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Wednesday
All present
‘All present and politically correct, Sah!’
You must feel terribly isolated in the Conservative party
‘You must feel terribly isolated in the Conservative party.’
I never thought I’d find someone like you
‘In my wildest dreams I never thought I’d find someone like you.’
Think drug legalisation is a good idea? Visit Fentanyl Land
In 1988, I lived on the backpackery Khaosan Road, Bangkok, in a hotel which offered heroin on room service. It went like this: in the morning, you padded down the teakwood stairs to the little kitchen and you asked the pretty Thai girl for breakfast – scrambled eggs, bacon, ‘extras’. Ten minutes later the same sweet girl would arrive in your room and graciously set down your tray, with scrambled eggs, orange juice – plus two straws of China White heroin, neatly paired on a saucer. The police would do a token raid and arrest some poor Euro-American guest and give him ten years After that you spent the rest
I loved my landlord
My favourite home in London was a neat three-storey townhouse in Haringey right next to Wood Green. It was at a strange junction between the rough and mildly frightening Finsbury Park and the hilly Eden of Crouch End. When we needed to get the tube we walked south, past halal butchers and kebab shops – and when we wanted brunch we walked north, where frothy flat whites, avocado toast and poached eggs awaited. I loved that house. After the hell of our first year in London (during which we discovered a dead body in the flat beneath ours), the clean white walls and stained-glass windows of a London townhouse were
Abolish the food hall
I remember going to Westfield Shepherd’s Bush to visit my first food hall, still a relatively new concept for British diners. They’re big rooms filled with shared seating and different kitchen stalls, serving everything from Thai to burgers, wontons to bratwurst. You can have a burrito and your friend can have a pizza. Oh, how I loved it. I was instantly gratified, gloriously free from the convention of menus, courses or ‘cuisines’. I was excited. These places were born in a boardroom to the sound of marketing ‘insights’ I was also a teenager. And that’s the problem: food halls are childish places. Surely the more choice there is, the better? Nope, it’s not true. Far
Tuesday
Welcome to the age of uncancelling
In September 2019 my fear was that comedian Shane Gillis might throw himself off a bridge. Just hours after being hired by Saturday Night Live, one of the world’s biggest TV shows, he was fired. The reason: journalist Seth Simons had posted clips of Gillis disparaging Chinese people. The clips, from 2018, showed Gillis on his podcast mimicking the accent of an old-fashioned racist as he said, ‘Let the fucking Chinks live there.’ Then he used his natural voice to have an ugly conversation about Chinatown. Another clip showed Gillis saying ‘faggot’ and using ‘gay’ as an insult. Gillis being fired from Saturday Night Live isn’t a free speech issue His Saturday
Hollywood, please stop the biopics
Having just watched the overwhelmingly underwhelming Bob Marley: One Love, I have decided that Hollywood’s obsession with biopics must be stopped. Biopics have become so ubiquitous, so pervasive, so unoriginal, that Kingsley Ben-Adir, who plays Marley in the film, has already starred in two other biopics: The Comey Rule as Barack Obama and One Night in Miami as Malcolm X. A biopic can feel like little more than a Wikipedia page Real-life stories have become so popular that this year we will be treated to not one, but two dramatisations of Prince Andrew’s disastrous BBC Newsnight interview. Will they offer anything more than a competition between who has the better hair and make up teams, or who
Rewild the churchyards
In the village where we used to live, the churchyard was just over the road from our cul-de-sac. I often used to potter around on my lunchbreaks, or pass through on walks. The oldest gravestone I managed to find, if I remember correctly, was for a local chap who had died in his seventies around the year 1750, which meant that he had been born towards the end of the reign of Charles II, some three hundred years before my own birth. There is a quiet consolation in the long continuity of communities There was a strange comfort in thinking that the man whose mortal remains lay – or had
Monday
North Korea won’t build bridges with Japan any time soon
Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korea’s Supreme Leader, is back. This time, though, Kim Jong Un’s sister doesn’t seem her usual vitriolic self – at least at first glance. Earlier this week, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida offered an olive branch to the North Korean leader, outlining his willingness to engage in talks with him to resolve an issue that has plagued relations between the two countries for several decades. Given North Korea’s lack of desire to engage in talks, apart from with Russia or China, it was surprising that Kim Yo Jong reciprocated with an offer of her own. Highlighting the possibility for Japan and North Korea
