What’s true of Hollywood is also true of fashion: no one knows anything As an ink-stained wretch living in New York in the Nineties, I was a little chippy about Anna Wintour. There I was, eking out a living as a general dogsbody at Vanity Fair, while she sat atop her throne as the editor
With four children under six, flying anywhere for the annual summer holiday has become prohibitively expensive, so for the past five years we’ve been going to Cornwall. With four children under six, flying anywhere for the annual summer holiday has become prohibitively expensive, so for the past five years we’ve been going to Cornwall. The
Variety Club day at Sandown, a splendid tradition which raises many thousands for disadvantaged children, is always a bit of a test. That chap over there in the tailored jeans and the shark’s tooth necklace — is he the star of something I should have watched last night or just a jack-the-lad from the local
For years I have been competing with my brother-in-law. He is married to my wife’s sister and each summer the four of us spend a week in Cornwall, along with all our children. For Johnny and me, this is a period of mutual accounting in which we forensically examine each other’s achievements over the last
One of the most remarkable things in Quentin Tarantino’s remarkable career is that he doesn’t appear to realise just how bad his most recent films are. ‘I have sibling rivalry with Orson Welles,’ he said recently on CBS Sunday Morning. ‘I don’t think he’s that good… all right? I have sibling rivalry with him and
It is the weather men rather than the steaks most of us want to grill slowly over hot embers this non-barbecue summer. But there are consolation days and nowhere better to appreciate them than Newmarket’s July course. The staff are friendly. Nobody looks askance at those who choose not to wear a tie and the
I have decided not to run as an independent at the next election. As readers of this column may know, I want to set up a grammar school in Acton and my plan was to run on this issue. However, most of my supporters would be people who would otherwise vote Conservative, thereby making it
As I exited the Today programme last week, my phone buzzed, indicating I had just received a text message. Which one of my friends was congratulating me on having just trounced another government minister? According to the LCD screen it was Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall! Hugh is an old Oxford contemporary whom I hadn’t heard from in
Horses, of course, have more sense than to bet on people. But how much do they know about what is going on? Watching the contenders parading before the Betfair-sponsored King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, the richest race in the UK calendar, you could not miss the frothy sweat already streaming down the flanks
Like most middle-class parents, I feel duty-bound to take my children to the theatre occasionally. Why is this? I tell myself it is a way of broadening their horizons, but really it is all about class. It is the same reason I encourage them to play with wooden toys and eat broccoli and say ‘please’.
‘Antichrist’ is the comic masterpiece of a con artist mocking fans of high culture Is Antichrist, the new film from Lars von Trier, a comedy? At first glance, that seems like a ludicrous suggestion. It contains some of the most disturbing images I’ve ever seen in the cinema, including a scene in which Charlotte Gainsbourg
Many worry these days about the quality of British racing. Racecards are stuffed with low-rated handicaps for poor-quality animals simply to keep the betting-office tills churning. But the quality of the men and women steering them from the saddle has never been higher. You could not expect to see a better example of riding from
My heart goes out to Hardeep Singh Kohli, the turban-wearing comed-ian and writer (and a contributing editor to this magazine). According to a BBC spokeswoman, he has been suspended from The One Show for six months following a complaint by a female colleague. ‘He was reprimanded and immediately apologised,’ she said. ‘He agreed to take
As funny as Bruno undoubtedly is, Baron-Cohen’s film is fundamentally dishonest One of the funniest scenes in Bruno is when Sacha Baron-Cohen, playing the gay Austrian television presenter, appears on a talk show in Texas called The Richard Bey Show. The African-American audience is none too impressed when he tells them he’s looking for a
Half an hour before it might have been Armageddon. The sky was black as pitch and the rain was bucketing down, not the happiest sound in a yard which two years ago was flooded out. But as an athletic bunch of horses jingled round the copper beech in Harry Dunlop’s trotting circle the atmosphere was
‘Hyper-parenting’ may be bad — but look what happened when I tried the alternative A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a Father’s Day piece that described a typical Sunday in my life. Essentially, it involved being an indentured slave to my four young children. Several people pointed out that I was guilty of ‘helicopter
By my epic standards, this was an extremely polite best man’s speech It never ceases to amaze me that I am still asked to speak in public. If I am not the worst orator of my generation, I must be a close second. The last time I performed an after-dinner speaking gig was in Bath
Newmarket trainer William Haggas should be one of racing’s ambassadors to the world. Win or lose he communicates pleasure. Take Triple Aspect’s victory at Sandown on Saturday in the Agfa Listed sprint. ‘He’s a really scrubby little thing and he moved to post like a goat,’ declared the candid trainer. ‘But he’s really genuine and
I would like to take this opportunity to apologise unreservedly to Twitter. Like many of my colleagues, I unfairly characterised it as a vacuous expression of our narcissistic age. In fact, it turns out to be the most effective tool for advancing freedom and democracy since the invention of the internet. In Iran, the anti-government
For several weeks now I have been agonising about whether to run for Parliament as an independent at the next election. On the one hand, the current political crisis means that an independent has a higher-than-normal chance of being elected. But on the other, it is not clear what an MP who isn’t affiliated with