I have written a novel about Middle England’s love affair with female newsreaders. I was struck by a survey which showed that viewers of these grave messengers of world events could remember only the first 30 seconds of what was said. The women newsreaders really are talking heads. My implicit thesis is that press journalists
Good old Boris! What a guy! I write to ask him to sponsor my charity run in the London Marathon, and back comes the offer of 44Hp a word for a Spectator diary. So here it is (those last few words work out at more than 20p a letter – brilliant). And Boris being so
If diaries are all about name-dropping and indiscretion, and they usually are, perhaps I should say that I had lunch on Tuesday with the Prime Minister at No. 10. This is the sort of thing that no diarist could bear to suppress. On the other hand, the unwritten rules of journalism dictate that I can’t
George Bush is a reformed alcoholic, and takes staying on the wagon seriously. I have recently discovered that you can’t get a drink at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, since it’s located in the dry gulch of prohibitionist counties. As we wait for the Bush-Blair show to begin, I find you can’t get a drink
I was brought up to pay little attention to vegetables, apart from beetroot, which was served every day, and carrots, of which we had two each on a Sunday, on the grounds that they enabled Spitfire pilots to see in the dark. And then last week I arranged to meet a friend in the bar
I spent Tuesday evening watching Ashley, a 15-year-old blonde girl from Oklahoma, flirt with a British boy called PJ. ‘Wanna see some photos of me?’ asked Ashley. PJ grinned. ‘I think you’ll like them, they’re hot,’ said Ashley, and winked. A boy called Ghetto, whom neither of them had met before, interrupted the conversation. ‘Hello,
When the Crimean war began in 1854, the prime minister was Lord Aberdeen, who carried a deep burden of guilt. Years later he was asked to pay for the rebuilding of a church on his estate, and pleaded King David’s unworthiness: ‘But the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Thou hast shed blood
Sydney When I first came to Australia in the 1980s the national sense of humour was less developed than now. Scarcely had I settled in my taxi at Perth airport than my driver offered, unsolicited, the following joke: ‘Mate, what’s the difference between a roo lying dead at the side of the road and an
Delhi If you are invited to one of these grand Indian weddings, you should jolly well make an effort. I inquired about the dress code, and was told that it would be all right for me to wear something called Kurta Pyjama. So I got the full bollocks. No mucking around. I went to the
This is the first Christmas in recent years that I haven’t spent in traction or immobilised by glandular fever. You may imagine that I spend my days drawing and whistling in a carefree manner, but there are tears behind the laughter. Two Christmases ago I was invited to the Erotic Review party in a club
Two or three times a week, some radio or television programme telephones, usually in search of a soundbite. That I should be so lucky, you may say. How flattering. Yes, but nobody ever mentions money. The ability to turn a phrase is the only marketable skill a journalist possesses. No newspaper would ask a professional
The 13th Earl of Haddington (cr. 1619) was minded to revise his theory about crop circles to incorporate pixies, he told me the other day while we were enjoying a pre-dinner cigarette at the chimney piece of a grand dining-room in Chillingham Castle, Northumberland. Lord H. – a whiskery, engaging gent in tartan trousers –
Within an hour of returning to the Commons after a sabbatical tour of ex-British South Asia I find myself plunged into the firefighters’ strike. The Blairites have long been envious of the glass-jawed opponents who queued up to be walloped by Mrs Thatcher. But during Monday’s Downing Street press conference the Prime Minister modestly disavowed
They’ve scrubbed it off now, but until recently the outer wall of Hackney’s HSBC bore a weird piece of graffiti. The ugly felt-tip scribble stood out harshly against the whitewashed stone. It consisted of a girl’s name (illegible), then the equals sign, and then ‘horing buckethole sellpussygal 10p a hour’. When I saw it, I
Whatever critics might say about Martin Amis’s Kobra the Dread, his recent book on Stalin’s atrocities, he was certainly right when he pointed out that people are generally indulgent, even flippant, about communist tyrants in a way they would never be about Nazis. This thought strikes me every morning as I walk through Canary Wharf
I am in the midst of a tour promoting a book, The Political Animal. Like all journeys in this country, it is almost impossible to travel anywhere with any confidence that you will arrive within a day of your anticipated time. A trip to Norfolk, which ought to have taken three hours, lasted five. The
Editing a newspaper is not a dinner party, as Chairman Mao would have observed had he been running a tabloid, but you sure do get invited to dinners and lunches and breakfasts, most of which are politely turned down because there is a paper to publish and competitors to clobber mercilessly and ceaselessly. But, thanks
A glorious sunny day in Spain, and I have just been certified a genuine, card-carrying, paid-up cripple. Actually, being an old-age pensioner and a householding resident of Catalonia, I wasn’t required to pay or say anything. My doctor did the talking, and had to, because I can’t speak a word of Catalan. Anyway, it was
Sunday: Ducked morning service in favour of gardening, but made it to a special evening service to celebrate the Jubilee year and the community of our parish. In the midst of a powerful sermon on how technology has changed village life, the rector clamped his mobile to his ear, yelling, ‘I am in the pulpit.
Kabul On the trail of genetic traces of Alexander’s soldiers in Afghanistan, I arrived in Badakhshan, the country’s most remote and beautiful province that abuts China. I went to see my old friends at the government guest house, which is set on an island in the middle of the Kokcha river. We sat on a