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Wednesday

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Why the left hates Gail’s

Is there any more evil influence on the world than Gail’s the bakery? It has thrown thousands of poor people out of their homes by gentrifying their neighbourhoods; it has destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of hard-working owners of independent coffee shops by drawing away business; it has scorned the poor by throwing away its old sandwiches rather than give them to the homeless; and it allegedly supplied a box of pastries to the White House for tea last Friday, which so poisoned the atmosphere between Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump that it could quite possibly lead to world war three. OK, I made the last one up. But as

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

How Armando Iannucci lost his edge

The BBC celebrated one of its own on Monday night. Armando Iannucci was treated to a fawning retrospective by Alan Yentob, and it opened with a crass piece of TV trickery. ‘Armando Iannucci is not an easy man to pin down,’ said Yentob, as if his quarry were a master criminal or an international terrorist. ‘For ten years, I’ve been trying to talk to one of Britain’s greatest comic talents.’ Iannucci, in his heyday, would have enjoyed dissecting this sort of bombastic hyperbole. This week, he connived in the hoax. Yentob ran through Iannucci’s CV. He was raised by affluent Glaswegians (plenty of colour photographs suggesting a comfortable income), and

Julia Hamilton

A pensioner’s guide to being broke

I’m a broke pensioner – quite a jolly one – not like those people Age Concern show wrapped in blankets, the caption informing viewers that she daren’t put the heating on. I’m not like those pathetic old people, I tell myself (untruthfully). I do put the heating on but, like the poor old dears in shabby armchairs, I worry about how I’m going to pay my heating bill – especially now Labour has taken away my wonderful winter fuel allowance. Being broke at 68 is humiliating. But it is also only to be expected, given how little money I’ve managed to make in my quite long life. Sometimes I get

Tuesday

Flora Watkins

Nurses shouldn’t have tattoos

Of all the aspects of dating that make me grateful I came off the market when I did – ghosting, choking, sober socialising, facial hair like Brahms’s beard – it’s the spread of large-scale visible tattoos that makes me feel like I got the last chopper out of ’Nam. Neck tattoos and sleeves were once either indicators of prison gang allegiances or the preserve of thrash metal bands and their fans. Although perhaps the most heavily inked man in rock is Travis Barker, drummer of pop-punk crossover tarts Blink-182. His whole head is tattooed, as is Kerry King’s of Slayer, who also has ‘God Hates Us All’ down his left

Zoe Strimpel

Is Kate Moss… basic?

Could it be? Could the world’s sexiest, coolest woman be turning… basic? It has come to feel as if that effervescent, mercurial quality that kept her aloof from the cut and thrust of the celebrity rabble – the endorsement-chasers, the tell-all-interview mongers – has evaporated. Kate Moss is turning into the very thing she had always been at pains to shun. Moss once called an EasyJet pilot a ‘basic bitch’ after being escorted off the plane for swigging vodka from her carry-on after Sadie Frost’s 50th birthday. Now she is becoming a basic bitch (to say nothing of her daughter Lila, whose bare nipples at London Fashion Week have been

Alexander Larman

In defence of Jack Vettriano

The death of the painter Jack Vettriano at the age of 73 is sure to delight at least one art critic: the Guardian’s Jonathan Jones. Jones has consistently attacked the creator of The Singing Butler, Britain’s best-selling single image, as ‘brainless’ and ‘not even an artist’. He derided his work as ‘a crass male fantasy that might have come straight out of Money by Martin Amis.’ Nor is he alone. The Daily Telegraph sneered that Vettriano was ‘the Jeffrey Archer of the art world’, and the director of the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art refused to include his work in the collection, saying, ‘I’d be more than happy to say

Monday

John Sturgis

Last orders: farewell to my 300-year-old local pub

The Cherry Tree on Southgate Green began life as a coaching inn on one of the historic routes from London to York and beyond. It has been trading since 1695, when what are now the north London suburbs were open fields. But the other evening, the pub – my local – rang last orders for the final time. The brewery that owns it is having it refurbished as a brasserie, its pub status coming to an end after 330 years. I went on its final evening for the closing-down party. It was like being in an episode of EastEnders, in the sense that it was a pub full of faces

Gavin Mortimer Gavin Mortimer

The Imperial War Museum’s betrayal of history

The news that the Imperial War Museum is closing Lord Ashcroft’s Victoria Cross and George Cross gallery is sadly not a great surprise. It’s the latest act in the ‘wokeification’ of this once outstanding museum. Writing in the Daily Telegraph last week, Lord Ashcroft said that the IWM didn’t even have the ‘courtesy to inform’ him of the closure. Rather, it issued a statement in which it thanked him for his generous 15-year loan but said the exhibition will shut permanently on 1 June. The reason, explained the IWM, is to create new space ‘to allow us to share more stories of conflicts that are within many of our visitors’

Ameer Kotecha

Something to relish: in praise of Patum Peperium

In a social media age, certain ingredients – long esteemed by those in the know – suddenly burst on to the scene. One morning we woke up to all the supermarkets stocking Mutti tinned tomatoes. Ortiz sardines and Perello Gordal olives are now in the limelight. I wonder – given the current zeitgeist for all things umami – whether Patum Peperium (Latin: ‘peppered paste’) could be next. Then again, the ‘Gentleman’s Relish’ – an anchovy paste made with butter and spices – isn’t for everyone. Much like Marmite, it has embraced this contentious reputation: ‘Dividing opinions since 1828’ it declares in its branding. After almost 200 years on the scene,