So the end-of-the-year Christmas party was the best yet, even if I say so myself. The festivities began at 10 p.m. and ended somewhat hazily around 6 the next morning. My son JT provided the youth, I provided the gravitas. Actually, it was the other way round. I provided the brawn — judo and karate
I was standing on the pavement outside the Lahore Kebab House, Hendon, after a three-hour lunch, waiting for a minicab. Fifty of us had sat down at a flower-laden table to samosas and champagne, kebabs and Valpolicella. Amid a convivial uproar, our host had stood, tapped his water glass with his spoon, and made a
By the time you read this I shall probably be 40. I say probably not because I am thinking of ending it all to ensure I remain for ever young in people’s hearts. I say it because the way things are going, the event may go completely unnoticed. It may be so ignored by my
For me, the end of one year and the beginning of the next is a time of mixed feelings. I always take stock, looking back to see what I’ve accomplished in the year gone by, and on that score I have much to celebrate. The West London Free School opened in September, the culmination of
Sadly, no blistering new memoir this year from Max Mosley — A Study In Scarlet: the History of the Whip (published by the British Horseracing Authority) — but there have been plenty of wonderful sporting books this year. Too many to list obviously, so I have chosen just four and, in the Leveson spirit of
Q. How can I tell a new young colleague that he needs to wash? He and I share an office and he is exceptionally nice but the smell in our shared quarters is sickening. What do you advise? — E.C., Oxford A. Try this method which has resolved the same problem for others. Say to
34 is the new restaurant from Richard Caring, the ‘Lex Luthor of Mayfair’, who owns The Ivy, Le Caprice and Annabel’s. In my research, which I undertake before every review — clams tend not to have a back-story — Caring emerges as a character from a Sidney Sheldon novel, or perhaps Lace: ‘Which of you
The word of the year is across. Earlier this month someone on the radio spoke of hospital experiences ‘across the patient journey’. The meaning was ‘throughout’. It is universality that across is now felt to express. A widely favoured, seldom understood figure of speech is across the piece. Proof of the obscurity of its application,
