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Last week, the nominations for the BAFTA film awards were announced and very swiftly afterwards the annual chorus of lamentation started up. For whatever poor old BAFTA does, a vocal segment of film fans and critics alike will declare themselves unhappy. BAFTAs-bashing, it can often seem, is how those in cultural circles like to keep themselves warm and entertained in the darkest and dullest months of the year. As if that weren’t enough, hot on BAFTA’s sweaty heels come the Oscar nominations, providing the opportunity to grumble on an international scale. As recently as 2020, grave accusations of ‘whitewashing’ were levelled at the British Academy, when it somehow managed to

Jimmy Carr is known as the hardest-working man in comedy. He loves making people laugh and most of all he likes making people laugh at the things they know they shouldn’t. He also loves making money and knows full well that audiences have become a lot more sensitive in recent years. That’s why he opens his Netflix show by saying: ‘Before we start, a quick trigger warning. Tonight’s show contains jokes about terrible things. Things that may have affected you and the people you love. But these are just jokes. They’re not the terrible things.’ If you continued watching after that and were offended, I’m sorry you were upset but

A suitcase landed in my garden. It seemed to have come from the sky. Soon after, two policemen urgently knocked on my door. Confused, I invited them in, they hurriedly went to retrieve the bag. Inside was a load of money, drugs and keys belonging to expensive cars. They inquired if the items were mine. ‘Certainly not,’ I said. After they’d gone, I was filled with questions. That evening the policemen returned and I was interviewed for an hour. I asked them for more information, but they were unable to tell me anything. Drug deals occur regularly on our street. They happen in a flash; a hand through a car window,

Let’s face it, rugby can be a bit confusing. No-one really understands the rules. For huge swathes of an 80-minute game, the ball disappears under a pile of bodies; scrums look like a load of fat fellas looking for a set of keys dropped in the mud and the rest of the time it’s just a giant cartoon brawl – a massive Beano-esque cloud of dust with assorted fists, feet and colloquial expletives emerging from it at various angles; after which a pint-sized ‘bloody good bloke’ kicks a penalty through some posts after an alleged offence no one understood in the first place. That’s why rugby fans are allowed to

Recently, at a London dinner party, I found myself sitting next to a beautiful young woman with a PhD in physics and a passion for bondage. At first I thought: I’ve hit the jackpot! Brains-Beauty-Bondage — here she is: wife number three! And then she treated me to a long monologue on the joys of bondage; the intricacies of knot-tying, bondage etiquette, arcane bondage practices from roughly the Middle Ages to the present (or so it seemed), plus her own bondage biography. Believe me, there’s no bore like a bondage bore. Granted, we boring old heterosexuals have our faults and our limitations. We lack glamour. We rarely bonk outside the

My name is John Sturgis and I am a Wordle addict. It’s not quite heroin or crack cocaine but it did have me hooked within minutes of trying it. And I have been chasing the high that those first hits gave me ever since. Or at least, I was a Wordle addict. Just two weeks ago I was confidently predicting that this was a hobby that I would keep up on a daily basis until I went to the grave. I was completely sold. Today that seems a much less likely scenario. I hear of people who find it so easy they are now attempting it in French or Spanish

All the best houses can be found on Rightmove, right? Well, actually no. Increasing numbers of properties are being sold ‘off-market’ in an environment where there’s very little supply and a range of motivated buyers. How can you access these properties if you’re looking to move and how can you avoid getting stung? There are some interesting misconceptions about the way the property market, particularly the residential market, in the UK works. Understanding the competing forces is wise in such a competitive market. Many forget that the role of an estate agent is to look after the interests of the seller, not the buyer. When you see a property online or via