So farewell, then, to probably the best Wimbledon fortnight ever, certainly the sunniest that I can remember. Andy Roddick now joins Gottfried von Cramm and Ken Rosewall as a three-times-losing finalist, coming within a whisker of winning the greatest trophy in tennis, but turning into a tragic hero instead. Still, unlike the elegant German baron
Once a year I turn out for Peter Oborne’s cricket team, the White City All-Stars, for their annual cricket weekend at Horningsham, a ludicrously pretty village next to Longleat House in Wiltshire. I can’t bowl, I’m hopeless with a bat, I can’t catch or throw. I try to make myself useful, however, by offering around
‘I wish I could be inside your head,’ she said, ‘on Sunday at Glastonbury. How must it feel to play to so many people?’ She wasn’t just saying it either. She really meant it, longed to know how it feels. Thinking about it now, I’m wondering whether the first bit is an appropriate thing for
As funny as Bruno undoubtedly is, Baron-Cohen’s film is fundamentally dishonest One of the funniest scenes in Bruno is when Sacha Baron-Cohen, playing the gay Austrian television presenter, appears on a talk show in Texas called The Richard Bey Show. The African-American audience is none too impressed when he tells them he’s looking for a
It was when Charlie Starmer-Smith, son of England’s Nigel and no mean scrum half in his own right, pulled himself to his full height of 5ft something, peered a long way up and asked Simon Shaw, the Lions and England oak tree of a second row, whether he’d mind if he, Charlie, tried to lift
Q. I was persuaded by my son to attend a lecture on astronomy. I was out of my depth within five minutes. Should I have interrupted the speaker, Mary, and asked for elucidation? I did not want to embarrass my son but through not so doing, the whole rest of the lecture went over my
Like the flying ants that swarm at this time of year, certain tricks of speech seethe in sudden outbursts. I heard the word testament used by mistake for testimony twice during From Our Own Correspondent last week, from different contributors. I was too kind about this usage four years ago when I mentioned it here.
