Spectator Life

Spectator Life

An intelligent mix of culture, style, travel, food and property, as well as where to go and what to see.

Leave Katy Perry alone

Last month, Katy Perry became the first pop star to go to space. The Blue Origin flight took only 11 minutes and involved her singing to Planet Earth. She had no idea the planet would hate her on her return. Much of the criticisms included phrases like ‘waste of money and resources’; some even mentioned

Nigels may soon go extinct

I have never been a big fan of my own name. The name ‘Nigel’ has romantic origins – it means ‘dark champion’ in Celtic lore and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle titled one of his dashing medieval historical novels Sir Nigel. But by the time of my birth the name had become indelibly associated with cerebrally

I’m obsessed with anchovies

Attempting to make lunch for a friend today, I discovered I had run out of anchovies – even though I always have some in stock: tins and jars of the salted variety in oil, tubs of boquerones in vinegar, and, lurking in the back of the fridge, a tube of anchovy paste. I was bordering

Julie Burchill

I’m finally out of hospital

Throughout my four months in hospitals, I dreamt above all of being home. This isn’t exceptional – it’s a very common desire – though I did meet one woman who complained that she’d find it too ‘quiet’ at home after the clatter of the ward. But for me the situation was extreme. I’m an only

Gus Carter

Maybe you’re not anxious. Maybe you’re just stressed

Something rather odd has happened to the way we talk about worry. The straightforward term ‘stress’ has been overtaken by the quasi-medical concept of ‘anxiety’. The problem is that the words don’t mean the same thing and treating them as interchangeable can have unhappy consequences. The way we use the term ‘stress’ is different to

Inside the Trump Ivy League college

Many years ago, long before Covid and when Donald Trump was still a property magnate-cum-reality TV star, I crossed the pond to study for my PhD at Penn. Not Penn State, which everyone seems to have heard of because of some obscure sex scandal; not Princeton, basking in its Michelle Obama afterglow; but Penn. It’s

When it comes to cheese, I’m Eurocentric

There are many reasons to like Kyrgyzstan. It has extraordinarily lovely women: some mad collision of Persian, Turkish, Russian, Mongol and Chinese genes makes for supermodels at every bus stop. It is safe, friendly, cheap. Its cities are commonly free of rubbish and graffiti (how does Central Asia do this, yet we cannot?). Despite these

Spare us from podcast host plugs

I’ve spent most of my working life producing radio commercials. You might expect me to say this, given my job, but when hosts read out ads on their own podcasts, I find it embarrassing. On commercial radio and television, viewers and listeners have always understood that the ads pay for the programmes and they’re fine with

Why Londoners still love Ally Pally

It was conceived as a ‘people’s palace’ – and, as it turns 150 this week, Alexandra Palace continues to fulfil this brief admirably. There is something for everyone, and it’s not too sniffy about who ‘everyone’ describes. Hence the annual mayhem around the winter darts tournament, when everywhere between Muswell Hill and Wood Green is

Gavin Mortimer

Dame Vera Lynn didn’t win the war by herself

The Royal Mail has issued a set of commemorative stamps to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day on 8 May. The ‘Valour and Victory Presentation Pack’ features ten men and women whose courage and determination, in the words of Royal Mail, ‘helped shape the outcome of the second world war’. Another criteria in selecting the

Bets for tomorrow and the Chester Cup

Field of Gold is going to be hard to beat in tomorrow’s Betfred 2000 Guineas at Newmarket (3.35 p.m.). He was impressive when winning the Group 3 bet365 Craven Stakes over course and distance last month and, according to his joint trainer John Gosden, the horse was only ‘80 to 85 per cent’ fit for

McDonald’s isn’t worth it any more

When did you last eat at a McDonald’s? If I’d asked this question a decade or so ago, I imagine the answer would probably have been ‘more recently than I’d care to admit’. The Golden Arches were the ultimate fast-food guilty pleasure, where, for considerably less than a tenner, the hungry, hungover or intoxicated could

The reinvention of limoncello

My first memories of limoncello, I expect like most people, are from an Italian holiday, the slender bottles as yellow and radiant as the Amalfi sunshine. And at a local, family-run Italian restaurant, cheerfully slammed down on the table at meal’s end. The lemon liqueur is now having a new lease of life, born again

The Airbnb guest from hell 

‘Is there a secret passageway behind that door?’ said the weirdly difficult Kiwi as she eyed a door marked ‘private’ leading off the central staircase. ‘Yes, sort of,’ I said. Behind that door is the rear part of the house, unrenovated. So if you open it, the secret is you fall into a gap in

