Restaurant critic A.A. Gill is one of my favourite writers in the Times – though he’s more than merely a restaurant critic. He’s also one of the paper’s television critics and more general columnists and feature writers. He really is a very good writer, with – as the blurbs have it – an ‘acerbic wit.’ (Blurb & sports writers truly are the sons and daughters of Homer and his ‘rosy-fingered dawn.’) Anyway, Gill got himself in a bit of trouble, last... Read Full Story

Sometimes, life is kind to time-pressed, autumn-weary columnists. When looking out of the window is like hearing an endless loop of Supertramp’s Godawful ditty ‘It’s raining again’, it’s hard to think of things to write. You read about the ‘Slumdog Millionaire director [wanting] to tackle the tale of Aron Ralston, the trapped climber who amputated his own arm with a pocketknife in 2003‘… … and you think, ‘Good!’. Not ‘go... Read Full Story

(Very fucking Elton John indeed…) Now, I don’t know why exactly but I still feel that the following announcement is ever so slightly disappointing: “Astrologists Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry took light measurements from more than 200,000 galaxies, broke them down into their constituent colours and then averaged the colours out to produce a single shade visible to the human eye. The result was beige.” Beige…? It’s a bit like being a little girl and dreaming of mar... Read Full Story

Okay, so someone asks you to come to his place for dinner. Then, on your way over, you get mugged. Now, I’m not suggesting that you should sue the person who invited you to leave the safety of your home… … or cuss him out… … or remove him from your Christmas card list. That would be silly – and more than a bit petty. On the other hand, it would be rather strange to call that person and say, “I’m awfully sorry that I couldn’t make it to dinner – but I... Read Full Story

(Like one of those ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots…) Granted, I’m an inmate in a mental institution… No, that’s not me doing the talking. Those were the opening words, spoken by the dwarfish narrator of Günter Grass’s newly translated and much celebrated novel, ‘The Tin Drum’. Of course, they could also have come from movie producer Barrie Osborne – or, that is, you feel that he should be committed to such a place, for his own good. As f... Read Full Story

Right, permit me to gloat for a little bit: My team, Ajax Amsterdam, just beat their old rivals Feyenoord (Rotterdam) 5-1. Ah yes, Amsterdam versus Rotterdam: The only thing these places lack is some bard giving these rivals the old ‘Capulets & Montagues’ treatment. Well, maybe not. I’m a big fan of Shakespeare but Romeo and Juliet has never been a play I warmed to. I prefer my teenage suicide pact to take slightly less time than a full five acts. “A glooming peace this... Read Full Story

I’m totally with the White Rabbit today: ‘So she was considering, in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her. There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself “Oh dear! Oh de... Read Full Story

(Perhaps so but politicians remain the cheapest sell-by-dates on the calendar…) You know, you read about modern-day parliamentarians and their feeble expenses scams and you can’t help but compare their behaviour rather unfavourably with the much more entertainingly lurid corruption of the old Roman empire. Sure, our present Masters of the Universe also consider themselves above the law but they translate this into moats, duck floats and the odd exaggerated gardening bill – which ... Read Full Story

(’As candles to wanton cakes are we to the gods’ - or something…) I’m sure none of those who read this have any particular wish to go inside the toilet with me. If they did so, they would see – at least in my home – that I keep a small number of books there. One of those, at this time, is a copy of ‘Just what I always wanted’, written by Robin Laurance, which holds ‘A calendrical collection of curious gifts – birthday presents and other offerings –... Read Full Story

(Well, that or an iceberg…) The world economy might, as of yet, be rather sickly but the world’s doom sayers are still doing a brisk trade – even though some of it is the equivalent of flogging cheap souvenirs to the Lourdes couch crowd: “Football players have been warned against spitting on the pitch, since it could increase the risk spreading swine flu - as two Premier League clubs have been hit by the virus. The Health Protection Agency (HPA) cautioned that spitting - which i... Read Full Story