How is this for an image which perfectly captures the greed, hypocrisy and downright silliness of the age through which we are living? A planeload of passengers flies from Norwich to Dublin. When it arrives, the travellers wait at the...
Read moreLike a tired old couple nagging wearily away at one another, politicians and the media have been bickering over the great marriage crisis exposed by the Office of National Statistics. In 2005, the number getting married fell by nine per...
Read moreBefore the current pitch invasion by wimps, cissies and goody-goodies gets out of hand, it is time to speak up for bad behaviour in football. As in any sport, there will be certain types of play which are inadmissible: the...
Read moreIt was, on reflection, not such a good idea for Sebastian Horsley, the English artist and decadent, to fly into New York on a publicity tour during Easter week. It was six years ago that he acquired a certain notoriety...
Read moreHere they come again, the tragic comic gang. There is Tony Hancock, of course, and our old friend Frankie Howerd. Absent this time around are Kenneth Williams and Spike Milligan, and the ghost of Peter Cook is being given a...
Read moreHere is an idea for a cracking new radio series. Called something like The Horse's Mouth, each programme would bring together famous people who share a talent but who are separated by several generations. A grizzled old footballer would talk...
Read moreNow and then, events which are utterly disparate and different align themselves into a pattern of dreamlike logic. So it has been this week with the self-banishing of the eminent actor Hugh Laurie, an uncertain spasm of loyalty to the...
Read moreWe live in a golden age of bullying. Hardly a day goes by without some example of playground mobbing being enacted in politics (a minister or party leader on the ropes), television (the latest reality-show villain) or the press (some...
Read moreHow Hilary Benn's heart must have sunk at the arrival of yet another report on the state of rural Britain. New Labour has never quite understood the countryside, and those made responsible for it – Nick Smith, Margaret Beckett, Ben...
Read moreIt has been difficult over these rocky past few weeks to find genuine success stories from the world of business but here is one which is positively heart-warming. Paul Ryan, a bricklayer from Bedford, spotted a money-making opportunity in the...
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