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If I were a doctor specialising in alternative treatments, and someone came to me feeling depressed, I wouldn’t send them off with a herb-based elixir or a bunch of St John’s Wort. I wouldn’t cleanse their chakras or refer them to an acupuncturist. I’d send them off to Málaga’s annual fair, which this year runs from 16 to 23 August. Summer in Andalusia is feria season – the best cure that I know of for a bout of the blues. Usually lasting three or four days, or an entire week in the regional capitals, ferias are occasions of pure alegria (joy) and inclusivity. Happiness is taken very seriously in Spain,

‘The view was stunning.’ ‘The hotel room was well appointed.’ ‘It’s a city of contrasts.’ Such numbing clichés in travel commentary are considered, by anyone remotely au fait with Eric Newby or Patrick Leigh Fermor, to be unacceptable. But if you watch Match of the Day, you’ll know the footballing equivalents of these kinds of asinine blandishments have long been deemed worthy of the kind of critical scrutiny usually reserved for Jonathan Franzen novels. After following the game for 40 years, I’ve finally reached breaking point with the abysmal drivel that comes out of the mouths of players, pundits and managers alike. Of course, they aren’t being paid to be

Ascot’s Shergar Cup meeting tomorrow is a fun event but, in terms of good bets, it is York’s Ebor meeting later this month that excites me more. The four-day event starts in less than two weeks and, unless there is a drastic change in the weather, racing looks likely to take place on fast ground. The most likely winner of the Sky Bet Ebor, Europe’s richest flat handicap, on 23 August is Hipop De Loire, who was desperately unlucky in running in this race a year ago when fifth to another Irish raider Magical Zoe. Willie Mullins’s eight-year-old gelding showed he is in good form when winning easily over hurdles

There’s something about motorway service stations that seems to encourage the very worst in human behaviour. They’re places where no doubt usually responsible members of society have long decided that it’s permissible to drop semi-industrial amounts of litter on to the verges, urinate all over the toilet floor and belch with impunity while queuing up for a Whopper at Burger King. For me, it was the full-to-the-brim child’s nappy that someone had left on a chair in the revolting ‘sit down café’ at a services near Preston that made me decide that I would never set foot in a Welcome Break, Moto or Roadchef ever again. I’m lucky; I have

When my father, a barrister who still insists on calling himself ‘working class’, talks to his friends about their early days in London, I almost reel at how pleasant it all sounds. Cheap rent in Chelsea. Jobs they got by word of mouth. Long holidays and longer lunches. It sounds less like real life and more like a Richard Curtis fantasy. My own version of post-university London is somewhat different. I have had a privileged life. I’m one of six children, all privately educated – the result of a Catholic mother, said barrister father and years of school fees paid to institutions that, frankly, struggle to justify their expense. I