Sport

The highlight of my country calendar is when I’m lucky enough to be invited to what even the host describes as ‘the world’s best worst shoot’. It’s the worst shoot because the bag is often truly atrocious. This year, for example, in the course of six or possibly seven drives — the details are hazy — we managed a total of nine birds between us. That works out at an average of one and one eighth of a bird per gun over an entire day. But still, disappointingly, we were well short of the all-time record low of three. I’d love to be able to blame this shaming tally on

When I was young, from about the age of nine to 13, I went through what my parents recall with a shudder as ‘the football shirt phase’. Where some children rebel by smoking, and others take to eyeliner, my vice was polyester. My first shirt was a quirky one — an early Noughties AS Bari white and red home shirt with an itchy collar. The thing smelled of washing powder no matter how much I wore it — which was daily for the best part of three months one very hot Italian summer. I’d wear football shirts everywhere, from family meals to drinks parties, trips into town and to Mass.

Who speaks what The Chancellor, Sajid Javid, included a little Punjabi in his speech to the Tory conference. How many people in Britain would have understood him? In the 2011 census the ONS counted 273,000 Punjabi speakers in Britain. The other most common languages, besides English and Welsh, were: Polish 546,000 Urdu 269,000 Bengali 221,000 Gujarati 213,000 Arabic 159,000 French 147,000 Portuguese 133,000 Spanish 120,000   Death by gender The British Heart Foundation claimed women were needlessly dying of heart disease because they were receiving less good treatment than men. How do the causes of death differ between the sexes? Deaths per million in 2017 Men / Women Ischaemic heart

Journey’s end Holidaymakers are being flown home after travel company Thomas Cook failed. The idea might have horrified the company’s eponymous founder, whose first excursion was a temperance outing from Leicester to Loughborough on 5 July 1841, on a charter train from the Midland Railway Company. All 500 tickets were swiftly sold. A holiday from Leicester to Liverpool and North Wales followed in 1845, including several nights in temperance hotels and a night-time ascent of Snowdon. Thomas Cook went on to organise trips to the 1851 Great Exhibition for 150,000 from the Midlands. Financial health A Labour activist and parent of a patient accused the Prime Minister on a visit