Subscriber only

Thursday

Taki

Remembering Tim Hoare – a man like no other

He was a Falstaff in his drinking and in his celebration of life, but his greatness lay in his friendships. Like his closest friend Nick Scott, who left us two and a half years ago, he roamed the world making friends and being as generous to them as a fairy godfather. The years, with all their disappointments, teach us caution, but Tim Hoare remained reckless to the end. Here he is in a high life column from 15 years ago: We hit a hurricane while sailing off the Riviera last week, a hurricane called Tim Hoare. I have never in my long life met anyone quite like him. The words,

Jeremy Clarke

The woman laid out in the coffin in front of us wasn’t Mum

The receptionist with brown lipstick showed my son and me into a faultless waiting room, whose centrepiece was a big colour photograph of out-of-focus lavender florets. A couplet written underneath said: I’m the colourful leaves when autumn comes around And the pure white snow that blankets the ground. Had we made an appointment, she asked. We understood that it wasn’t necessary, we said, and that we could view the body ‘at any time within normal business hours’. She wrestled with her thoughts for a moment, then said she would have to get a man to come over from Torquay to help lift her out of the fridge. ‘Can we help?’

Melissa Kite

Pet health insurance is a scam

‘The reason vets are so expensive now,’ explained the vet in her snazzy green uniform, ‘is because we can do so much more.’ I was standing in the waiting room of the veterinary practice with the silly name: the corporate, expensively branded chain vet I said I would never go to, but have to when the sensible Israeli chap I prefer is booked up. I tried to say nothing but sadly this wasn’t possible. ‘Yes, but that doesn’t make doing more right, does it? I mean, putting wheels on a dog, is that right?’ She looked back at me askance. She had her RSPCA magazine on the coffee table. I

Thursday

Taki

My soulmate Brian Sewell

Romy Somerset is the sweetest, nicest young girl in London. She’s also my goddaughter and I remember, during her christening at Badminton years ago, the present duke’s mother staring at me rather intently while the minister was going on about love, trust and faithfulness. At lunch afterwards I asked Caroline Beaufort: ‘Why the looks?’ ‘I was wondering if you recognised any of those words,’ said a laughing duchess. Well, I do now that I’ve become monogamous on account of ‘force majeure’, but that’s not the point of my story. I am quite annoyed with Romy because she sent me a book that I have been unable to put down, one

Jeremy Clarke

The mysterious ways of the French

These new tablets that will save or at least prolong my life have unpredictable side effects which only now, a month after starting to take them, are making themselves felt. Breasts, round and wobbling that I can cup in my palms and jiggle up and down; breasts, moreover, with painfully sensitive nipples. Fatigue: it is almost impossible to be both immobile and awake. By early evening, trapped upright in a chair drawn up to a crowded restaurant table, I’m longing for sleep or even death. And wind, which is perhaps the least expected and most disastrous side effect. Quelling the Boxer Rebellion is the only thing keeping me awake. In

Melissa Kite

How it feels to be the only Brexiteers in the village

We are the only Brexiteers in the village. That, at least, is how it feels. Out they come, the far left bullies, on to the streets of Westminster waving their placards and calling for the referendum result to be cancelled. And that is bad enough. But inside the suburban Surrey homes of Middle England the enlightened liberals send out even more hostile vibes. Admit you’re Brexit and you’ll never eat my vegan lasagne again, is the message they transmit. Personally, I’m delighted to be persona non grata at the homes of my more vegan acquaintances, even the dirty ones who eat meat secretly at weekends. Why one should feel bullied

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

When it comes to Brexit, everything that can be tried will always fail

It is all beginning to feel like the closing scenes of the 1980 spoof comedy film Airplane! In particular the bit where, as the stricken jet is coming in to land, someone in the control tower suggests putting on the runway lights to help a little. ‘No,’ says Captain Rex Kramer, ‘that’s just what they’ll be expecting us to do.’ The most basic explanation for the chaos in parliament is that the political divide in the House of Commons does not remotely match the political divide in the country, on Brexit or indeed on most issues, surely. But that shouldn’t stop us revelling in the multifarious paradoxes which have come

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

Catriona’s accident has made of us minor celebrities in the village

Three weeks ago Catriona was going to the village shop when a building site security fence fell on her. Wire spikes ranged along the top gouged three chunks out of her right forearm, two of which were too capacious to sew up. She was taken to hospital by the village firemen in their fastest van, siren wailing, lights flashing. The fence had toppled over once before that day, but the mayor, with whom the legal responsibility ultimately lay (the building site was a public work) put the blame on Catriona for walking too close to the fence, or perhaps existing. Within this small Provençal village society the incident and the

Melissa Kite

The EU has banned a miracle cure for laminitis

Once upon a time, in a country that didn’t run itself, a horse supplement company invented a cure for laminitis. This cure, let’s call it LamiSafe, was like the holy grail of horse-care products because when administered to ponies who previously went lame on lush summer grass, LamiSafe prevented lameness and the pony was suddenly once again able to graze safely. I bought this miracle product after my farrier recommended it and, though sceptical at first, for I have rarely found a supplement of any kind that did what it said on the tin, I was amazed to find that it worked. Gracie, the skewbald pony, was suddenly as sound

Taki

My guide to being a man

Gstaad   I was reading in these here pages Julie Burchill’s review of Candace Bushnell’s Is There Still Sex in the City? when one of Julie’s pearls struck me like a stiff left jab in the noggin: ‘Those who have persisted in carrying on creakily have become increasingly embarrassing.’ Ouch! Could she have had the poor little Greek boy in mind? Of course not, I told myself, but then again… Never mind. A little paranoia at my age is normal. I felt better the next day when a Dutch TV crew of five arrived in the Alps to film a programme called How to be a Man. It stars one

