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Radio 4 listeners have chosen Queen’s opera-headbanger as their favourite Desert Island piece of pop; I explain all in a feature for the BBC News Magazine, What is a Bohemian Rhapsody?:

“Freddie Mercury used a piano as the headboard of his bed. The double-jointed Mercury would awake with inspiration, reach up and back behind his head and play what he’d heard in his dreams. This was how Bohemian Rhapsody began.”

Update [22 Jun]: Here is Scott Simon of NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday yakking with me about Bismillah and Scaramouche:

• Other florid lyrics I have enjoyed dissecting: Flowers In The Rain; A Whiter Shade Of Pale.
• More American public radio below; I discuss Daniel Powter’s Bad Day [article here] with John Schaefer on WNYC’s Soundcheck.

• Photo taken at the Alhambra in Andalucía‎ and included in tribute to Dr Matthew Beaumont‘s evocation of Moorish architecture. [More Beaumont in his book with Patrick Keiller, Chris Petit, Iain Sinclair et al, Restless Cities.]

I’ve written a feature for the BBC News Magazine about how pub quizzes can survive the smartphone era.

“Text-messaging Is Destroying the Pub Quiz As We Know It, noted the Super Furry Animals in 2001. Little did they know that the pub quiz of 2011 would start with the host insisting: ‘OK, iPhones away, please. Yes, very clever – and Androids. All phones away.’

“Cheating has always been possible in pub quizzes. But while once the dishonest quizzer had to pop out to phone a friend, or wait for a text message reply, phones with fast internet access have taken cheating possibilities to a new level.”

• Related: a piece by me for the BBC about Google getting us to teach it to see.
• Sadly, I was only able to talk to Stuart Jeffries, who sets the King William’s College Quiz, after publication. Perhaps next time.
• The last time I talked quizzes for the BBC was in this report by the excellent Chris Vallance for Broadcasting House on Radio 4.

• Photo taken at Bekenscot Model Village.
• One type of question which there wasn’t room for was the Blurred Cover. Below are four best-sellers. But what are their titles and authors?