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Monday

Niall Gooch

The problem with Larry the Cat

There is, reportedly, an official plan in place for the demise of Larry the Downing Street Cat, aka the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office. Old Larry, originally acquired by the Camerons in the early part of the coalition, has now reached the impressive age of 17, having been born in the dog days of the Blair government. Sir Keir is the sixth Prime Minister to have passed through the black door of No. 10 since Larry began his tenure. What exactly will happen when Larry shuffles off to pounce on balls of angelic wool for all eternity has not been revealed. Some wag has apparently dubbed the alleged plan

Arabella Byrne

Doing the bins has become an unbearable faff

Benjamin Franklin famously observed that there are only two certainties in life, death and taxes. But there are in fact three certainties: death, taxes and bins. Of the three, bins occupy more of my thought life than my eventual demise, financial or otherwise. For a long time, bins used to be bins: receptacles for rubbish. You scraped the remains of your supper into them, tore a letter up and tossed it in (usually a bill) or emptied the vast tangle of dog hair and unidentified dirt of the hoover bag into it and remembered to heave it out on the right day for collection. End of story.   Not anymore. Since my local Oxfordshire council went Liberal Democrat in the recent election, it has been decreed that there are eleven

Friday

Angus Colwell

There should be a maximum smoking age

In January 2022, the New York Times ran a piece that declared that smoking was back, quoting Martin Amis’s daughter saying it seemed like it was. In the summer of 2023, the Guardian ran a piece that declared that smoking was back, because Lily-Rose Depp looks great when smoking. Last month, the Guardian again ran a piece that declared that smoking was back, because Dua Lipa smokes and Charli XCX pretends to.  Smoking between 35 and 60, however, is really very dangerous But it isn’t back, and there’s stats to prove it. However, what those pieces do say is that smoking retains its ‘cool’ image. We know that. Kate Moss and James Dean knew that. And because we know that, we can

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

Beware the celebrity booze merchants

There are quite a few ‘theories’ (what the middle classes call gossip nowadays) about why Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck have sundered their union for a second time. Personally, I’m of the entirely uninformed opinion that one of the contributing factors may have been that Jennifer Lopez – like many a celeb – has her own alcohol line, launched last year with a suitably up-itself press release. ‘Delola world-class spirit-based ready-to-enjoy cocktails designed for a thoughtful lifestyle coming to the finest establishments.’  When the touter is teetotal, regular celebrity greed starts to look like something more malign Perhaps Lopez might have been a bit more ‘thoughtful’ about the fact that

Penworthy

Bets for Sandown and Chester

Tamfana is just the sort of short-priced favourite that I love to take on. Yes, of course she might win tomorrow’s Sky Bet Atalanta Stakes (Sandown, 2.25 p.m.). After all, she was fourth in the Qipco 1000 Guineas at Newmarket in May and, with more luck in running, she would probably have won that day. However, her two runs since then have been more moderate and her French handler David Menuisier, who trains in West Sussex, seems unsure what is his three-year-old filly’s best distance. Last time she failed to stay a mile and a half on soft ground at Longchamp and so tomorrow she reverts to the Guineas trip

Wednesday

Daniel Sokol

How saying ‘deez nuts’ can ruin your life

For most parents whose teenage years pre-dated Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, few things are as terrifying as the social media use of their children. What might seem like harmless fun, such as posting memes, sharing photos, or venting frustrations, can have life-changing consequences. As a barrister who represents students, I have seen how a single ill-judged post can ruin a young person’s future. In one memorable case, a pupil was expelled from secondary school for using the phrase ‘deez nuts’ with a classmate In one memorable case, a pupil was expelled from secondary school for using the phrase ‘deez nuts’ with a classmate. The male pupil had meant it

Marcus Berkmann

Wonderwall is the worst song ever written

It could be said that the last thing we need now is an Oasis reunion. I read somewhere that there are 56 conflicts in the world at the moment, and that doesn’t count what would surely happen if you put the Gallagher brothers in the same room. Siblings have a poor history in rock ’n’ roll – one immediately thinks of John and Tom Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival, who didn’t talk for the last 20 years of Tom’s life, or Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks. In 1971, Ray and Dave were dining in Manhattan. Dave tried to steal one of Ray’s French fries. Ray stabbed his brother