Society

Yes Trinny Woodall I’m Trinny, I’m an alcoholic and I’m an addict. When asked whether addiction is a disease, I didn’t have to think twice. Knowing that I have a disease is how I manage to have a healthy life today. All I can tell you about addiction is my experience. I grew up in a very normal home. Both my grandfather who was an alcoholic and an uncle who was alcoholic died of this illness. When I went to my first rehab I kept wondering: why I am an addict? They told me: ‘Don’t be concerned with why you have developed this disease. It’s in you, you have it,

Poor, dear, awkward George Osborne. Just when he seems to be doing things right — the economy, for instance — he gets something wrong. Very wrong. In The Spectator this week, James Forsyth reveals that, at Matthew Freud’s now notorious 50th birthday bash, when Bono and Bob Geldof sang a duet, Osborne insisted on whipping out his mobile telephone and filming the performance. Just what the Chancellor was doing there is one question. But if this were a 15- year-old and not, er, the Chancellor, his Bono-worship might be endearing. Perhaps the proper response is one of pity. But politicos are not a forgiving bunch. As James puts it, Osborne’s “act of

Allegations that Nigella Lawson used cocaine and prescription drugs on a habitual basis have emerged in court today after the trial judge lifted a reporting restriction. Lawson’s former personal assistants Francesca and Elisabetta Grillo are accused of fraud by Charles Saatchi, Lawson’s former husband. The court heard, in pre-trial hearings, evidence for the defence which apparently shows that Saatchi accepts the Grillo sisters’ argument that Lawson had allowed them to spend more than £300,000 on the proviso that they did not divulge details of her drug use to him. The judge read out part of an email that Saatchi wrote during the prelude to the trial: ‘Of course now the Grillos will get off on the basis that you were so

The Met Police took 166 of London’s traffic junctions hostage this morning. After a recent spate of cycling fatalities across the capital, a ‘major road safety operation’ kicked off today, with 2,500 police officers on the streets ‘making busy London junctions safer’. Codenamed Operation Safeway, the Met are watching for anyone committing an offence on the road. In reality, the Bobbies appeared to be targeting cyclists jumping red lights, absorbed in their music and generally misbehaving on the road: Boris Johnson has acknowledged there is much to be done to make London safer for cyclists, especially as more and more people are taking up two-wheeled commuting. But is ‘handing advisory

Unfortunate timing. In the Sunday Telegraph today is an article by Gyles Brandreth eulogising the crossword; we are approaching its 100th anniversary. Yes, all well and good. But travel to The Telegraph crossword site and this is what you will see: Sorry we’re experiencing some technical problems and we’re working to try and fix them. Please try back again soon. That message has been up since Friday. I pay forty quid a year for the pleasure of doing Telegraph crosswords online. I realise that this isn’t a tragedy on the scale of Darfur, or that cyclone which hit the Philippines. It’s just annoying. I can’t start a day without doing