Shortly after he became champion apprentice, when he was launching the next stage of his career from Mick Channon’s stables back in 2001, the lads nicknamed Chris Catlin the ‘Cat’. His surname helped but so did the fact that the pale-faced, dark-eyed jockey moves quietly about the place. His unobtrusive style hasn’t changed. You simply
I’m on holiday in France for the first time in nine years and I’d forgotten how lovely it is. The food, the architecture, the scenery — it’s all exquisite. Indeed, I’d be tempted to move here permanently in spite of the 75 per cent tax rate were it not for the country’s single flaw: it’s
Character is destiny, according to Heraclitus, and that becomes increasingly clear as you get older and chart the ups and downs of your friends. Take the fate of one of my oldest acquaintances, who I’ll call ‘Philip’. Up until his mid-forties, Philip had a pretty spectacular career as a journalist and broadcaster. He won awards,
After a carefree month at my wife’s house in Tuscany — the longest summer holiday I have spent there for maybe 30 years — the return to England this week has proven especially irksome. It is depressing enough to land at any British airport, but Stansted takes the cake. Arriving there after a Ryanair flight
The Italian shop assistant accused by Oprah Winfrey of showing racial prejudice towards her in a shop in Zurich has hotly denied the charge, but with a curious twist. ‘I am Italian,’ she said in an interview with a Swiss magazine. ‘Why should I discriminate against anybody because of their origin?’ She seemed to be
As part of the after-dinner entertainment on a cruise ship recently, I encountered a couple of comedians. One claimed he had recently shared a booking with a topless ventriloquist. I bet nobody saw her lips move. What was noticeable in both acts, given the seaborne clientele, was the concentration on jokes about ageing, like the
I’m currently in Cornwall with my family and whenever I spend a lot of time with my children I’m constantly reminded of the opening lines of ‘This Be the Verse’: ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad. / They may not mean to, but they do. / They fill you with the faults they
One of the great things about spending the summer holidays in England is that it gives you an opportunity to experience life in the country. All year, Caroline and I dream about moving out of London and spend hours scouring property websites to see what we could buy if we sold our house in Acton.
While sitting beside a pool under a blistering Tuscan sun, I’ve been reading an article in Corriere della Sera about how to make the most of a summer holiday. The paper says that it isn’t enough to do what I have been doing — sweat, swim, sweat again, swim again, and then eat and drink
Scarcely a day passes, it seems, without another book landing with a thud on my desk that bemoans the rise of inequality. On this side of the Atlantic we have The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett and Injustice by Daniel Dorling, while in America we have Charles Murray’s Coming Apart and Joseph
A fresh new breeze is wafting through British racing. Led by the enthusiastic Sheikh Fahad Al Thani, the Qatar ruling family is investing heavily in buying British bloodstock and, through their Qipco holdings, sponsoring the richest day’s racing in Britain. At first British racegoers accepted the newcomers with a polite smile, seeing them as another
When we bought the farmhouse in Tuscany, where I am now, more than 40 years ago, there were only two restaurants within a five-mile radius and neither of them was much good. And being in the unfashionable province of Arezzo, as opposed to the then already popular Chianti region between Siena and Florence, there were
Seeing the royal hack pack in full cry on Monday reminded me of the week I spent with the late James Whitaker, the Daily Mirror’s chief royal correspondent. This was for a profile I was writing about him in a colour supplement in 1993. It was a memorable experience, not least because of the message
The people of Rome have always liked to believe the worst of their bishop. When I was a correspondent in Rome more than 40 years ago, I was constantly assured by its citizens that the Pope not only had the evil eye but was known for a fact to be living secretly in the Vatican
‘Another opening, another show,’ sang five-year-old Charlie on his way to school this morning — and then proceeded to belt out the entire first verse of the famous Cole Porter song. No, it’s not what you’re thinking. All four of my children are deep into rehearsals of Kiss Me Kate, this year’s ‘summer production’ at
Clive Cox, once a conditional jockey in Lambourn, fell at the first fence one year in the Grand National. ‘Mind you,’ he told the owners, ‘we were going well at the time.’ It helps in handling horses to have a sense of humour and there is nothing conditional now about Clive Cox’s presence at the
The government has done a puzzling U-turn over its plan to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes. It had seemed determined to put the plan into effect, but suddenly announced last week that it had had second thoughts. It was no longer sure that this would in fact discourage the young from taking up smoking, so
A few years ago, I got the shock of my life when a girl I was sitting next to at a 21st birthday party asked me if I was a dad. ‘Are you asking if I have children?’ I said. ‘No, I’m asking if you’re the father of one of the guests.’ I almost fell
The days may be long gone when a husband would pretend to commit adultery in a Brighton hotel so as to clear his wife, whatever her faults, of any blame for a divorce. But might it not still be customary for him at least to present their separation as mutually and amicably agreed? Not so,
Caroline and I were watching The Fall in our front room when the intruder entered our house. Not great timing on his part, considering The Fall is a BBC drama series about a serial killer who breaks into people’s homes, then tortures and murders them. Thankfully, we never actually set eyes on him. We only