Olivia Potts

The gobsmacking brilliance of baked Alaska

I have never seen a baked Alaska in the wild. Have you? I knew what they looked like, of course, all meringue cheekbones and technicolor interior, but I haven’t actually come across one. For whatever reason, they seem to be an endangered species – so I took to making them myself. The pudding was invented

My new-found love for Marsala

Western Sicily is one of the most wonderful places on Earth. From the Greek temples in the south to the Arab-Norman architecture and frescos around Palermo, there are endless treasures and glories. There are also records of fascinating characters, especially the Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen, Stupor Mundi. Historians still argue whether he was a prototype

AI killed the Easter Bunny

On the grounds of advancing age, I had decided to ignore all the chatter about artificial intelligence and devote my remaining time to things I could properly understand. Then I discovered that one of my own copyrighted properties, the fruit of a year’s work, had been scraped into the AI maw without so much as

The art of a great pub quiz

‘What’s the capital of Albania?’ The correct answer is, of course: ‘Who cares?’ If you’re at a quiz and this is one of the questions, find another quiz. Either you know it’s Tirana or you don’t, and in neither case is there any satisfaction. A really good quiz question is one you can work out.

Jonathan Miller

Why Americans are so fat

Are you hungry, peckish, esurient? Join me at Josie’s diner in Lexington, Kentucky, in the heart of Bluegrass country, where the horses are lean and very many people are, let me be frank, not. Josie’s is heaving at 8 a.m. as the well-upholstered clientele arrive for the morning feed. A mercifully slim student at the

Is Subaru turning me into a lesbian?

I was recently lent the latest Subaru Forester to test drive, and I enjoyed its sturdiness, its space and the frugality of its 2.0 hybrid engine. But as my mileage progressed over the course of a week’s bombing around the back roads of north Norfolk, I started to have a hankering for a nose ring,

We need a chugger crackdown

Why do we allow our public spaces to be taken over by chuggers? Whenever I exit my office above Charing Cross station in search of lunch, I am immediately confronted by no fewer than three charity muggers – each decked out in a garish uniform promoting whichever charity they are being paid for that day.

What’s wrong with national stereotypes?

Saying that national generalisations have fallen out of fashion is an understatement. Stereotypes have become less common and less tolerated. But not all is unblemished improvement, and something of value has been lost. National generalisations – often misnamed racial – now veer close to thought crimes. A pity – national generalisations are a basic tool

What Warfare forgets about Iraq

In Alex Garland’s new film Warfare, one detail stakes the film’s claim to be the most honest depiction of combat yet. Not the severed foot left lying on an Iraqi street after a bomb blast, nor a wounded US soldier’s screams as a medic bandages up what is left of his leg. Instead, it is

The frugal luxury of a pod hotel

Right beside the airport I often use to fly home from Italy, there is a pod hotel where I am becoming a regular client. These, as most will know, are dirt-cheap places where sleep is stripped down to its absolute core. For about £35 a night here, you get a tiny berth of a room

Farewell to the Fleet Street I loved

Filthy, foetid and fraught with danger. A magnet for hooligans, hard drinkers, a few saints and plenty of sinners. And that was Fleet Street before the newspapers moved in. This ancient thoroughfare, in use since Roman times, is one of London’s most famous occupational streets, much as Jermyn Street is known for its tailors and Harley Street its medics. The difference is that Fleet Street is

Did Terry Pratchett really write classics?

The news that Terry Pratchett’s 2002 novel Night Watch has joined the ranks of the Penguin Modern Classics series may seem, to the Pratchett uninitiated, something of an eyebrow-raiser. Penguin has proudly announced that the book ‘which draws on inspirations as far ranging as Victor Hugo and M*A*S*H, is… a profoundly empathetic novel about community, connection and

An ode to my old Nokia

Without much fanfare, the Nokia phone has died. I got my first mobile phone, a Nokia, at an age that is by most lights too young. I was in what Americans call the fourth grade, which means I was ten or 11. The phone in question was a cutting-edge Nokia 6820, which a contemporary Nokia

Why the middle classes are giving up on skiing

Let’s cherchez un violon petit! Skiing is now too pricey for the middle classes. According to a recent flash poll by the Telegraph’s ski section, 70 per cent of readers now think skiing holidays are unaffordable. For the bourgeoisie, skiing – along with many of the other trappings they used to take for granted, such