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Wednesday
Protein obsession
Include Harrods
‘Will that include Harrods?’
This is normal
‘I worry that his algorithms are telling him this is normal…’
Why wasn’t he put on Ozempic?
‘Why wasn’t he put on Ozempic?’
‘And “Cut”.’
‘And “Cut”.’
Three wagers for day two of Royal Ascot
The Grade 1 Prince of Wales Stakes at Royal Ascot today (4.20 p.m.) is an intriguing contest in which five of the nine runners are priced up at 6-1 or less. Los Angeles and Anmaat will renew their rivalry from the Tattersalls Gold Cup at the Curragh last month when the former beat the latter by half a length. That form, with highly-rated rivals Kalpana in third and White Birch in fourth, looks red hot and so it is not surprising to see these two horses at the top of the market today for this 10-furlong race worth £600,000 to the winning connections. However, at the prices, I am going
Bluesky is dying
In the middle of Cairo there’s a place called the City of the Dead. It is a dusty sprawl of mausoleums, sepulchres and crumbling Mameluke tombs, that has housed the corpses of the city for over a thousand years. On a dank winter’s dusk, it feels especially lifeless – deformed dogs vanish into shadows, random fires burn vile rubbish. But that’s when you notice children’s toys. Cheap clothes drying outside a tomb. And you realise, with a shudder: my God, some poor people live here. That, roughly, is the vibe on Bluesky today. Ironically, Bluesky is now much nastier than Twitter In case you’ve forgotten, Bluesky is the social media
The Poundland paradox
‘Poundland sells for a pound’ is one of those stories of which sub-editors dream – not to mention the beleaguered company’s PR department. But irony aside, the news does draw attention to a paradox: why do discount stores seem to suffer more in bad economic times than they do in good times? It’s like Ratners, which boomed during the loadsamoney years of the late 1980s, only to flounder during the early 1990s slump, admittedly with a bit of help from its chief executive, Gerald Ratner, who called one of his company’s products ‘total crap’. Shouldn’t recessions, or times of anaemic growth as we have now, be good for shops that
I’m pseudy and proud
What does it mean to be a ‘pseud’? I hadn’t thought a great deal about it, until a passage from a piece I’d written about semicolons made it into Private Eye’s venerable Pseuds Corner. It appears just after a conversation between two AIs, and above a breathless quote from Meghan Markle (for it is she). Members of the public submit what they consider to be ‘pseudy’, and everyone laughs. I’ve always enjoyed it, and I was so delighted to be featured (I mean, Will Self’s been in there!) that the column is on its way to the framers as we speak. To share some pages with Craig Brown, whose satirical
Tuesday
Five bets for day one of Royal Ascot
The two staying handicaps on day one of Royal Ascot – the Ascot Stakes and the Copper Horse Stakes – are always among my favourite betting races of the week. In both of today’s races, I first look out for a horse that is well handicapped on the flat compared with its hurdles form. Willie Mullins’ Poniros most certainly ticks that box having won the JCB Triumph Hurdle at 100-1 before showing that was no fluke being second to his old rival Luamba in the equivalent Grade 1 event at the Punchestown festival early last month. Poniros undoubtedly has a big chance of landing the Ascot Stakes (5 p.m.) but
Ascot has been ruined by the middle classes
Today, I go to Ascot. The last time I darkened the turf of the Royal Enclosure was in 2017, when I was heavily pregnant with my first daughter. In the photograph of my husband and me that day, I resemble a whale with a plate attached to its head, while my husband looks as if he might at any moment burst into flames from wearing tails and top hat in a heatwave. As you can imagine, we both look rather cross. Curiously, though, on the edge of the photo, there appears to be another couple posing for the camera who look to be having a brilliant time. The gentleman is
Am I ready for Turkey teeth?
