October 31, 2012 When a letter from John Lennon dropped through your letter box, you would, if you and he were on good terms, be smiling almost before you opened the envelope. Because, as he would say, everything he wrote was “for laughs or fun”, and his letters would be happily embroidered with jokes and… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, October 24, 2012 Following the letter that Michael Gove, the Minister of State For Education, wrote to a former teacher whom he had sorely aggravated during his school days, the Daily Mail asked me and three other writers if we had a letter of apology we would send to one of our teachers.… Continue reading…
October 6, 2012 “We goofed,” Paul McCartney said half-jokingly on the morning of December 27th, 1967, trying unsuccessfully to make light of the Beatles’ first disaster. His father, who was staying with him for Christmas, had just brought him the morning papers and the Beatle was sitting in bed reading venomous reviews of the group’s television… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, October 3, 2012 As dates go October 5, 1962, isn’t famous. They don’t mention it in schools, nobody very important was born or died then and no world changing events made the headlines. Perhaps the most newsworthy event of that day was the London premiere of the first James Bond film, Dr No.… Continue reading…
Daily Telegraph, August 24, 2012 With photographs of Prince Harry’s bottom now enlightening hundreds of millions of computer screens around the internet world, and when everybody with a smart phone has become a potential paparazzo, I wonder, has the time not arrived for a new social etiquette with regard to picture taking? I mean, it’s… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, 20.8.12 There are four virtually abandoned contraptions of plastic and metal gathering dust around our house. There’s one on my desk, another in the kitchen, a third in the sitting room and a fourth by our bed. We used to call them telephones, but now they are better known as landlines, and they… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, July 9, 2012 Why do they do it? Do they really think it makes them look younger, more virile and more attractive to women? Are they really so vain and deluded? Or, in this youth obsessed age, is there a darker reason? Are they just terrified of appearing old and being considered…well, past… Continue reading…
Daily Telegraph, July 4, 2012 Though it really shouldn’t, to learn that the Queen is a Cole Porter fan came as a surprise yesterday. But to discover that one of her favourite Porter songs is Miss Otis Regrets, with its blackly comic lyric about a woman who murders her lover because he cheats on her,… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, June 18, 2012 The perfectionist in Paul McCartney won’t have enjoyed it, but, with his voice scratchy and strained, he sounded and looked exhausted as he closed the show at the Diamond Jubilee Concert a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps, though, his tiredness was to be expected. His short performance at Buckingham Palace… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, June 9, 2012 History can be studied in many ways. While last weekend’s Diamond Jubilee flotilla was a traditional Royal spectacle, another quite different way of looking at the recent past could be seen at Monday night’s Buckingham Palace concert. Then music drew hundreds of thousands of people on to the streets of… Continue reading…
