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Sunday

Lara Prendergast Lara Prendergast

The quiet frustrations of Puerto Rico

If you like piña coladas – and I do – Puerto Rico will suit you just fine. The cocktail was born on the island in 1954, though debate lingers over exactly where it was first dreamt up. A bartender at the Caribe Hilton is credited with blending coconut cream, pineapple and rum into its original form, but some claim it was at Barrachina that the drink evolved into the slushier, icier version we know today. But does it really matter? What’s important is that in Puerto Rico, you’re never far from a piña colada. Spring break was in full flow when I arrived on this tropical US territory. The college

Saturday

Naomi Firsht

The perennial appeal of Made in Chelsea

The modern world of dating is ripe for disappointment, and recent dating app convert Sophie is certainly not immune. ‘I went on a date with an actor – not doing too bad – we go to Zuma. I ordered everything; Henry VIII in there, got it all. Then the bill came and he says, how should we do this? Ugh! Ejector seat. Meep! Bye bye. No, I couldn’t. I paid the whole bill and left. Auf wiedersehen.’ Luckily, pal Olivia has a solution, and advises her to ditch the apps and instead sign up to a millionaires’ dating agency run by her friend. Good advice for all of us, perhaps,

Friday

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Coffee House Shots Live: The local elections shake-up

The May elections were a disaster for the Tories – but a triumph for Reform. As the dust settled on the results, Spectator subscribers and readers heard from Reform UK’s chairman Zia Yusuf and former Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg at a live edition of Coffee House Shots: The local elections shake-up. Joining them at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster on 7 May was The Spectator’s editor Michael Gove, deputy political editor James Heale and political correspondent Lucy Dunn. ‘The reality is that people simply do not believe anything that the Tories say anymore,’ says Yusuf ‘I remain more confident than ever that Nigel Farage will be our next Prime Minister,’ Yusuf told the audience. ‘Our

Penworthy

Bets for Chester and Ascot

Today’s Ladbrokes Chester Cup (3.05 p.m.), run over a distance of more than two miles and two furlongs, is an intriguing affair with 15 runners competing for a first prize of more than £86,000. The best handicapped horse on the basis of his hurdles form is the likely favourite East India Dock, who was third in the Grade 1 JCB Triumph Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival in March and can run off a lenient official flat mark of 89 today. The slight downsides to his chances are that he is untried at such a marathon trip as this on the flat and he has no experience of the unique twists and turns of Chester. East

Ameer Kotecha

The Lord of the Rings gave me my moral compass

In a recent diary for The Spectator, the editor noted that many of the world’s leading tech companies have names inspired by The Lord of the Rings: Peter Thiel’s Palantir and Mithril; Palmer Luckey’s Anduril. ‘J.R.R. Tolkien has a curious hold on the minds of Silicon Valley’s Trump supporters,’ he wrote. Well, they’re not the only ones. If I had founded a company I probably would have called it Anduril too. While less odd teenagers spent their money on CDs or football boots, I used to have a life-sized replica of the Elvish sword hanging above my bed. I, like the tech bros, was a LOTR obsessive. A super fan.

Mark Mason

Magic and the art of lying

Talking to a former politician about lying felt very appropriate. It was during one of my ‘Magical Thinking’ sessions, a corporate team-building event I run in which I perform close-up magic tricks and the participants try to work out how they’re being done. Among those at this session was Anne-Marie Trevelyan, who had initially been baffled by a particular mentalism effect. She thought of a day of the week, then a month of the year and finally a playing card, and my guesses on all three proved correct. Every possible route by which I could have cheated seemed blocked off – but Anne-Marie was brilliant at responding to my hints

Wednesday

Ella Dorn

Leave Katy Perry alone

Last month, Katy Perry became the first pop star to go to space. The Blue Origin flight took only 11 minutes and involved her singing to Planet Earth. She had no idea the planet would hate her on her return. Much of the criticisms included phrases like ‘waste of money and resources’; some even mentioned an ‘ongoing genocide’. She has defended herself in strange self-help metaphors, as the biggest pop stars are wont to do. ‘Through my battered and bruised adventure I keep looking to the light and in that light a new level unlocks,’ she said. ‘It’s so out of touch,’ said Lily Allen, who has since apologised for

Nigel Jones

Nigels may soon go extinct

I have never been a big fan of my own name. The name ‘Nigel’ has romantic origins – it means ‘dark champion’ in Celtic lore and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle titled one of his dashing medieval historical novels Sir Nigel. But by the time of my birth the name had become indelibly associated with cerebrally challenged upper-class twits with protruding teeth, and then a silly song about ‘making plans for Nigel’. The most prominent bearers of the name during my lifetime – such as Nigels Lawson, Havers, Mansell and Kennedy – have done little to enhance its prestige. By 2022, only three Nigels were registered in the national birth statistics,