We all agree that a world without manners would make this a pretty grim place to live. Offensive informality is pretty much accepted nowadays, and manners are at times seen as a superficial activity. But good manners are as much a part of our culture as great books, great paintings and great classical music. At
After Trev had mugged the mugger in the toilet we moved quickly on to another club. The Double O is frankly a horrible place, but it stays open later than any of the others, and is only a bracing ten-minute walk along the seafront. As was usual on the walk between Mandy’s and the Double
‘No, I do not do WhatsApp.’ That’s pretty much all I ever seem to say to people nowadays. They ask me if I do WhatsApp, I say I don’t do WhatsApp and they never bother with me again. I deduce from this that not only can we not now meet in person (so 80s), we
A few years ago, I got a bit fed up with receiving Christmas cards from my friends designed to show off just how well they were doing. A typical card consisted of five or six blond children on ponies or quad bikes with a massive country house in the background. The caption would be something
I was wondering what to write about this week when I suddenly realised that exactly 40 years ago this Saturday I became editor of this magazine. Despite eventually getting the sack, I hung onto the job for nine years, from 1975 to 1984, which is still the longest that anyone has had it since Wilson
Q. I have learned that someone I much admired in youth is about to become single again. I only have the sketchiest details but am single myself and keen to know more. The one person who knows everyone and would know everything is a valued and highly amusing friend of mine, but she is also
The Honourable Society of Odd Bottles began proceedings with a report on the activities of our junior branch. These youngsters are not yet eligible to become drinking members, but they are chosen because of their unremitting hostility to vermin and their burgeoning enthusiasm for killing game. Young Charlie, the Nimrod of his generation, has been
I had never heard the Country (Red Dirt) singer Wade Bowen before, although his latest album Hold my Beer (Vol 1) has already sold 14,000 copies. On an earlier album, he provided textbook examples of two constructions that I find increasingly annoying, and one that seems fine. ‘I love it that you’re my girl,’ sang Wade.
What follows is a proposal for reducing the BBC licence fee and improving the corporation’s output while saving the British newspaper industry. All that’s involved is a basic understanding of pricing psychology combined with a digital currency for micropayments. Under my proposals, half the licence fee would fund the BBC’s Reithian purpose; the other £60
