On my radar: George Ezra’s cultural highlights

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/dec/14/george-ezra-cultural-highlights-paddington

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Hertford-born George Ezra, 21, was signed to Columbia Records in 2012 less than a year after he moved to Bristol to study music. Last year he played on the BBC’s Introducing stage at Glastonbury festival. Later that year his song Budapest reached the top 10 in countries including Australia, Germany and Italy, and in June 2014 he released his debut album Wanted on Voyage. Ezra’s single Listen to the Man is out now.

Film: Paddington

This is the film I’m most looking forward to. I’m going to go see it next Sunday. My album title comes from Paddington’s suitcase. I grew up being dressed up as him by my mum when it was cold. Last Christmas I got a framed picture of one of the original sketches and I’ve got a nice jumper with Paddington on the front. I’m a fan.In the originals he gives people “a long hard stare” – someone will be like, “I’m not having bears in my taxi” or something, and then he’ll give them a long hard stare and they’ll let him in. He’s always the winner at the end. My old flatmate hated him. We’d have heated debates. He’d say he was a pretentious, annoying little bear, but I beg to differ. I was rooting for Paddington.

TV: Gogglebox

I remember someone first telling me about this and I was a bit like, that sounds like something the 21st century’s dreamed up that’s going to be awful, doesn’t it? But then you watch it and you fall in love with all the characters. The nice thing is they have all these people from different walks of life and they’re all watching the same thing and they all have pretty similar opinions. It makes me feel quite snug and happy. Whenever I watch it with someone I’m like, do you reckon we’d be any good on this?

Radio: Shipping forecast

I had a few different jobs when I was younger, so I used to work in this cafe in the day, go to college for a bit, and then go and work at a sweet factory at night. I’d always get home just in time for Radio 4’s shipping forecast, which would send me to sleep. I think the thing I like about the shipping forecast is, I haven’t got a clue what they’re on about, it’s kind of this make-believe language. I always picture people out on boats who genuinely need to listen to it, and what they’re getting from it.

Website: Over/Under on YouTube

This is a series of interviews by music site Pitchfork. They interview people really quickly about whether different things are overrated or underrated. So they’ll say, like, hummus, and a picture of hummus will come up, and then you’ll have Earl Sweatshirt’s or Vampire Weekend’s views on hummus. The films are only about seven minutes long so before you know it you’ve wasted an hour and a half of your life watching them. What do I think of hummus? I think it’s forever underrated.

Restaurant: Pizza Pilgrims

This is a really nice little pizza place tucked away near Tottenham Court Road. It’s really small, and I always like it when there’s hardly anything on the menu, because obviously it’s being cooked properly. It’s almost like a bit of a cave downstairs - it’s in this basement and you can see the bare walls and there’s little tunnels into different bits. Unfortunately for me, the only thing is the furniture’s quite small, and I’m quite a big person, so I have to clumsily stumble through.

Museum: La Specola

I went to this when I was in Florence – it’s a huge taxidermy museum. It had everything. Years ago people would dissect the human body in every way you could do it and then made models of it, so there’s rooms full of every inch of the human body, of all ages. It’s crazy. It sounds bad, but the monkeys kind of make me chuckle – the grim expressions on these little faces. The room that makes me feel most uncomfortable is all the butterflies and the moths. I hate moths.