My parents both had false teeth. My mother had all her teeth taken out one winter afternoon. I can remember her huddled by the electric fire with a small bowl of blood beside her, mourning their loss. It was a loss not just of teeth but of youth. She can’t have been much over 40. Because of her I feel rather proud of the fact that I’ve managed to hang on to mine. I tell this to my dentist, Marcus. He’s not impressed. I should have guessed by my stint watching the video in the waiting room of a blonde whitening her teeth and smiling. Just hanging on to them
The lost art of late dining
One of the most memorable dinners I ever had was about 20 years ago, at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Fitzrovia called Pied à Terre. It’s still going, and indeed remains a stalwart of the city’s fine dining scene, but what I especially remember, rather than the food or wine, was how deliciously louche an experience it was. I couldn’t get a booking before 9 p.m., and by the hour that I turned up, it was packed to the rafters with well-heeled diners. My guest and I were kept happy with complimentary champagne until we finally sat down for dinner sometime after 10 p.m. In my (admittedly hazy) recollection, we didn’t
Monday
The death of celebrity gossip
When I was in hospital for almost half a year, learning how to face life as a ‘Halfling’ – a person in a wheelchair, patronised and petted – the thing I looked forward to most was a normal, some would say banal, event. I longed to be in my local Pizza Express, in Hove, reading Heat magazine to my husband as he ‘savoured’ his American Hot. To put it mildly, I am a far faster eater than Mr Raven, and rather than chatter to him and expect an answer, thus hindering his progress still further, I read to him. To add to the fun, I framed the problems of the
Is the Lake District still as Wainwright described it?
The Lake District isn’t really meant to be about eating. It’s about walking and climbing and gawping. The guide one carries is not that by Michelin but Alfred Wainwright, whose seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells turns 70 this year. Food is mainly to be consumed from a Thermos rather than a bowl, and eaten atop a precariously balanced upturned log rather than a restaurant table. The culinary highlight should be Kendal mint cake, gratefully retrieved from the pocket of your cagoule. And so I was as surprised as anyone to find real gastronomic delights on a recent trip. Not from Little Chef, though that was where Wainwright religiously
Sunday
The blossoming career of Cedric Morris
In the winner-takes-all world of modern art, there’s every chance you might not have heard of Cedric Morris. Why should you? No matter how much you sweeten the tea, the Welshman, born in 1889, was no Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko or Salvador Dali. Nor from our 21st-century outlook can it be said that the name itself inspires much confidence: ‘Cedric’ sounds about as on-trend as a character from a short story by Saki, and when paired with Morris, the combination offers up all the avant-garde promise of a baked camembert starter at an Aberdeen Angus steakhouse. But don’t be put off, because there’s more to Morris than meets the eye
Saturday
Lunches, kidnappings and coups: my Frederick Forsyth connection
Back in 2007, I went to war-ravaged Guinea-Bissau in west Africa to report on its rise as the continent’s first narco-state. Latino cartels were using it as a staging post for shipping cocaine to Europe, bribing its rulers to turn a blind eye. So much product was being landed that local fishermen would catch stray bales of coke in their nets – a modern twist on Compton Mackenzie’s novel Whisky Galore. Guinea-Bissau’s new drug lords would go on to inspire a novel of their own. Back home on the Telegraph foreign desk in London a few months later, I got a call from no less a figure than Frederick Forsyth.
Friday
Four bets for Royal Ascot next week
Royal Ascot gets me more excited than the weekend racing fare so I am going to put up four horses who could well go off shorter when they line up for their respective targets next week. First up in RASHABAR in the Group 1 St James’s Palace Stakes on Tuesday (4.20 p.m.). Brian Meehan’s three-year-old colt caused an upset at this meeting a year ago when landing the Coventry Stakes at odds of no less than 80-1. Admittedly, next week he has to take on arguably the best horse in training in the form of Field of Gold but this race might just cut up to less than eight runners
Save the miniskirt!
What is it about men and miniskirts? A few months ago, I read with horror – but sadly not surprise – about a school that was considering banning girls from wearing skirts. Apparently, residents in Whitstable, Kent, were so alarmed at the ‘inappropriate skirt lengths’ spotted around town they had complained to the local school. Headteacher Alex Holmes (you guessed it – a man) immediately dashed off a letter informing parents that all pupils could be forced to wear trousers as part of a new ‘gender neutral uniform’ in response. The miniskirt is a symbol of women’s liberation – not sexual servitude I’m sorry, what? Are we talking about a