Uncategorized

Saturday

Katie Glass

Veganism is becoming an extremist lifestyle

This week Billie Eilish served up a reminder of the irritations of veganism. She forced the O2 to go fully plant-based during her six-night run of shows – and the Daily Mail reported that fans, who’d paid £70+ for a ticket to see her, were not happy about the food on offer at the arena. One said: ‘Punters were less than impressed with the vegan options – a mixture of pizzas, cauliflower bits and loaded fries – with more than one asking “Did they run out of meat or something?”.’ But I expect their real irritation had little to do with the food itself – and everything to do with

Friday

Penworthy

Four bets for Ascot and York tomorrow

Ascot racecourse missed most of the rain that fell this week and, as a result, the ground will now almost certainly be on the fast side of good for tomorrow’s big race, the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes (4.10 p.m.). Despite a first prize of more than £850,000 for winning connections, just five runners will line up for this prestigious Group 1 contest. Calandagan and Jan Brueghel are vying for favouritism in a re-run of their duel in the Betfred Coronation Stakes at Epsom early last month when the latter prevailed by half a length. However, I see this as very much a four-horse contest with Kalpana and

Alec Marsh

Forget Oasis – we should celebrate Pulp’s legacy

It begins with an electric swish sound that makes you feel like you are falling backwards, followed by an arresting synthesiser da-da-dum drumbeat. Then we get the voice, in double-time: ‘She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge. She studied sculpture at St Martin’s College…’ With those words, singer Jarvis Cocker and his fellow members of Pulp caught the attention of a nation. And chances are, three decades on from the release of ‘Common People’, this musical intro will still send a tingle down your spine, particularly if you’re aged anywhere between 40 and 70. Forget the record-marketing buzz of ‘Blur vs Oasis’ (always less entertaining than the

Wednesday

Rob Crossan

Bring back the milkman!

Even if you couldn’t care a fig for sustainability, it’s hard not to be impressed with the Nostradamus-esque foresight of the milk float. In an era when Old King Coal ruled the roost and recycling meant pedalling backwards on your Raleigh Grifter, the pre-dawn hour across the UK was the stage for a phalanx of electric vehicles trundling along our streets and lanes delivering our order of gold or silver top in reusable, pint-sized bottles. The decline of the milkman in percentage figures would cause palpitations to the most hardened of economic wonks. In the 1970s, 94 per cent of Britons had their milk delivered to their doorstep via an

Alfie Pearce-Higgins

London is due a lido renaissance

There are 1,000 spaces available for the 6-9 a.m. lane swimming session at Tooting Bec Lido in south London. On Sunday it was fully booked. After a few frantic lengths (at 91m, it is Europe’s longest), we are all shooed out at 8.50 a.m. by the lifeguards to make way for the daytime swimmers. Those slots are like gold dust and sell out within minutes of becoming available. Across London it’s the same story: swimming spaces are a precious commodity. After three heatwaves so far this summer and the warmest June on record for England, it’s easy to see why so many people are craving access to outdoor water. In

Jonathan Ray Jonathan Ray

Could a secretive Swiss clinic cure my bad habits?

Having just turned 65, I enjoyed a week of firsts. My first ever facial and my first ever yoga class progressed to my first ever impedancemetry session, my first ever photobiomodulation session, my first ever hyberbaric chamber session, my first ever cryotherapy session, my first ever sensory deprivation session, my first ever neurofeedback session and my first ever revitalising wave session. I was at the Nescens Clinic Centre for Aesthetic and Regenerative Medicine near Geneva, marking my milestone birthday by attempting to defy age. It was Mrs Ray’s idea. Concerned that I was beginning to look and act like the old soak that I am, she wanted them to break my

Tuesday

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Dogs have no place at my table

I love dogs. I love lunching. I love seeing dogs in restaurants where I’m lunching. But one thing I don’t love one bit is a dog being brought to a luncheon which I’m participating in – and, most likely, paying for. Luncheons are for humans – not for our furry friends. Let’s face it, it’s not like they’re particularly thrilled to be indoors while their owners indulge in a little light character assassination. They’d be having far more fun running around outside eating vomit and sniffing each other’s bums. They can be big dogs, like the one belonging to my friend K. His gentle nature is swamped by the physical reality

Michael Henderson

The BBC’s mistreatment of the Proms

The Proms – the BBC Proms, to stick a handle on its jug – remains a good deed in a naughty world. Eight weeks of orchestral music, mainly, performed nightly at the Royal Albert Hall by artists from every continent, for as little as £8 if you are prepared to stand. One of those artists, the Georgian fiddler Lisa Batiashvili, supplied the highlight of this year’s ‘first night’ with a mighty performance of the Sibelius concerto. The concert ended with Sancta Civitas, a rarely heard choral work by Ralph Vaughan Williams, performed with love by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under its principal conductor, Sakari Oramo. Musically, it was a good

Robert Jackman

Will AI kill off Captchas?

It was a line on Poker Face (the excellent US detective drama currently streaming on Now TV) that piqued my interest. Hunched over a laptop, Natasha Lyonne’s heroine, Charlie Cale, claimed to be working as a ‘Captcha technician’ – someone who solves those fiddly, occasionally infuriating internet puzzles for money. You know – the ones that ask you to ‘Select all the squares with traffic lights’, ‘Select all the squares with bridges’ or simply tick a box to say you’re human before you can log into a website. Given the series has satirised everything from New York City rent controls to multi-level marketing schemes, I originally assumed it must be a joke.