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Usually when I start listening to a true-life podcast, I don’t know how it ends. That’s not the case with The Smuggler, BBC Radio 4’s new investigation into people smuggling. Across ten episodes, its Orwell Prize-winning presenter, Annabel Deas, tells the story of ‘Nick’, on the face of it an unlikely protagonist. Nick is white, English and a former soldier in the British Army. He’s also a friend of mine. We met in jail in 2021 and have stayed in contact ever since. So I know Nick’s story. I even know how it ends. Despite all this, I found myself absolutely gripped by The Smuggler. This is partly because it’s

I tried getting my husband to go with me, but wild horses wouldn’t have dragged him so I forced a friend’s son to come instead. I’m talking about going to see Tyler, The Creator at the O2. That’s Tyler, The Creator, the magnificent hip hop artist who was banned from the UK in 2015 by then Home Secretary Theresa May on the grounds of supporting homophobia and acts of terrorism.  What, you’ve never heard of him? Well, that’s clearly because you are not as down with the kids as me. I may be a middle-class boomer from Chiswick but I’m also a raging hip hop fan and I know my

‘I have died and gone to heaven,’ the gentle-faced, fortysomething American beside me murmured into her phone. I turned and stared. Too late I remembered the instructions repeated in childhood not to stand with one’s mouth open. But I couldn’t help myself. In the glorious sun at Chelsea Flower Show, I – unlike my neighbour – felt like I had died and gone to hell. Tuesday morning at Chelsea Flower Show is among life’s rare treats. At least, it used to be. The whoosh of excitement crossing Royal Hospital Road, where policemen marshalled crowds; the magnetic pull towards the show gardens, where the eye was dazzled by loveliness; inside the

Astute Scottish trainer Jim Goldie cannot hide his admiration for his five-year-old sprinter AMERICAN AFFAIR, who runs at Haydock tomorrow in the Group 2 Betfred Temple Stakes (3.30 p.m.). Goldie knows a thing or two about decent speedsters having trained the likes of Jack Dexter and Hawkeyethenoo in recent years – the former, in fact, finished second in the Temple Stakes a decade ago. The veteran handler said this week that American Affair was ‘very exciting’ and up there with the best sprinters he had trained which is why Goldie has given his stable star an entry in the King Charles III Stakes at Royal Ascot next month. American Affair