Gstaad The fat cats were all over Davos last week, greedy bankers, self-important bosses of publicly owned multinationals, craven hedge funders and shameless publicity-seekers such as Bono and others of his ilk mixing freely with Gordon Brown, Al Gore and Bill Gates. No, Carla Bruni did not attend, nor did Amy Winehouse, who had better
Tom proudly showed me a video clip on his mobile phone of his latest girlfriend doing a striptease. Confident girl. The tattoos must have cost a fortune. ‘So who’s this one?’ I said. ‘The first time I woke up beside her, I thought, “Oh no! What’s this?” But I’ve got to hold both my hands
Despite efforts not to be superstitious, I am much obsessed by the idea of disaster seepage. That is to say, when one thing goes wrong, a hundred others usually follow. So it was that a leaking roof segued seamlessly last week into blocked drains, a broken catflap and a stolen mobile phone. Have you noticed
As a father of three small children, I find myself constantly baffled by what is known in our household as ‘the boredom paradox’. Why is it that my four-year-old daughter considers a trip to Loftus Road to watch QPR battle against relegation ‘boring’, while her enjoyment of the same six episodes of Numberjacks can never
First Serb Like this journal’s esteemed High Life commentator, I too have been spending too much time watching the last fortnight’s Australian Tennis Open from Melbourne — but unlike my colleague I found it an absolute revelation, with potentially lethal levels of thrills, shocks, gut-wrenching excitement and great grace in victory and defeat. For most people
Q. I wonder if you can give me some advice. My parents have agreed I can have 20 people to a party in our house in Balham. I am 16 but very responsible so they agreed to go out between 7 p.m. and 11 when the party is taking place, though they would only go
In the midst of an author tour for a new book, I am confronting both the worst evils of fast food and some surprising exceptions. Writers today cannot simply write books; readers want to see you in the flesh, talk to you, send you thoughts or their own fledgling manuscripts. I actually enjoy the human
A reader, whose letter I have put somewhere safe, asks me whether I cannot blast the misuse of broker as a verb. Indeed I should love to blast away, if it would stay still in the water. The usage annoys me as a cliché. It is generally a deal or settlement that is brokered, according
