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Few bluesmen have matched the success of John Mayall, ‘the godfather of British blues’, who died on Monday aged 90 at his home in California. In a career spanning more than six decades, he made 50-odd albums with an ever-changing incarnation of his band, the Bluesbreakers. His proselytisation of black American artists like Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and Otis Rush, gave these legends a new audience this side of the Atlantic. BB King is said to have remarked that, were it not for Mayall, ‘a lot of us black musicians in America would still be catchin’ the hell that we caught long before.’ Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, founded in the early

What’s the biggest division in life? Between clever people and stupid people? Between the good-looking and the ugly? No. The fundamental difference is between the ones who do things quickly and the ones who do them slowly.  You know that friend who emails you back the moment you email them for a favour? Or the builder who comes round the morning you ring him? These are the modern saints – the hyper-efficient deities who put to shame that other friend who only ever rings when they want something out of you; or the plumber you have to ring three times and only ever rings back to say he isn’t coming after all. 

I’m in Provence for my annual jaunt to the land of bulls, Pernod and lavender. All over our small French village, fever for the Jeux Olympiques ‘24 builds: the Olympic rings hang in the window of the Pharmacie and the Papeterie, in the Cafe du Commerce on the Rue General de Galle the television blares all day with adverts for the opening ceremony set to Celine Dion’s I’m Alive, the Mistral blows the Olympic buntinghung over the Mairie high into the cloudless sky. So far, so normale.   One thing, however, seems rather off. Snoop Dogg, the American rapper and notorious connoisseur of large joints, will be carrying the Olympic torch through the streets of Seine Saint Denis on Friday ahead of the grand opening ceremony that evening. Sorry, what? His fellow torch