Today is our national caring day. Across the country, people will be involved in activities - sporting, musical or just plain odd - which will raise money for charity. On the BBC, the famous will be doing their bit by...
Read moreFor the past 12 years, Bob Dylan has been nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature. As the list of his achievements has grown longer, so have the reasons why he will never win it. He is a musician, he...
Read moreSomehow it seems all wrong for Hilary Benn to be chairing a rubbish summit this week. One tries to picture him sitting, like Guy Fawkes, on top of a vast pile of unacceptable waste, but he is altogether too neat...
Read moreThis week, as usual, British television viewers will be subjected to an undeclared marketing campaign on behalf of the forces of law and order which amounts to a none-too-subtle type of light brainwashing. The police documentary is now such a...
Read moreIt has been a grim week in that increasingly murky place, the blogosphere. In America, the widespread practice of slipping secret payments to internet "reviewers" has caused the Federal Trade Commission to rule that all covert advertisements appearing in blogs...
Read moreSomeone surely should commission a biopic based on the bizarre life of Gyles Brandreth, that Zelig in the world of contemporary celebrity. For more than 50 years, Brandreth has played the fool in one way or another, modifying and varying...
Read moreAt first glance, the hypothesis of Anthony Seldon's new book Trust would seem to make it a shoo-in for this year's Statement of the Bleeding Obvious Prize. We have lost trust in one another, says the headmaster/ biographer/ media pundit....
Read moreBecause politicians only occasionally take into consideration what is happening in the British countryside, rural policies and initiatives, when they do come, often have an other-worldly, Alice in Wonderland feel to them. A few days, ago for example, a report...
Read moreEvery country which has hosted the Olympics has used it for image purposes. China presented itself as powerful and organised. Australia projected a sunny yet cheerfully competitive nature. The problem so far with the London Olympics has been to decide...
Read moreCould there be a more perfect nanostory than the sad tale of what happened when a university vice-chancellor made a joke about sex? A nanostory, you may recall, is one of those small media events which, in our fast, emotion-led...
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