Saturday

Marcus Berkmann

Cricket’s guilty men: my list of who deserves to be sacked for the Ashes debacle

I suppose the question is who we sack first. For like many, if not most England fans, I am at a stage beyond rage, beyond reasonable doubt, beyond all good sense. I want blood. As a friend of mine who supports Everton posted on Facebook this morning, ‘Name two seven-letter sports teams beginning with E who will always let you down.’ The candidates for the chop are as follows: 1. Jason Roy as opening batsman. Dear god, I could do better. My old friend Simon, who used to open for the team I play for, could do better. He played 252 games for us and averages just over seven. He

Thursday

Taki

My jailhouse diet

Gstaad   It’s written in the Declaration of Independence, so it must be true: the pursuit of happiness is an unalienable right. There are those, of course, who try to deny us the pursuit of happiness — we used to call them ball-busters — and they were more often than not wives or girlfriends, ladies who had replaced stern nannies, or even sterner mothers, as we grew older. I’ve had women trying to thwart my pursuit of happiness throughout my life, mostly using the excuse that they’re worried about my health. They don’t seem to get that happiness is more important than health, and that I was never healthier than

Jeremy Clarke

How Captain Mainwaring lightened my mother’s dying days

On Saturday evening I showered, shaved and, prompted by a strange impulse, put on my going-out clothes. Then I cycled round to the nursing home. The door of room 33 was ajar and she was fast asleep, mouth open, brow furrowed, as if she were trying to make sense of it all. The electric motor-powered mattress was raised and she was sitting up rather than lying, her head lolling towards the darkening window. On the bed table was a box of man-size tissues, a TV remote, a little pink sponge on a stick for sucking liquid out of, and a baby’s plastic drinking beaker in which her tea had gone

Melissa Kite

A mysterious case of fly-tipping immunity

When is fly-tipping not fly-tipping? I think I can explain, now the pile of rubble has finally moved from the hedgerow after a most unusual conversation with the local council. After weeks of trying to get to the bottom of why one householder in Surrey was being allowed to chuck his building refuse into the lane outside his house, I got through to a chap at the local authority who told me he had gone to have a look at the mess and could see nothing wrong with it. ‘You mean you didn’t see the pile of broken drains heaped up outside his house in the hedgerow, by the black

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Is there anything that can’t be put down to a ‘condition’?

I suppose it is overstating the case to suggest that dyslexia is simply a term coined to assuage the disappointment of middle-class parents faced with offspring who are considerably thicker than they fondly imagined them to be. There was an interesting report a few years ago by Professor Joe Elliott of Durham University. He wrote: ‘On the basis of current research, there are no meaningful grounds to differentiate between so-called dyslexic and non-dyslexic poor readers. Genetics, neuroscience and cognitive science can help us better understand the underlying nature of reading disability, but they do not offer means to make a dyslexic/poor reader distinction.’ Well, quite. The dyslexia industry — by

Sunday

Rod Liddle

In solidarity with Owen Jones

Much as the appalling Shami Chakrabarti has insisted, I stand ‘in solidarity’ with Owen Jones and hope he makes a swift recovery. The question, though, is whether Owen Jones stands in solidarity with Owen Jones. By which I mean, does he agree that assaulting people because they have different political opinions to you is always odious and always wrong? He was full of glee when Nigel Farage was pelted with a milkshake, tweeting: ‘spare me the tears over a banana milkshake’ and praising the burger chain who were selling the milkshakes for having ‘joined the anti-fascist resistance’. But that’s not all. Jones also tweeted in support of Aamer Rahman who advised that it was morally

Thursday

Taki

High life | 15 August 2019

If it hadn’t arrived I’d be dead, but it was hardly welcome: another birthday — 38 years old on 11 August, but for any pedant among you, reverse the numerals and you’ll get it right. Thirty-eight came to me as I was sparring with a young whippersnapper from Norway recently. I was out of breath and told him that, at 38, I was having trouble keeping up. ‘You’re doing fine for 38,’ he said, and then attacked as if there was no tomorrow, the brute. What’s that old cliché about being as old as you feel? I’ve never felt younger, but I have to stop giving advice to people. La

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 15 August 2019

A 20-minute drive through quiet country lanes then suddenly a madcap roundabout and teeming new ring road and finally the hospital car park where I leave the car unlocked and the windows down because nobody in their right mind would want to pinch a car as shabby as this. Up the grassy bank, in through the sliding doors, turn right past the café, left and left again, up two flights of stairs to level one, then a wide sunny corridor with paintings by schoolchildren and mission statements, then left and straight on without deviating as far as the front row of the pews in the hospital chapel, where I stop

Melissa Kite

Real life | 15 August 2019

One thing Lorraine Kelly does not say in the Wayfair advert is: ‘What if I fancy getting my money back for an item that hasn’t arrived?’ I guess they’ve only got 30 seconds, and it’s a wee bit complicated. This is a shame because I’ve always rather enjoyed myself on Wayfair. When the wrong bed arrived, they set about despatching so many beds to me that I ran out of storage space until the right one randomly materialised. So when it came to ordering a new mattress for another bed I returned for more, thinking that if it went wrong I might get deluged in the EU mattress mountain. The

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

An all-female cabinet? Insert your own joke here

I wonder what Jacques Derrida would have made of the new leader of the UK Independence party? In the philosopher’s typically readable and sensible tract On the Name, Derrida muses: ‘The name: What does one call thus? What does one understand under the name of name? And what occurs when one gives a name? What does one give then?’ All good questions, Jacques. The new leader of Ukip is called Dick Braine. I expect he will prefer, perhaps insist, upon being known as ‘Richard’. Or perhaps this is the way Ukip intends to continue, with its rapidly changing leaders henceforth each chosen for an apt and mildly offensive nomenclature: Bob