My 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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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