Life

High life

Cheap tricks

The telephone rings and a downmarket voice greets me with a cheery hello. ‘This is Peter McKay, your old friend,’ says the bubbly one. ‘We hear that Vanity Fair paid for your party.’ For any of you unfamiliar with McKay, he is a scandal-purveyor of talent, malice and unparalleled mischief, who writes under the pseudonym

Wine Club

Spectator Mini-Bar Offer | 14 October 2006

Click here to send an order by emailStone, Vine & Sun of Winchester is one of my very favourite wine merchants. I’ve never tried anything of theirs that wasn’t first rate, and I was not remotely surprised when they won the Best Small Independent Wine Merchant award from Wine International this year. What they do

Spectator Sport

Trailer trash

Football is intrusive, all right; but mightily persuasive as well. It is impossible to steer clear of football, but at the same time — I speak for myself — it is hard not to be fondly enamoured of it. For sure, there is no remote escape from both the obviously besotted obsessives who ration tightly

Dear Mary

Dear Mary… | 14 October 2006

Q. I am now working from home and am therefore in situ when my Korean cleaners arrive each week. What is the correct way to behave in this situation? Although their English is limited, they are clearly intelligent; both their children have won scholarships to excellent schools. I fear that my current mode — making

Mind your language

Mind your language | 14 October 2006

Mr George Osborne was criticised for calling Mr Gordon Brown autistic. Osborne had mentioned in a public meeting that his brothers nicknamed him Knowledge as a boy. Miss Mary Ann Sieghart, of the Times, suggested he might have been ‘faintly autistic’. Mr Osborne remarked, ‘We’re not getting on to Gordon Brown yet.’ A psychiatrist friend