Please 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
Read moreNow 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...
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...
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...
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