As the squeeze tightens, families all over Britain will be looking around for a little financial miracle to help them out. Some will be taking advantage of our newly liberated gambling laws. A few might dream of coming up with a clever invention which will triumph on Dragons’ Den. Some might be looking wistfully to… Continue reading How to market your child star
Read moreIt is doubtful that Bono will be too concerned about the latest controversy surrounding him. Embarking on a tour of South Africa with U2, the rock revolutionary told an interviewer that he supported the singing of “Kill the Boer”, an African National Congress anthem. It was an incendiary thing to say: last year, the song… Continue reading You can’t silence the songs of the past
Read moreMysteriously, the Independent was not too keen on my devoting this week’s column to the death of Jet Harris, bass guitarist for The Shadows until 1962. The paper’s view,  I assume, was that in a world full of sound and fury, of war, earthquake and general momentousness, the departure from this earth of an old… Continue reading ‘Rock on, Jet’ – the great Jet Harris deserves a better farewell than Sir Cliff’s sick-making effort
Read moreI felt a genuine pang of sadness at this week’s news that Barack Obama has given up smoking. The pester-power of the women in his life, his wife and daughters, have apparently broken this proud man at last. Michelle Obama announced her triumph on American television. How far we’ve come since tobacco was seen as… Continue reading Kick the bullies, not the habit
Read moreHow strange it is that the years when, allegedly, the British people discovered their caring side have been followed so quickly by a golden age of bullying. At a time when the power divide is at its widest, it is those at the top who are cheerfully taking advantage of their position. What Evelyn Waugh’s… Continue reading Whose idea of a joke involves sneering at dead people?
Read moreIt’s back. Greed is once more good. Who would have thought that the evil old Tory lie about selfishness being an act of patriotism, profit-making a shining civic virtue, would reappear so soon in all its ugly splendour? The Prime Minister has learned from Tony Blair the importance of telling people what they want to… Continue reading Let’s raise a glass to our brave allies – the “enemies of enterprise”
Read morePerhaps it is because, in a few days’ time, I shall be sharing a stage with General Sir Richard Dannatt while singing the old music-hall song “I’m Not All There†that my brain has recently become somewhat scrambled as to what is acceptable to say, written and sing in public, and what is not. We… Continue reading A singalong with the general: ‘Don’t Let’s Be Beastly to the Germans’
Read moreThose engaged in the great and important campaign to prevent libraries in the UK being closed down could learn a lot from the four-year tussle which has been taking place in Canada between a big-time novelist and a leading politician. Some might say that when the Booker Prize winner Yann Martel took on the Conservative… Continue reading Pity those ‘too busy’ to read
Read moreThere was a tricky moment in the recording of last week’s Saturday Review. Under the chairmanship of Tom Sutcliffe, the panel – Deborah Moggach, David Benedict and myself -were discussing the forthcoming Channel 4 series Friday Night Dinner, which aims to be a new and edgy take on the traditional Hi-honey-I’m-home domestic sitcom. Tamsin Greig plays… Continue reading Help! Have I become an anti-Semite?
Read moreHark to the sound of music all around you! There are the jaunty tones of personalised mobile phones – a blast of Eminem here, a few notes of “The Birdy Song” there, half a bar of a Brandenburg concerto in the background. Nearby there might be a commuter, a jogger, or someone walking a dog,… Continue reading Why are we so scared of silence?
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