For all of Rock's fealty to hard fact and the disenchantments of experience, "Tamborine" is most exciting, and most unlike anything he's done before, when he gropes toward transformation.
The only time when this has been done before was when Rex Harrison insisted on filming his solos live for My Fair Lady, because he said the intricate interplay between talking and singing made it difficult to lip-sync.
Not that this hasn't been done before, but when it becomes headline news that someone stole credit card numbers from unsecured networks, it's worth showing people just how widespread the security laxity is.
"This sort of thing has never been done before," said Yentob, "But when I saw how Gilbert and George made their pictures it was clear that this would be a perfect match".
"We are attempting to do things that have never been done before," Murray told me, last year, when the project had only just been made public.
Parnham was a captain when he made his debut for England — "which I don't think had ever been done before," he said — and was 27 when he played his first Olympic game, in 2000.
That has been done before, notably in Afghanistan in 2007, when Mullah Muhammad Omar, spiritual head of the Afghan Taliban, signed a letter of protection for vaccination teams.
Put crudely, it has been done before: in 1989, when the Soviet army pulled out of Afghanistan.
These should have all been done before the age when a puppy is adoptable.
