Chas Newkey-Burden is co-author, with Julie Burchill, of Not In My Name: A Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy. He also wrote Running: Cheaper Than Therapy and is the host of Jesus Christ They’ve Done It – the Threads podcast
I was 12 years of age and mooching along Putney high street when someone thrust into my hand a leaflet that changed my life. It bore a photograph of a cat with its head covered in electrodes, and the slogan: Curiosity Will Kill This Cat. I had a beloved cat of my own called Chippy.
It may be a pagan festival but thank God for Halloween and all its joys: the child’s delight at being dressed up and out after dark, our thrill at pretending to be frightened, the faint sense that for one night, the ordinary world has slipped its moorings. On Halloween, the country briefly remembers how to
When I first started running 25 years ago, it was the simplicity that captured my heart. There were no complicated techniques to master, no ghastly membership fees or extortionate equipment to shell out on. You just needed to buy a pair of shoes, get out there in the fresh air and put one foot in
Transport for London is refusing to take down a social media video which encourages owners to take their cats on the tube network. The unhinged Instagram video shows two owners taking their cats on an escalator, in a lift and on a train, with the slogan: ‘This is your sign to start travelling with your
Just when you thought we could all stop talking about flags, Gary Neville has arrived with his size ten boots to keep the ball in play. The ex-Man Utd footballer, turned property developer, said he removed a union flag from one of his Manchester sites because it was being ‘used in a negative fashion’. He
Lucy Letby’s barrister says she has ‘new hope’, as he prepares to submit 1,000 pages of fresh evidence that he believes will ‘clear her name’. In an ideal justice system, evidence that proves an inmate’s innocence would of course lead to their release, but we don’t have an ideal justice system, as I learned as
From emails to ‘breaking news’ alerts to texts, our phones come under a bombardment of notifications these days. But there’s one kind that always brightens my day – the one that tells me that a friend has sent me a voice note. This, however, seems to make me unusual. ‘I don’t want to hear your
When you’re travelling abroad, a good way of getting the measure of any city is the culture of its public transport. I visited Australia several times as a child and I was surprised by how chatty strangers were on trains and buses. People sat down and struck up a conversation with whoever was sitting next
News headlines about a Labour council banning fireworks to avoid upsetting baby pandas are certainly eye-catching. It’s true that Edinburgh city council has banned fireworks in nine neighbourhoods between Halloween and November 9, after the death of a baby red panda and its mother in Edinburgh Zoo last year were linked to the din of
The news that Taylor Swift is releasing her 12th album in October will thrill her fans but perhaps we should all be grateful because this might mean we can move on from the endless chatter about the Oasis reunion tour. From the moment the Gallaghers announced their lucrative concerts it was clear that a lot
At a time when Britain feels increasingly unstitched – with families queuing at food banks and sewage drifting from rivers to seas – it’s almost impressive that anyone has the emotional energy to be annoyed by vegans. Yet we continue to provoke strong feelings, and Katie Glass gave strong voice to them in these pages
Ordering things online can be a lottery. You can’t touch, smell or taste the product you’re buying, so it’s hard to know whether you’ll actually want it when it arrives. But we keep clicking anyway because it’s more convenient than trudging to the shops and things are often cheaper. For me, another reason to order
Social media can still be a force for good, as I found out last weekend when we woke up with an unexpected visitor in our garden: a beautiful white, crested chicken. In the old days, reuniting lost animals with their owners could be a tricky task, involving phone calls to the RSPCA and local authorities,
Almost 16 years after they last performed live, Oasis kick off their reunion tour tonight and for every ‘mad for it’ fan, there’s someone else who thinks they’re a musical atrocity. The critics say they rip off other artists. There’s not much to debate about this. The intro of ‘Don’t Look Back In Anger’
When Deal or No Deal hit our TV screens in 2005, it soon became a national obsession. I remember hotfooting it from the train station to my house, desperate to make sure I didn’t miss it. This was the most infatuated I’d been with a TV show since I was child. Noel Edmonds, the show’s presenter,
Leonardo DiCaprio got his Oscar after 23 years. King Charles was crowned after 70 years. And now David Beckham will finally get his knighthood. Good things come to those who wait – and how Beckham has waited. It’s no secret that Goldenballs has been gasping for a knighthood for a long time, nor that the
The secretly-filmed footage is a horror show. Hens are desperately trying to escape as they suffocate in a gas chamber. The birds, which are being killed for supermarket meat because they’re past their egg-laying days, gasp for breath. They appear to cry out as they die slowly. The floor of the gas chamber is littered
The secret is out: vegetarians are ‘tougher’ and more ‘power-hungry’ than meat eaters, according to a study in the Times this morning. Well, as a vegan I suppose I must be even tougher and more megalomaniacal. I’m surprised, then, to not find myself doing a whole lot of street brawling or holding any subterranean meetings to discuss how I’ll
You know you’ve arrived when professors start thinking about how to look after you during a major emergency. As a vegan, I was thrilled to read in the Times this week that Professor Tim Lang, a professor of food policy, has told the government that us meat-dodgers must be catered for in any ‘food apocalypse’. Speaking at
28 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Arabella Byrne on the social minefield of private swimming pools (1:13); Sean Thomas says that not knowing where you are is one of the joys of travel (5:34); reviewing Helen Carr’s Sceptred Isle: A New History of the 14th Century, Mathew Lyons looks at the reality of a vivid
