The Wiki Man

About four years ago, an irate father in Minneapolis walked into his local Target shop with a complaint. He wanted to know why they were sending his daughter, who was still at school, vouchers for baby clothes and cots. Were they trying to encourage her to get pregnant? When they telephoned to apologise a few

I never got beyond page 20 in Fifty Shades of Grey. No one got shot in the first chapter, and there were more than four characters, so I rapidly found the plot confusing. In any case, I am averse to physical pain in any form (if I were to engage in BDSM activities, my secret

I stopped using London buses when some coward put doors on them. Twenty years ago, you could board any bus headed in the right direction and when it diverged from your intended route you’d jump off and board another. You didn’t need to understand bus routes at all. Now, when bus doors open only at

Apart from the Wye Valley, where I grew up, there are only two places in Britain I’d consider living: Kent and Essex. Since Kent grabbed the ‘Garden of England’ moniker, it’s generally considered the posher of the two, but in reality the two counties are mirror images of each other: in the words of one

It is a trick which often works on children. Do not tell them to eat vegetables; instead ask whether they want broccoli or spinach. Question such as ‘Red or white?’ or ‘Still or sparkling?’ are examples of placebo choice: a psychological hack which works rather like the placebo ‘door close’ buttons in lifts (which are

My second favourite religious joke is an old Jewish joke (which I read in the Harvard Review, so I assume it has passed the political correctness test). Two Jews pass a church displaying a sign promising $1,000 to all new converts. After much debate, one of the men decides to take up the offer and

‘There’s a little bit of a fascist in all of us. For some, the tragedy of human want may provoke an impatient urge to expropriate and centralise economic resources. Others, alarmed at the world’s exploding population, may be attracted by calls for a programme of mass compulsory sterilisation. But for me it’s letter boxes and

One inarguably good thing about electronic publishing is that it solves that old quandary about what books to pack for your holiday — you just take a tablet or Kindle and buy books on a whim. The downside, however, is that this old dilemma has been replaced by an entirely new one: what bits of

What would happen, I wonder, were we to rescind the smoking ban as Nigel Farage wants? My guess is not much. Most restaurants would keep the existing rules. Some pubs might set aside a room for smokers. Casinos, comedy clubs and jazz clubs might revert to the status quo ante. But would we return to

Gandhi would test his resolve by sleeping between two naked virgins, an avenue not really open to me, as my wife is an Anglican vicar: though Anglicanism imposes almost no constraints on your behaviour or beliefs nowadays, it still frowns on sleeping with naked virgins, especially if they are of the opposite sex. So my

But why did the food [in England] stay so bad after refrigerated ships, frozen foods and eventually air-freight deliveries of fresh fish and vegetables had become available? … The answer is surely that by the time it became possible for urban Britons to eat decently, they no longer knew the difference. [Since] your typical Englishman,

Old Glaswegian joke: ‘Put your hat and coat on, lassie, I’m off to the pub.’ ‘That’s nice — are you taking me with you?’ ‘No, I’m just switching the central heating off while I’m oot.’ Late last year we bought a little holiday flat on the Kent coast. After I had furnished it with all

A few years ago I would have quite liked to live in America. I’m not sure now. For one thing, most of the things perfected by Americans (convenience, entertainment, technology, a very small bottle of Tabasco to accompany your breakfast) very soon make their way over here. On the other hand, the things Europeans do

A 14-year-old at an American school recently caused a stir when he claimed that the US government could save over $400 million annually on the cost of printer ink if the default printer font were switched from Times New Roman to Garamond. Major effects can often be achieved by relatively trivial improvements. One of the

If you are reading this article online, perhaps you could go to the comments section and let us know what single slightly unusual item you have bought which has brought you the most reliable and lasting happiness. Perverse answers are welcome, of course, but I am not so interested in suggestions such as ‘a Thai

Google ‘the bread market’ and you get 135,000 hits, mostly from specialist food industry websites. Google ‘the property market’, however, and you get over 180 million. ‘The financial markets’ nets you 282 million. Seen like this, it’s unsurprising that capitalism has a reputational problem. The likelihood that the word ‘market’ is attached to any area of

During the O.J. Simpson trial, the prosecution made much of the fact that Simpson had a record of violence towards his wife. In response, Simpson’s legal team argued that, of all women subjected to spousal abuse, only one in 2,500 was subsequently killed by the abusive husband. It was hence implied that, since the ratio