted stairs towards the entrance and press photographers started snapping us. At the end of the screening...

Some Big Band Boogie Woogie Bounce for everyone depressed by the Chancellor's ghastly Butskellite Bollocks Budget

The human dynamo on the drums - and the matchbox - was, of course,  Gene Krupa with his "Drum Boogie" from the great 1941 comedy Ball of Fire. Right, let's get the politics out of the way. Allister Heath expressed my exact feelings in the Telegraph this morning:

My favourite songs about sex workers

The story about a hotel in Hull refusing to admit an 18-year old Romanian student because staff thought she was a prostitute surprised me, because every report I saw on the incident used the word “prostitute” rather than “sex worker”. Sky News and the BBC went through a phase of favouring the latter term, which implies that whoring is a perfectly respectable way to earn a living, rather than the old-fashioned, judgmental one. Is this a sign of political correctness finally loosening its suffocating hold on the nation’s throat? Probably not. I’m sure our collective timidity will ensure that the void between, for instance, “coloured people” and “people of colour” will grow ever wider, and that the use of "homosexual" - as opposed to "gay" - will eventually be outlawed altogether.

Stranded In The Jungle - with only jazz, exotica, R&B and rockabilly for company

Gertcha! A dozen of this Londoner's favourite London songs - from "Play with Fire" to "We're the Sweeney"

Gertcha! A dozen of this Londoner's favourite London songs

John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillen" - the riff that launched a thousand songs

"Good morning, America, how are you?" - train songs are the best

Boogie Woogie synchronicity: "Sugar Chile" Robinson and Martin Pyrker

Hoagy Carmichael, the white songwriter who made pop black - and cool

Perez Prado, The Diamonds and Freddie Cannon - the importance of insanely cheerful music

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/dfxv_lw2CDw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Rhythm and Blues - the very best of the grown-up music that made everything possible

Without Rhythm and Blues,  the musical genre invented by Black musicians in Chicago in the 1940s and 1950s by electrifying guitars and adding drums (and anything else they fancied) to acoustic Country Blues, there would have been no Rock ‘n” Roll, no Rockabilly, no Rock. We'd probably be listening to George Formby imitators.