Evening Standard, November 16, 2010 Having your pocket picked on the Tube might not seem like everyone’s idea of a good start to a day out, but in the end that’s exactly what it was. It all began in mid-afternoon on a train between Fulham Broadway and Earls Court, just two stops away. I’d been… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, October 25, 2010 Let’s face it, the Rolling Stones are dead. It really is all over now. It hasn’t been officially announced, and probably never will be, so intricate are the business deals that bind the individual members. But the chances of them ever touring or recording together again have to be nil.… Continue reading…
October 2010 Neither man nor monkey. That was how wise grandmothers would once describe teenage boys, and if we need evidence that nothing really changes over the generations ‒ not in human development, anyway ‒ we need look no further than The Inbetweeners, an award winning comedy show than can be seen on the digital… Continue reading…
The Guardian (August 13, 2010) You won’t hear it said in many publishing houses these days, where those editors and managements who have survived the ten per cent cull in their numbers following the credit crunch now appear frozen in the headlights of the onrushing digital revolution. But from the point of view of authors,… Continue reading…
July 28, 2010 Jackie Cobell doesn’t look like a star. A council foster carer, she doesn’t have a glamorous job, and at fifty six years old, she’s so fat she’s had a gastric band fitted. All in all she just doesn’t fit your usual image of a cute, young, fake-tanned, TV celebrity. But a celebrity… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, June 2010 Have you noticed the promotion the BBC has been running for their niche channel BBC 4 recently? After snippets of what look like enticing, grown-up, forthcoming programmes it ends with the selling pitch “Everyone needs a place to think”. That’s absolutely right. Everyone does need a place to think and television… Continue reading…
Readers Digest 2010 Once, when a man got past forty, his hair began to go grey. When he reached sixty it frequently turned white. It was nothing to be ashamed of, just part of the ageing process. This didn’t necessarily apply to mature women, of course, whose hair has always come in many splendoured shades… Continue reading…
Mail On Sunday, 2010 My father never visited France—although he is buried in the tiny village of Servel, near Lannion, in Brittany. He was on his way to the Far East when he died in October 1944, the huge tank landing craft on which he was a passenger, and which was being towed in a… Continue reading…
Daily Mail, May 2010 There was a hullabaloo at the end of our road on Friday night. It was so loud I went out take a look, and, as I did, other neighbours were opening windows and peering out in curiosity. And what was going on? Well, nothing really, just a hundred and fifty or… Continue reading…
We’re hardly the best choir in London. We never rehearse and we only ever meet once a year when we sing Christmas carols in a shopping mall. And although we’re all English, we’re not exclusively Christian. This year, for instance, although we had three lapsed Catholics, a former Methodist, a chap who vaguely thought he… Continue reading…
