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Wednesday

Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

The Arts Council should subsidise footballers

The Norwegian footballer Erling Haaland will, upon commencement of his new nine-year contract extension with Manchester City, be paid £1 million a week. On pocketing his first colossal pay cheque (which includes sponsorship income), Haaland will cruise past his rivals in the traditional European leagues. Real Madrid’s Kylian Mbappé is forced to get by on a paltry €45 million a year, Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah on his derisory €18 million, and Ballon d’Or winner Rodri with his piddling £9 million. The Finnish government used to pay its greatest artists an annual stipend Has the world gone insane? One million pounds a week, for kicking a ball around for a couple of

Siam Goorwich

The vanity of hair transplants

I used to think that one of the few things that men had over women was their lack of manifest vanity. Not that men weren’t vain, but apart from turning their chests into Doritos at the gym or dyeing their greying locks that unnatural shade of black, there were very few ways for them to enact these impulses. That was, until hair transplants. One of the men in my local corner shop was proudly peacocking the follicles sprouting from his forehead As it turns out, hair transplants aren’t actually a new thing. According to my research (Google), modern hair transplant techniques were pioneered in Japan in the 1930s. Despite being

Diana Hendry

I love Edinburgh. I’m not sure it loves me

This year I shall have lived in Edinburgh for a quarter of a century. I fell in love with the city on the 23 bus travelling from the New Town to the Old Town. There was so much architecture. Gothic and Georgian, medieval, baronial. So many turrets and finials, tollbooths and towers. I was drunk on the stuff. Add pomp – a Royal Mile, a castle, a palace. Then the libraries, art galleries, museums. And that’s before you get to bookshops and Edinburgh’s proud moniker, the first Unesco City of Literature. What other city has a railway station (Waverley) named after a novel or a high street (Princes Street) with

Tuesday

Ettie Neil-Gallacher

How the phone colonised my life

I read recently that this month marks 40 years since Britain’s first mobile phone call was made. It was in the early hours of New Year’s Day 1985 in Parliament Square, when one Michael Harrison rang his Vodafone chairman father, Sir Ernest Harrison. It would, of course, take many years – and much hankering and hysteria – before I got my own mobile A few years later, one sunny Saturday morning, my father took delivery of his first company car. I must have been about ten years old and can recall the sheer thrill of seeing something outside our house that wasn’t one of my mother’s seemingly endless succession of

David Shipley

Prisons must prioritise mental health

What is prison for? I’ve wondered that a lot, these past five years. In February 2020, just a few days after the UK left the European Union, and as scientists worked to agree an official name for the ‘new coronavirus’, I was sentenced to 45 months in prison for a fraud I’d committed in 2014. During my time inside I discovered a system that did almost everything badly and didn’t seem to know its own purpose. Meanwhile our jails remain a mystery to those who haven’t been there. Since my release I’ve written and spoken to help people understand our prison system. I believe there is a better way of

Adam Hay-Nicholls

How Margaret Thatcher’s son went missing in the Sahara

The year was 1982. Prime minister Margaret Thatcher rerouted an RAF Hercules over foreign territory and requested the scrambling of jets and choppers and ground troops. The diplomatic cables burned back and forth. President Ronald Reagan expressed concern. The situation was desperate. This wasn’t the Falklands War – that came a few months later. This, in fact, may have been more emotional for the Iron Lady. Her only son, 29-year-old Mark, had gone missing. A privileged and rather bored young man who’d failed his accountancy exams three times, Mark Thatcher was searching for some meaning in life and caught the motor racing bug. He’d competed in the Le Mans 24

Monday

Julie Bindel

The offal truth? Organs are delicious

I’m sure my mum would forgive me for saying this, but cooking is not one of her many strengths. Raising three children, and with a husband who worked shifts in a steel mill, she was feeding people round the clock, so cooking became a necessity rather than a pleasure – as it will have been for the majority of working-class women in the 1960s and 70s. Since this was before convenience food really hit the shelves, things were cooked from scratch, and in winter, steak and kidney suet pudding was on the menu in our house most weeks. As were liver and onions, mince and potato pies and anything else

Terry Barnes

I became a father at 56. Now I feel guilty

I was a late starter at everything. After drifting through my youth, and numerous false starts in life and work, I only found a committed relationship in my thirties and married in my forties. Even my second career as a writer waited until my fifties. So, too, did my unexpected third career, as a parent. For years, my significantly younger wife and I ached for a child. When it didn’t happen naturally, we embarked on a long, uncertain, painful and stressful IVF journey to fulfil our longing. When we accepted that we had reached the end of that road – or rather our endurance of its rockiness was exhausted –

Ian Evans

Are tribute bands killing music?

If you fancy watching a live performance of Fleetwood Mac’s hits, there’s plenty of choice in tribute band land: Fleetwood Shack or Fleetwood Bac, McFleetwood or Rumours of Fleetwood Mac – or perhaps Tusk, Tell Me Lies, Fleetwood Macrame or Gypsy Dreams. Or you could wait to see if the real Fleetwood Mac tour again, minus keyboard player Christine McVie who died two years ago and guitarist Lindsey Buckingham who is currently ostracised from the band in true Fleetwood Mac falling-out tradition. Ultimately… you can go your own way.  But are tribute acts – no matter how good or authentic – ‘real’ music, or are they cheating? Are they a harmless piece of nostalgia, or

Sunday

Lukas Degutis

How to eat like a president

John F. Kennedy opted to serve New England lobster, Ronald Reagan a California-inspired garden salad – and James Buchanan 400 gallons of oysters. Held at Statuary Hall in the US Capitol, the inaugural luncheon for a new president is as much part of inauguration day as the swearing-in ceremony and the inaugural address.  Nixon enjoyed pineapple slices topped with cottage cheese and washed down with a glass of milk First time around, in 2017, Donald Trump’s inaugural meal featured dishes including Maine lobster and Gulf shrimp. But for those not on the guest list to find out what he serves tomorrow (McDonald’s ice cream, perhaps?), there are plenty of other