World

T’was not in another lifetime, but in New York last week that our very own Taki became rather smitten with Hollywood bad girl Lindsay Lohan. Writing in this week’s magazine, the old rogue recounts how he weathered Hurricane Sandy with the troubled actress, more famed for her binges than her fortitude: ‘I went to Brooklyn, to Norman Mailer’s house, now inhabited by his son Michael, got completely crocked and proceeded to the Boom Boom room, the best nightclub in the Bagel.  Once up there, I got a bit confused but chatted up a beautiful girl who seemed awfully friendly and nice. She asked me what I did and I told

For years I have kept this to myself; a damaged individual, bottling it all up inside. But now that others have spoken out I’ve found an inner strength, a sort of resolve. Several times during the 1970s I was the victim of serial sexual assaults by BBC stars who are now dead. On one occasion I was violated, in the space of ten minutes, by Morecambe and Wise, Ronnie Barker, Sir Kenneth Clark (of “Civilisation” fame) and Eric Sykes. I was tied to a bed in a BBC dressing room and one by one they came in and practised their vile depravities upon my young body. The ringleader was Hattie

Can Mitt Romney win the presidential election on Tuesday? The answer is yes, he can — but it’ll be tough. Although the national polls taken in isolation suggest the race is roughly tied, the state-level polling points to a much bigger lead for Barack Obama. It seems that either the national polls are underestimating Obama’s strength or the state polls are overestimating it, or both. Nate Silver’s Fivethirtyeight model  assumes it’s both, so adjusts the national polling slightly towards Obama and the state polls slightly away from him, so they meet in the middle. And that leads it to forecast a win for Obama of slightly more than two points.

Differences between the US and the UK are often commented upon. But the storm ‘Sandy’ this week has highlighted one in particular. It is no criticism of either President Obama or Governor Romney to say that it seems strange to me to see them hugging and otherwise comforting people who have lost their homes and in some cases all their possessions. I keep testing – and then mentally blocking – the images of a similar thing happening here. I am trying to imagine my mental state had my house and few possessions been washed away only to see, emerging from the mist, the figure of Gordon Brown. He would be

The politics of poppy-wearing shift slightly each year. The unofficial rule used to be that poppy-wearing began at the start of November. In recent years this has crept forward further and further into October, largely, I think, because of politicians and the BBC. The BBC lives in terror of someone appearing on one of its programmes without a poppy and thus sparking a round of ‘BBC presenter in poppy snub’ stories in the papers. If you appear on the BBC during this period you will find people on hand to pin a poppy on anyone not already sporting one. To my mind this slightly misses the charitable, not to mention

Hats-off to Bloomberg’s Max Abelson for this delicious, bone-dry report on how Wall Street’s finest have coped with the impact of Hurricane Sandy. Wall Street turned to Bordeaux, sushi and faxes as Hurricane Sandy wreaked the most havoc in the history of the city’s transit system and closed stock markets on consecutive days for the first time for weather since 1888. “I had to go to the wine cellar and find a good bottle of wine and drink it before it goes bad,” Murry Stegelmann, 50, a founder of investment-management firm Kilimanjaro Advisors LLC, wrote in an e-mail after he lost power at 6 p.m. on Oct. 29 in Darien,

What is going to happen next with the BBC Jimmy Salvile saga? In this week’s magazine cover, Rod Liddle blames institutional problems within the organisation and predicts there will be plenty of buck-passing to come. Fraser Nelson says in this week’s View from 22 podcast that although he sympathises with the decision the BBC took, he believes there are more scalps to come: ‘As an editor myself, I know that if you are to come up with a story that makes an explosive allegation it has got to be absolutely nuclear-proof nowadays and if it’s not, if there is a slightest bit of chink in your armour, it could sink

The presidential debates are over, and Mitt Romney is within touching distance of the White House. Barack Obama was the better candidate – just – in last night’s third and final presidential debate, on the attack and with his trademark eloquence restored. But he needed to deliver a knockout blow to Mitt Romney, and failed. Everyone knows Obama is great with words. What is not entirely clear to voters is that Mitt Romney isn’t evil. As it turned out, Romney came across as moderate, articulate and well-informed- and a plausible commander-in-chief. The next election may very well be his. A snap CNN Poll called it 48-40 for Obama, wider than

Trouble continues to brew inside Iran. The ordinarily supine Attorney-General, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi, has defied Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by preventing him from visiting an imprisoned aide. Ahmadinejad is viewed as having acted against the country’s powerful clerical establishment, with whom Ejehi is closely aligned. Indeed, Ahmadinejad’s aide is currently being detained over charges of publishing material which ‘offends’ Islamic norms. He is just one of a dozen political allies close to Ahmadinejad to have found themselves arrested as relations between the political and clerical authorities become increasingly strained. Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad continues to bluster about ‘external enemies’. State media reported that Iranian Special Forces are busy training for the possibility of

Andrew Mitchell has just announced his resignation as chief whip following the row about his altercation with a police officer at the Downing Street gates. His resignation letter, which you can read in full here says: ‘Over the last two days it has become clear to me that whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter I will not be able to fulfil my duties as we would both wish. Nor is it fair to continue to put my family and colleagues through this upsetting and damaging publicity. ‘I have made clear to you – and I give you my categorical assurance again – that I did not, never have