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Wednesday

Sean Thomas

Why are American sports so boring?

I’m in an urban park surrounded by fast-food outlets: Taco Bell, the Golden Arches, KFC, Starbucks. The sound system is blasting out raucous rap music; all the men are in blingy sportswear, baseball caps, Nike shoes. I can see big shiny billboards advertising iPhones, Pepsi Max or the latest Marvel movies. In short, I could be almost anywhere in the world – Australia, Brazil, Germany – such is the power of American exports: soft and hard, cultural and consumerist, Coke to Tesla to Friends. And yet I know I’m in America, specifically in the SoFi Stadium, Los Angeles, because I’m about to encounter the one thing America has, peculiarly, not

Leyla Sanai

Down with freshers

Now that the autumn term is well underway at universities and freshers’ week has removed its leering, spotty face from the calendar for another year, may I talk about how ghastly it is? Impressionable young people who believe they are completely mature adults but still have another decade or so of brain remodelling to go arrive at an unfamiliar place for the first time. Once any relatives who lugged their bulging suitcases packed with stuff to make them seem grown-up have disgorged the final single sock from the family car and driven off, hiding their tears, the young person is on their own. I remember being 19 and arriving at

Mark Nayler

Why piano competitions strike a controversial note

The USA’s Eric Lu has beaten more than 600 other pianists to win the 19th International Chopin Piano Competition. Held every five years in Warsaw around the anniversary of the Polish composer’s death on 17 October, this is one of several piano tournaments that often launch major careers, along with Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Competition, the Van Cliburn in Texas and the Leeds International. Unlike any of those, however, the Chopin competition requires contestants to perform the music of just one composer. Lu, 27, didn’t exactly need this win. He took first prize at the Leeds International in 2018 and has already released two records on the Warner Classics label. After his

Tuesday

Arabella Byrne

Sober October and the hangover of wellness

By now, you have probably given up on Sober October. I’ve never done it, mainly because I’ve been sober for 15 years. There’s two things, however, that I’m truly thankful for. The first is that I gave up drinking before Instagram stories became a widespread means of social documentary. The second is that I had been sober for four years by the time the absurd country-wide rehab that is Sober October was established as a charity initiative by Macmillan Cancer Research in 2014. But if I had still been drinking, I would never have thought it might apply to me. In fact, I would have relished the opportunity to loudly

Ross Clark Ross Clark

At last, a council is taking on SUV drivers

I’m not usually in favour of money-grasping councils, but I will make one exception: I’m afraid I am not on the side of the SUV drivers of Cardiff who are bleating about having to pay higher parking charges. Under new rules introduced by the Labour-run council – and likely to be copied elsewhere – drivers of vehicles which weigh more than 2.4 tonnes will have to pay extra for a parking permit, and drivers of cars weighing more than 3.6 tonnes will be refused parking permits altogether. How much extra has yet to be decided – the council has so far voted in favour of the principle of charging more

Rob Crossan

Let the Hard Rock Café die

‘Live fast, die old’ ran the strapline to the David Brent: Life On The Road film a decade ago. The movie itself was a textbook example of how unwise it is to attempt to cash in on the earlier (read: much funnier) successes of your career. Not that Ricky Gervais gives a damn while residing in his Hampstead mansion, of course. As increasingly pompous as his persona now is, I’ve finally reached a place where I know I’d rather have a night out with Brent than with his creator. There would be pathos. But there would at least be lager. Although I’m certain that a 2025 London ‘big’ night out

Monday

G.V. Chappell

How bad do things have to get before the police show up?

Earlier this year, I wrote here about the arsonist who’d left our neighbourhood looking post-apocalyptic. In the months that followed, the pyromaniac grew ever more reckless. Initially, he’d stuck to torching vehicles on the road, which was bad enough. But then he took it a step further. He set fire to a car on a driveway, which in turn set the house alight. The young family, who were asleep upstairs, escaped with their lives, but their home was destroyed. A collection was started, and we dropped in some cash. The organiser said that in 20 years in the area, he’d never seen things as bad as they were now. He’d

Esme Gordon-Craig

Gen Z’s obsession with ageing is making us look older

Turning 24 came with more than just cake and candles. Alongside the celebrations came a barrage of life-determining questions: when are you getting married? Where do you see yourself living? When will your job become a career? With a single step into my mid-twenties, I felt suddenly catapulted into a new world of adult expectations. And nothing captured this shift more than my birthday presents. I love my new pilates ring and am curious to see what collagen will do to my complexion, but there was something unnerving about receiving an entire haul of health-inspired gifts. When my friends arrived that evening to celebrate my ‘achievement’ of turning 24 –

Rob Crossan

Banish the B-word!

The SS Californian deserves more than mere footnote status when it comes to its role in the story of the RMS Titanic. For that was the name of the ship that sent repeated messages to the crew of the doomed cruise liner, all of them warning of ice ahead. But the Titanic’s wireless operators weren’t interested – to the point where one employee dismissed the Californian’s communications with a reply that read: ‘Shut up, I’m busy.’ Of course, the Titanic wireless crew weren’t really busy at all. They were simply spending their time sending private telegrams on behalf of the first-class passengers on board. A few hours later, well, we