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Friday

John Sturgis

The unmaking of Russell Brand

Russell Brand’s hero status among a prominent section of the British left began on Friday 13 September 2013 and officially came to an end one week ago. On both occasions the medium was the Guardian. The 2013 moment came when he wrote for the paper giving ‘his side of the story’ after being kicked out of a GQ awards event for making a joke about the Hugo Boss fashion label and its historic links with the Nazis. Just shy of ten years later, the paper’s columnist George Monbiot last week published a mea culpa for having once been an advocate for Brand. He had nominated the comedian as his ‘hero’

James Innes-Smith

The wacky world of immersive dining

The human desire to turn life’s mundanities into something altogether more agreeable never ceases to amaze and amuse. Take our homes, for instance. Once we were content to live in caves as long as they kept us dry and were reasonably warm. Then we decided it would be more appealing to build our own caves but with the added benefit of shag-pile carpets, front doors and locks to keep the jungle at bay. This ability to cocoon ourselves from an outside world that had once housed us became something of a status symbol and so we built bigger, more elaborate caves loaded with ostentatious accoutrements such as silk wall linings and

Thursday

Penworthy

Two more tips for the last day of Cheltenham 

Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup day is almost upon us and the rain-softened ground means the distance of 3 miles 2 furlongs plus will not be for the faint of heart or for those horses whose stamina is in doubt. In the Grade 1 feature race tomorrow (3.30pm), the favourite Galopin Des Champs oozes class but he is not guaranteed to stay the trip, especially in these conditions. In contrast, both Noble Yeats, last year’s Grand National winner, and Stattler, last year’s winner of the National Hunt Challenge Cup, will relish a stamina test but may not have the class required to win this championship contest. I put up two horses

Wednesday

Penworthy

A 28-1 bet for day three at Cheltenham

The rain continues to fall at Cheltenham and so it is vital to look for horses that like soft ground on day three of the Festival tomorrow. Equine talent that needs the ground similar to the terrain of the M25 to show their best form might as well stay in their stables. One horse that could not have it wet enough is DASHEL DRASHER in the Grade 1 Paddy Power Stayers’ Hurdle (3.30pm). At first glance, his chances look easy to dismiss: he is ten years old and from an unfashionable Somerset yard with a little-known jockey taking on the biggest stables in Britain and Ireland. However, if Dashel Drasher,

Alec Marsh

Stop demonising cyclists

If you were to ask me how many bicycles I’ve had in my life, my response would be about as precise as Boris Johnson’s to the question of how many children he’s fathered. In my case, so many bikes have been stolen over the years – including one attached to a signpost (which vanished along with the bike) and another that I left unlocked for 45 seconds outside Nicolas on Holland Park Avenue. That turned out to be the most expensive bottle of wine I’ve ever taken to a dinner party. (In fact, that was the same bike that had previously been harvested of 90 per cent of its components after

Mark Mason

The secrets of London by postcode: N (North)

How Rod Stewart kept his hair in place, why the BBC gave its presenters electric shocks and what Paul Gascoigne shot with an air rifle: this month’s London postcode area is N – buckle up for another trivia-packed tour… The first run that cabbies have to learn for the Knowledge is Manor House Tube station to Gibson Square. Their task, as with any journey, is to take the most direct route possible – this is called being ‘on the cotton’, because the route will follow the straight line mapped by an imaginary piece of thread stretched between the two points on the map. The Great Northern Hotel at King’s Cross

Ameer Kotecha

Save our sweet shops

There are only so many times I can watch Lord Sugar swivelling in his chair and reusing put-downs from three seasons ago before enough’s enough, so I’ve dropped in and out of the latest series of The Apprentice. But one contestant that has caught my eye is Victoria Goulbourne, the flight attendant turned online sweet shop owner (note: not sweat shop, despite what one unfortunate online review might say) from Merseyside. And while I pass no judgment on her business acumen, it did get me thinking: what a miserable thing an online sweet shop must be. Victoria’s company markets itself as the ‘UK’s most Instagrammable pick ’n’ mix’. Quite apart

Tuesday

Sarah Rainey

Help! I've become a marathon bore

Over dinner with a friend last week, halfway through a bottle of Merlot, I noticed her eyes starting to glaze over as I spoke. Normally, I’d be offended – but it’s something I’ve experienced a lot lately, and I’ve only got myself to blame.  I was in the middle of telling her a story about my latest running route, which is a slightly different version of a run I’ve been doing for years – down the country lanes near my house, but rather than cutting through the footpath in front of the fields, now I take a sharp left and go round the farm, doubling back behind the houses and adding

Ruth Bloomfield

How 'DFLs' saved St Leonards

Almost 30 years ago, my journalistic career began in the faded seaside town of St Leonards-on-Sea, where I spent six months undertaking a crash course in shorthand, typing and all the basic skills of local paper reportage. With no previous experience of just how dismal an out-of-season holiday town could be, my spirits were high on the trip down the A21 – an extended coastal sojourn sounded like fun. The reality of St Leonards in the early 1990s brought me back down to earth with a bump. This once splendid Regency resort – created by the team which had designed London’s Bloomsbury and Regent’s Park – was a wasteland.  Its white

Antonia Hoyle

In praise of the Casio watch

Of all the accessories one might expect a celebrity with millions in the bank and army of stylists at their disposal to choose, a bargain watch is not the most obvious. Yet Casio timepieces – some of which sell for little as £10, and most of which cost under £50 – appear to have become something of a status symbol among a certain strata of the well-off and well-connected. Take former Manchester United footballer Gerard Piqué (estimated net worth £66 million), who split up with pop star Shakira last year. Recently the Colombian singer, 45, released a ‘revenge’ single with lyrics ridiculing the retired Spanish player, her partner of 11 years,

Monday

Penworthy

A 22-1 tip for day one of the Cheltenham Festival

Few people enjoy the thrill of a winning punt more than me but there are times when betting becomes (almost) irrelevant. Tomorrow at 3.30 p.m. will be one of them. That’s when seven runners will line up for the Unibet Champion Hurdle, the first championship race of this week’s four-day Cheltenham Festival. I will be at the course to see what I expect to be a hurdling masterclass from Constitution Hill, Nicky Henderson’s vastly-talented six-year-old gelding and the odds-on favourite for the Grade 1 showpiece. To date his racecourse record is flawless: five wins from five races including victory in the Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle at this meeting a

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Lessons for Meghan from Fergie

Before the Sussexes – before the Grabdication was a twinkle in Meghan’s crocodile eye – there was Sarah, Duchess of York; greedy, grasping, grubby Fergie. Some see Diana as when the stiff upper lip of heritage royalty became the trembling lower lip of the new breed. But the Princess of Wales was a teenage virgin with a headful of dreams lured into a marriage in which she was a breeding machine with a man who was still in love with his ex; this would have made any woman with spirit react. No, Diana was a hard worker with an attractive dash of spite – that revenge dress, that three-in-this-marriage quip – which