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George Osborne says NWA live show was one of the best he’s ever seen

By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 6 October 2015

George Osborne ranks an NWA show at Brixton Academy in 1991 among the top five gigs he has ever attended. So that’s a piece of information for you.

Quite how he came to be there isn’t clear, as the Daily Mail just plonked this fact into an infographic at the end of a long article on the Chancellor Of The Exchequer and didn’t see fit to examine the statement any further. But surely this is the most fascinating thing we’ve ever learned about him. Why was the whole article not about this?

Though the collection of Osborne ‘top fives’ contains several nuggets almost as interesting. For example, his other four favourite gigs are a Rolling Stones show from 2006, Billy Joel in North Carolina, also at some point in the 90s, a performance of German opera ‘Tristan Und Isolde’ earlier this year, and last year’s ‘Monty Python Live (Mostly)’ show.

He says in the article that he also hoped to attend a Taylor Swift show recently, but his daughter banned him from going because it would be too embarrassing.

His top five songs, should you be wondering (and I’m sure you are), are as follows: ‘Come On Feel The Illinoise’ by Sufjan Stevens; ‘Hurricane’ by Bob Dylan; ‘Carolina In My Mind’ by James Taylor; and Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations’. The latter is the music he writes his speeches too. Yeah, that’s the one that the Mail felt required context.

There’s more too. ‘The Young Ones’ is one of his favourite TV shows, the opening of ‘Trainspotting’ is one of his favourite film moments, and Rosa Parks is one of his political heroes.

All of which makes you wonder if someone’s forcing him to do his current job, and to pursue his current policies, against his will. What did this man do to a pig?