In Peter Tinniswood’s peerless comedy of northern life, I Didn’t Know You Cared, it was at about this time of the year when Carter Brandon, a lugubrious young romantic, sat with his Uncle Mort watching the swallows as they gathered on the telephone wires. Soon, Carter said, the swallows would be taking off and flying… Continue reading A crossroads is no place to make a home
Read moreFor a few of us, the description of Lord Deedes’s final hours and days, affectionately described in the press, will have made rather chilling reading. He “bravely struggled to write his last column as he lay on his death bed”, reported the Sunday Telegraph. “Despite being desperately ill, bedridden and 94 years old, Lord Deedes… Continue reading Death isn’t a date to put in your diary
Read moreAnother day, another BBC apology. First it was the Queen, filmed walking out when she should have been walking in. Then one of Newsnight’s young bucks did something tricksy with a profile of Gordon Brown. More recently, there has been the shameful scandal of a Blue Peter presenter who appeared at a bicycling rally with… Continue reading This BBC apology is a grovel too far
Read morePlease assume an expression of concerned sympathy, for here is another – yet another – tale of youthful innocence betrayed by middle-aged cynicism. Four years ago, 14-year-old Lara Jade Coton posted a photograph of herself, wearing a ballroom dress and a top hat, on a website. Now she has been “absolutely horrified” to discover –… Continue reading Childhood innocence lost on the internet
Read moreThe man in the cinema foyer was making an exhibition of himself. He was remonstrating loudly in a red-faced, vein-throbbing way, to an official who was trying unsuccessfully to placate him. Cinemagoers hurried by, no more than mildly curious. It was London. It was hot. Small detonations of urban rage of this kind were no… Continue reading Don’t just stand there and take it – give them hell
Read moreHardly a day passes in this office without the arrival of yet another anguished press statement, announcing that an action group has been set up to fight some new outrage of modern life. All the same, it was a bit of a surprise to hear from an organisation called Charm which aims to “protect the… Continue reading A brutal menace is threatening our peaceful havens
Read moreIt is that dangerous time of the year when people go on holiday, relax, lower their guards and, at the very moment when their brains are hardly functioning at all, make plans for the future. They talk about the need to take a step back, to look at the big picture. Disastrously, they might even… Continue reading The things that matter in life – and other holiday delusions
Read moreMy old friend Easy Suzie, a veteran from the Sixties, has been in touch. She is, as she puts, it “freaking out big-time, man”. Suzie was a legend 40 years ago, she tells me. In her prime, she was known as “the Magic Roundabout” because more or less everyone in the rock community got a… Continue reading Easy Suzie’s tales of hard living with Dylan
Read moreDuring the grim, dull days of summer when the only football played is in parks and on beaches, the sport’s governing body, Fifa, tries to keep interest in the game alive by changing its rules. Nobody quite understands the reason for this desire to meddle with regulations beyond the need for the men on its… Continue reading What hope now for three-in-a-bed, pigging and drooging
Read moreThe late Phil Drabble seems to have been a crusty old cove whose off-air views were often at odds with his gentle, murmuring tones as presenter of One Man and His Dog. He had little time for feminists, Whitehall officials, ramblers or what he called “green welly wallies”, and talked nostalgically of the days when… Continue reading The green welly wallies have won
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