I have just had the pleasure of writing a play for the Radio 4 series, Fact to Fiction. My starting point was the BA strike - and how it changed one man's life... The producer was Duncan Minshull and it...
Read moreA small lesson in the way history smooths the sharper edges and corners of the past is being played out at the Cannes Film Festival with the help of that much-loved father figure of the alternative establishment, Sir Mick Jagger....
Read moreWhat a happy day it must have been for Melissa Jacobs when a silly old fool called Lord Triesman took a shine to her. She had applied for a job with him in 2007 when he was a Labour...
Read moreIn a tribute by Donald Trelford to his old friend Alan Watkins, the eminent political journalist who died last week, one particular anecdote snagged in the mind. Alan, said Trelford, was a man whose great interests in life – rugby,...
Read moreToday, officially and in public, I was declared to be the biographer of Fergie, Duchess of York. It is a small embarrassment (what a terrible job that would be) but frankly I can only blame myself. In today's Independent, I've...
Read moreJulie Andrews is one of those public figures who, probably through no fault of her own, has become a larger-than-life representative of a range of contemporary clichés. For some, she is the wholesome, faintly sexless Englishwoman, a trilling, skipping optimist...
Read moreIt’s exciting. It’s nothing less than a revolution in the way this country is run. But what exactly is this New Politics we hear so much about? To guide us through the tumultuous political future of Britain, when a wind...
Read moreAdopting her most serious tone, the BBC reporter standing outside Old Bailey intones that the courts had heard of many terrible acts but few were quite as disturbing as what has been revealed over the past few days. What had...
Read moreWhenever a successful woman experiences some kind of career freak-out, the great Having It All debate is re-ignited. Sometimes it is a politician who decides to spend more time with her family who sets the whole thing rolling, sometimes a...
Read moreIn a moment of perfect poetic justice, I have recently been on the receiving end of a mild act of political incorrectness within moments of completing a celebration of politically incorrect songs. With my musical partners Derek Hewitson (Suffolk) and...
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