Ringo Starr is mostly known as the second or third best drummer in the Beatles. But for me – as for many children of the past four decades – he will forever be the voice of Thomas the Tank Engine. This week marks 80 years since the publication of The Three Railway Engines, the first
‘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.
Four days ago I was so bored that I considered starting a terrorist groupuscule. I had no demands, no ideology, no manifesto. I just wanted directionless chaos. I even got as far as ChatGPTing ‘How to start a violent movement’ before realising all movements require meetings. And meetings are dull. You may think I’m exaggerating.
Every Easter, the Creme Egg dominates supermarket shelves. It is, Cadbury’s marketing department loves to remind us, ‘the nation’s favourite Easter egg’. Its popularity sometimes verges on cultlike. In 2016, when Cadbury opened a pop-up café in Soho called Crème de la Creme Egg Café, people queued down the street to eat something they could
There’s a joke that does the rounds about a Pakistani couple who get a divorce. After their union is dissolved, one of them says to the other: ‘Well, at least we’re still cousins!’ I feel slightly guilty whenever I laugh, yet there is some truth to it. I remember at my secondary school how Pakistani
One of my favourite scenes in Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino’s black comedy martial arts film, is the meeting of Beatrix ‘the Bride’ Kiddo, played by Uma Thurman, with sword-maker Hattori Hanzo at his scruffy sushi bar in Okinawa. Hanzo: What do you want with Hattori Hanzo? Kiddo: I need Japanese steel. Hanzo: Why do you
Lewis Carroll used to travel with purses divided into separate compartments, each containing the exact number of coins he’d need for a particular transaction (train fare, porter, newspaper and so on). These days we have one bank card which gets tapped everywhere. The coinless society might be more convenient – but it’s also more boring.
For several years, a debate has raged (mainly on Twitter, now X) over whether animal fats are actually better for you than industrially processed ‘seed oils’. The debate has become more mainstream thanks to the efforts of the new US Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jnr, who wants to Make America Healthy Again. His strategy
Do you Boom Boom? Or are you just Booming? Can Boomers Boom Boom or is it just for Zoomers? Can you Boom Doom? Hear me out: I’m getting to grips with the new vibe shift. In December, Sean Monahan, an American trend analyst, announced the arrival of the ‘Boom Boom’ aesthetic, which he described as
In 1990, an exotic Swiss-Canadian teenager of purportedly Habsburgian lineage descended on Cambridge in a cloud of cashmere. His wardrobe was unfeasibly organised, shelf after shelf of cashmere arrayed in all the hues of the rainbow. We regarded him as a thing of wonder. In those days most of us British undergraduates were deeply unsophisticated,
In some countries Shrove Tuesday (the day of merrymaking before the rigours of Lent) developed into a ‘carnival’ that lasted several days, but in England it was only ever a half-day holiday, since it was not an official Church feast day. Apprentices and schoolchildren claimed the right to an afternoon of ‘sport’, and from at
In 2015, an orthopaedic surgeon called Limb, with three other doctors called Limb, wrote a paper on whether people’s names were correlated with their medical specialties. The findings were striking. In general surgery there were practitioners called Gore, Butcher, Boyle and Blunt. In cardiology, Hart and Pump. In anaesthesia there was a Payne but also
If something can be squeezed into a jar with brine, Polish grandmas will do it. Walk into the kitchen of the average babcia and you’ll see jars lining the shelves filled with mysterious experiments, as if in an old-fashioned Slavic science lab. Here are pickled cucumbers, pickled peppers, pickled mushrooms, pickled cabbage and pickled beetroot.
My obituaries habit gets ever stronger. I find there’s nothing as inspiring or instructive or entertaining as reading a few hundred words about someone’s time on this planet. My main dealers are the Times and Radio 4’s Last Word. Each batch throws together a varied mix, people who share only one thing in common: the
The Pope hates gossip. In his Christmas message to his Vatican advisers last year, Francis warned that it is ‘an evil that destroys social life’. It’s not the first time he’s attacked rumour-spreading. He once compared gossips to terrorists because ‘he or she throws a bomb and leaves’. The Holy Father’s condemnations are of particular
Those who use TikTok, or are familiar with Ed Davey’s dance routines on social media, may have heard of the ‘Costco Guys’. For those with an aversion to TikTok (or to Ed Davey), Andrew ‘A.J.’ Befumo Jr. and Eric ‘Big Justice’ Befumo are a father-and-son duo who became internet celebrities by gorging on food items
Donald Trump has form with the smelt. In his 2016 presidential run, he complained that California’s authorities were prioritising the endangered fish (which are native to the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta) over farmers’ irrigation needs. ‘Is there a drought?’ he asked a private audience of farmers ahead of a rally. ‘No, we have plenty of
The cape is having a moment thanks to the Highland wardrobe of Claudia Winkleman, who is currently presenting The Traitors for a third season. Capes are often used in literature to signal an air of mystery (think Sherlock Holmes) or to hide identity (Little Red Riding Hood or Lord Voldemort). The cape is a contradiction:
Two things come to mind when I think about visitors books. The first is the memory of leaving the home of a low-profile and secretive single man whose company is widely craved. I had been revelling in a sense of self-importance as I had good reason to suspect that the previous occupant of my guest
It’s 500 years since Martin Luther, along with the preacher Paul Speratus, put together the first Protestant hymn book, the Achtliederbuch, literally the ‘book with eight songs’. Collections of liturgical chants and songs had existed before, but they had never been meant for the congregation – just for choirs. Luther believed collective sung worship in