An optimist’s guide to dying
My favourite bit of understatement ever comes not from a Brit or a Spartan but from the Japanese Emperor Hirohito. In August 1945, following Japan’s defeats in every recent battle and the obliteration of two cities with nuclear bombs, he broadcast that ‘the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage’. At 46, I have lived far longer than most of the humans in the 300,000-year history of our species Well, I’m sorry to have to announce that my cancer situation has also developed not necessarily to my advantage. Last August I was diagnosed with advanced throat cancer, and was started on a fairly aggressive regime of treatment to
The invasion of the vineyard robots
‘Autonomous machine operating here,’ says the sign. ‘Stay away.’ And instead of the chatter of the vendangeuses, there’s the hum of a robot. Welcome to southern France, 2024, just down the lane from my house, where, walking the dogs among the vines, I stumble upon Ted, a compact, green and white, battery-powered cultivator, guided by GPS satellites. Ted is not dissimilar in principle to a robot lawnmower or vacuum, but is the size of a family car. The French ban on chemicals has created a vast amount of work for growers He is toiling away, straddling the vines and chopping up the mauvaise herbes. He is neither cute nor friendly or even that
The unbearable rudeness of the thumbs up emoji
Years ago, in the midst of a dating spree that involved numerous encounters with erratic and callous young men, I often consulted my cousin. She’s a cool, emotionally controlled New Yorker who seemed to have an innate knowledge of how to seize and maintain power in sexual or would-be sexual entanglements. She often advised me to nix the wordy message I had planned, especially in response to an outrageous slight, like a last-minute cancellation with a crap excuse and an insincere apology, and send a single yellow thumbs up instead. This was the craftier, nastier update on the cumbrous and obscene big blue thumb from Facebook messenger. For those of
Friday
Two bets for Ascot and Haydock
The run-up to the Cheltenham Festival is a quiet time for many punters with some of the best horses in the land effectively wrapped-up in cotton wool so as not to sustain an injury that would keep them out of their big-race targets next month. However, there is plenty of competitive racing on offer at Ascot, Haydock and Wincanton tomorrow. The Thoroughbred Industry Employee Awards Handicap Hurdle (Ascot, 2.25 p.m.) has certainly attracted a decent field of 16 runners, all hoping to land a pot of more than £26,000 for the winner. My preference is for BAD from the in-form Ben Pauling yard. This is a horse that, 11 months
The BBC’s betrayal of Steve Wright
Radio is my favourite medium. Always has been. It doesn’t shout ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ in the way newspapers and screens do. Radio informs and entertains as you drive a car, paint a ceiling or perform open-heart surgery. And there was no finer, more creative and more enduring radio entertainer than Steve Wright, who died on Monday. His afternoon show made Radio 1 in the 1980s. When Wright moved to Radio 2 in the late 1990s, it was a stroke of genius by the station’s then controller Jim Moir, reviving Steve’s – and Radio 2’s – anarchic glory. There, The Big Show remained a hugely popular and always evolving stalwart of
Why is John Lewis selling sex toys?
Well, for the Waitrose classes, it seems you can get all the accessories for middle class eroticism at John Lewis. The store has started selling sex merchandise and the good news is that there’s been a restock this week for Valentine’s Day, which used to be sacred to roses, Charbonnel et Walker chocolates and scent – though excitingly, I was sent an offer of 30 per cent off a subscription to the Economist, billed as the perfect Valentine’s gift (funny people at that magazine). Ann Summers is entering a partnership with Deliveroo: can you think of anything more grim? Anyway, at the John Lewis website, ready to be put in
Historian’s notebook: What the Dean of Westminster would save from a burning Abbey
Last Wednesday morning, the Cellarium Café of Westminster Abbey was filled with excitable French visitors. It was the press preview of Notre-Dame de Paris, The Augmented Exhibition. ‘What do you make of our croissants?’ I ask the sharp suited French curator. ‘Comme ci, comme ça’ he chuckles, taking another bite. While Notre Dame undergoes restoration following the 2019 fire, its stewards have toured the world via an immersive digital exhibition, now doing a stint in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey. With an iPad-like device in hand, visitors become une mouche sur le mur of major events in the cathedral’s story: the 12th century building site, Napoleon’s coronation, Viollet-le-Duc’s creation
Wednesday
Asylum seekers convert shock
‘So what’s new? People become Christians to avoid going somewhere unpleasant.’
Bonus… bonus…
‘Bonus... bonus...’