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Right beside the airport I often use to fly home from Italy, there is a pod hotel where I am becoming a regular client. These, as most will know, are dirt-cheap places where sleep is stripped down to its absolute core. For about £35 a night here, you get a tiny berth of a room – a ‘capsule’ about 4ft wide and 6.5ft long – with a narrow bed, a socket to recharge your devices and, if you want to work, a fold-down mini-table for your laptop. It is a bit like you imagine a rather poky Swedish prison cell, decorated with Nordic minimalism: white bed, white walls, fluorescent light,

Filthy, foetid and fraught with danger. A magnet for hooligans, hard drinkers, a few saints and plenty of sinners. And that was Fleet Street before the newspapers moved in. This ancient thoroughfare, in use since Roman times, is one of London’s most famous occupational streets, much as Jermyn Street is known for its tailors and Harley Street its medics. The difference is that Fleet Street is inexorably linked to newspapers despite the fact journalists have not pounded its pavements for decades, the trade having moved on to Wapping and beyond at the tail end of the last century. Now Fleet Street is on the cusp of another new era, with plans to replace many of its historic buildings with modern office blocks. According to

Let’s cherchez un violon petit! Skiing is now too pricey for the middle classes. According to a recent flash poll by the Telegraph’s ski section, 70 per cent of readers now think skiing holidays are unaffordable. For the bourgeoisie, skiing – along with many of the other trappings they used to take for granted, such as being able to afford the fees for a private day school or a daily takeaway coffee – ce n’est pas possible. Quel dommage! (Let’s parlez anglais now; I think you get the point.) It’s not just the accelerated cost of living in the UK – or Liz Truss personally putting our mortgages up by

The Dan Skelton versus Willie Mullins battle reaches its finale at Sandown tomorrow when one of these two brilliant trainers will be crowned Britain’s champion National Hunt trainer for the 2024-5 season. Skelton, who trains in Warwickshire, goes into the final two days of the season with a narrow lead over Mullins, who trains from his all-conquering Irish yard in Co. Carlow. However, with all the firepower at his disposal, it looks highly likely that Mullins will overtake Skelton’s prize money total tomorrow, given the latter’s lead is less than £60,000. For example, Mullins fields no less than ten runners in the bet365 Gold Cup Handicap Chase (4.10 p.m.), worth