Now that reality is never quite as real as it seems, when even footage of the Queen walking out of a room turns out to be have been faked, the great hoaxes of the past have acquired a weird sort of glamour. Steven Spielberg took the story of a 1960s fraudster, Frank Abagnale, and turned… Continue reading Where have all the great hoaxers gone?
Read moreThe new Prime Minister, still in a blissed-out state of honeymoon-period euphoria, must have thought his brave support for “Britain’s ordinary heroes” was a smart vote-winner. Community is good. Everybody loves local. In a big and brutal world, we hanker increasingly for what Mr Brown calls “the good society”. Recognising that an ordinary hero deserves… Continue reading If this is nimbyism, there should be a medal for it
Read moreWhere have the Zimmers gone? Not so long ago, the group of pensioners who had recorded a reedy-voiced version of the Who’s rock anthem “My Generation” were everywhere. Their single rode high in the charts. They flew to Hollywood and met George Clooney. Since then, it has all gone a bit quiet. Could they have… Continue reading Keep on truckin’ to the end of the road
Read moreIt is difficult to know what Stuart Burgess, chairman of the Commission for Rural Communities, would make of the events of Wednesday afternoon in my local village. A young man wearing a balaclava drew up in a silver car outside the village shop, which is also the local post office. He jumped out and, wielding… Continue reading Town or country? Vive la différence
Read moreSo, with the perfect symmetry of a well-told fairy tale, the great Harry Potter saga reaches its final chapter. Even for the few of us who are not fully up to speed on what has happened at Hogwarts, the story behind the stories – how they were written, were discovered, published and became a mighty… Continue reading J K Rowling, a good author in a bad industry
Read moreThe sounds of the British summer holidays will soon be heard on our city streets and on the squares of our market towns. There will be laughter, raised voices, the occasional sound of breaking glass, a squeal of tyres and, later, that now-familiar type of informal community singing which is leery with booze and boredom.… Continue reading We need to wage war on teenage boredom
Read moreThe soundtrack of modern British government has been given another slightly depressing spin on the media turntable this week. How, according to Alastair Campbell, does it sound? Well, apparently members of Her Majesty’s government were frequently in fuck-it mode. A former Labour leader expressed his concern that stockbrokers now had the party by the fucking… Continue reading So our rulers are just like us: foul-mouthed and silly
Read moreIt is not often that a pop musician, doing a bit of high-profile moonlighting in public life, comes out with remarks which resound with sober good sense, but Feargal Sharkey, former lead singer of the Undertones, managed it this week. As chairman of the Live Music Forum (LMF), a committee set up by the department… Continue reading Music is more than a business, it’s the beat of life
Read moreHurrah, hurrah. A new rich list – the millionaire register which now seems to be released with the regularity of pop charts, suggests that Brownite hard work is back in fashion. Communication is for wimps. The media years of Blairism, with its soundbites and charm offensives, have given way to a new, no-nonsense firmness of… Continue reading Forget university if you want to coin it
Read moreA significant footnote in the history of Britain in the 20th and 21st centuries concerns the mass inhalation of tobacco, writes our historian from the future. Today, in the healthy, well-ordered 22nd century, we can look back with wonderment to the momentous date of 1 July 2007, when “smoking”, as it was called, definitively went… Continue reading A bizarre custom redolent of a dark, vanished era
Read more
