He was a Falstaff in his drinking and in his celebration of life, but his greatness lay in his friendships. Like his closest friend Nick Scott, who left us two and a half years ago, he roamed the world making friends and being as generous to them as a fairy godfather. The years, with all
The receptionist with brown lipstick showed my son and me into a faultless waiting room, whose centrepiece was a big colour photograph of out-of-focus lavender florets. A couplet written underneath said: I’m the colourful leaves when autumn comes around And the pure white snow that blankets the ground. Had we made an appointment, she asked.
‘The reason vets are so expensive now,’ explained the vet in her snazzy green uniform, ‘is because we can do so much more.’ I was standing in the waiting room of the veterinary practice with the silly name: the corporate, expensively branded chain vet I said I would never go to, but have to when
Sorry is allegedly the hardest word to say — so Carolyn Harris, chair of the all-party parliamentary group studying gambling-related harm, scored a significant success recently by extracting apologies from a number of leading gambling-industry executives about the damage caused by their business. Representatives from Paddy Power Betfair, William Hill, Sky Bet and bet365 agreed
I think my colleagues on the pro-Brexit side of the aisle have been a little unkind in their response to John Bercow’s announcement that he’ll be standing down as chief referee in the House of Commons. Yes, he’s clearly done everything in his power to make life as difficult as possible for those MPs who
Q. We often have friends coming to stay before (and after) we all head off for Glyndebourne, a 20-minute drive away. What is the etiquette governing who should drive? It has drinking ramifications of course. Then, what is the etiquette of the seating plan in the car? — A.W., Lindfield, Sussex A. Assertive forward-planning is
What do you get if you cross a dyslexic, an insomniac and an agnostic? Someone who wakes up at 4 a.m. and says: ‘Is there a dog?’ There was a lot of dog talk this weekend, and about the tributes they bring to their owners in the shooting field. A South African who had just
Fotherington-Thomas was introduced by Nigel Molesworth, the narrator of Down with Skool!, in 1953: ‘As you see he is skipping like a girlie he is uterly wet and a sissy.’ Geoffrey Willans featured the school sissy again in How to be Topp (also illustrated by Ronald Searle, who had spent time in a Japanese prison
In 1891, a 29-year-old man moved from Philadelphia to Chicago intending to start a business. With $32 to his name, he began by selling scouring soap. Hoping to boost sales, he gave away small packets of baking powder with every purchase. Soon he found that the baking powder was more popular than his soap, so
