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Friday
3 wise men
Two bets for the next two weekends
The two big races tomorrow, the BoyleSports Becher Chase at Aintree and the Betfair Tingle Creek Chase, could hardly be more different contests. The former is a 12-runner competitive handicap run over three miles and two furlongs on the Grand National course, the latter is an eight-runner Grade 1 race, with all the horses running off the same weight, over a shade under two miles. The Becher (Aintree 2.07 p.m.) is a keen betting contest, while the Tingle Creek (Sandown, 3p.m.) has an odds-on favourite in Jonbon, who has never been out of the first two in 18 runs and, given his consistency, it is difficult to find each-way value
There’s something smug about a Nehru jacket
At a recent drinks party in Oxfordshire, I counted five men wearing Nehru waistcoats. Not one of these men looked like he was paying homage to the garment’s namesakes, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Not one looked as if they were genuinely taken with Indian fashion nor remotely bothered that they were wearing the same thing. I detect a hint of smugness in there somewhere, a rather-too-pleased-with-itself appropriation Puzzled, I thought back to other men I’ve seen rocking the Nehru: Imran Khan, obviously; Nicholas Coleridge, probably; Mick Jagger, surely. I’m not sure what all these men have in common, but their take-up of the Nehru waistcoat has neither surprised nor
London is getting worse
A famously elitist members’ club, a 900-year-old meat market, and a traditional old barbershop may not feel like they have much in common. In fact, they didn’t – not until the last week or two, when they all simultaneously closed in their disparate parts of London. The first closure, that of the Groucho Club, has been widely covered in these pages, generally with an overtone of chortling. After all, it is hard to feel sorry for a place that is notoriously exclusive, boasts a world-class art collection, and charges members £1,500 a year for the privilege of eating near a Damien Hirst – or indeed eating near Damien Hirst. It
How The Box of Delights became a Christmas cult classic
At this time of year, switching on the radio to hear the twinkling harp at the start of ‘The First Nowell’ from Hely-Hutchinson’s Carol Symphony has a profound Proustian effect on an entire generation. It takes us back to our childhood living rooms in 1984, sitting cross-legged in front of a boxy TV with a 14-inch screen, bewitched by the most exciting, terrifying and Christmassy programme we had ever seen. Part of the nostalgia comes from knowing that this wonderful series would probably never be made now As a bookish child who lived largely in my head, I thought the BBC had made The Box of Delights especially for me.
Wednesday
A few inappropriate remarks and it was back to waiting tables
‘A few inappropriate remarks and it was back to waiting tables.’
I’m continually surprised by what goes viral
‘I’m continually surprised by what goes viral.’
Keir’s milestones
Carbon capture
I can’t decide
‘I can’t decide what phone to get.’
Assisted dying
‘I’m confused. Is not getting the winter fuel payment the same as assisted dying?’
Putin has mucked around with the crackers
‘It’s just as we feared – Putin has mucked around with the crackers.’
One person will be leaving this week
Who cares about Gregg Wallace?
In 1986 the late Martin Amis published a book of essays called The Moronic Inferno – a title he had borrowed from the writers Saul Bellow and Wyndham Lewis. The essays focused on Amis’s dim view of culture in the USA. These aspects of American life have long since crossed the pond, and we are all now living in a Moronic Inferno – a veritable cauldron of cretinism and ignorance. Our public discourse is more concerned with the career of a superannuated slapheaded former market trader At the time of writing this piece, the lead story on national news bulletins for five whole days has been not Gaza, Syria or
Is London the most stylish city on earth?
Let’s face it, there are many reasons not to visit London these days: the crime, the intimidatory protests, the woeful public transport, the eye-popping cost of everything, Sadiq Khan – I could go on. So disillusioned have I become with what was once my favourite place in the world that I fear I may be tiring of it, and thus, perhaps, life. Such thoughts make those assisted dying adverts the mayor has just plastered all over the Tube all the more poignant. We are not talking about fashion here, which I haven’t paid any serious attention to since the zip craze of the early 1990s But there is at least
48 hours in Dublin
I need little excuse to go to Dublin, one of my all-time favourite cities. The only trouble is that recovery between visits takes so long. I’m neither as young nor as thirsty as I once was. And I’m still haunted by a bizarre trip I made many years ago when I hadn’t even intended to visit the Fair City. I’d been at a family party in Co. Down, drinking Guinness with Bushmills chasers for what seemed like days. Next thing I knew, I was waking up starkers three days later It was an accident waiting to happen, of course, and, thanks to too much poitín, the wheels came off spectacularly
Tuesday
Gregg Wallace was no national treasure
To call Gregg Wallace a ‘national treasure’, as some did after his fall from grace last week, was inaccurate. Just because he is (or was) very popular on television does not qualify him. To attain national treasure status, a person needs to be older, as well as much nicer. The expression is vastly overused, lavished on too many undeserving celebrities, and it needs to be reined in. As Julie Burchill (sick to death of them last Christmas) wrote, ‘it seems harder to name a public figure who isn’t one’, and that most of them ‘can’t open their cake-holes without mouthing centrist platitudes which we’ve all heard a million times before’.
Are you brave enough for night shopping?
When it comes to adventures in retail, nighttime shopping is where it all happens: the unusual and most interesting people, the prime parking spaces, the lack of queues and, best of all, the absence of germy, screamy, bored, needy, naggy children. Shopping at night is plentiful in the sticks where I live – the sticks being that area between the outer suburbs and Home Counties proper. It is where you can find both stretches of heath and woodland and still get a decent coffee, speciality breads, etc. Retail parks are open until 8, 9, or even 10, and two epic 24-hour superstores are a mere zoom away in my old