Home > The Magazine > The Week

Saturday 22 November 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

Diary

Tim Rice

Wednesday, 2nd January 2008

I was determined not to give guests the opportunity to reject the food on offer, at least before they got there. It is quite extraordinary how hosts now seem to be required to cater for every dietary whim of those they are generously entertaining. If you are not prepared to take a chance on the nosh offending your health, environmental or religious quirks, then don’t come, or at least be quite happy to push the obnoxious items to the side of your plate and chew bread or your napkin. Whenever I get a form asking for my dietary requirements I always put ‘large helpings’, which request is unfortunately (but quite correctly) rarely acted upon.

It was quite something for me to sing with Eva and her beau Pete at the party. A new band was created — Pete and the Sugar Pops, featuring ace Razorlight drummer Andy Burroughs. It was not my idea to join the band, honest, but when Pete’s band revealed that their repertoire would include ‘That’ll Be The Day’ and ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ it was hard to resist sharing a microphone with the bride, the former lead singer of the Replicant Saints. Besides, Eva could hit the high notes. As I let rip with my Buddy Holly impression, finely honed over half a century, it crossed my mind that Holly, one of the most important creative artists of the 20th century, was in the charts for the first time exactly 50 years ago and here were young musicians faithfully and excellently recreating his great work. And he perished aged 22.

The news of Buddy’s demise was broken to me by a house prefect, who would normally never instigate a conversation with a junior tick, one chilly morning in February 1959: ‘Rice, I see one of your heroes has died.’ A brutal revelation, especially as he refused for several minutes to reveal which one. Denis Compton? Terry-Thomas? Ronald Searle? Holly’s death was only reported in the Daily Mirror. Today the magnificent Amy Winehouse’s every star-crossed move is in every paper.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 Next page

More articles from: Tim Rice | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

A child of our time

From the economic and psychological bedlam of the global downturn has emerged a particularly dangerous false dichotomy: namely, that there is somehow a choice for ministers over the next few years between economic reconstruction and the repair of Britain’s broken society, and that the government (whether Labour or Conservative) must prioritise the former at the expense of the latter.

Diary

Anne Robinson

The daughter and I spent the last few days before the American election in Arizona.

Politics

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

‘A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter drop” of money.’ So said Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Fed, in a speech about how to ward off the ‘extremely small’ chance of deflation, which he delivered in 2002.