The Wiki Man

It is a joke I have heard told 20 different ways since I first heard it 23 years ago. Often the location has changed, along with the nationality of the subject or his transgression. However, the ur-joke, told to me by an anthropologist in 1986, went like this. A tourist is exploring the coast of

Some time in the mid-1990s I spent a day in a windowless room watching endless presentations of European television commercials. In the style of the times, most were filmed in exotic tropical locations with lavish production values, sumptuous photography and a pulsating soundtrack. As the day drew to an end, the creative director of an

Fifteen years ago, when I lived in W2, I was sent a leaflet from something called (I think) the Bayswater Residents Association. As is common with anything produced by self-appointed volunteers, the leaflet proposed an exclusively geriatric vision for the postal district in which we lived, one completely at odds with its population. The organisation

At first glance the climate change debate is simple: you either believe the doom-mongers or you don’t. Soon, however, other questions arise. Is the world warming up or not? If so, is this warming anthropogenic or the result of a natural cycle? If greenhouse gases are indeed to blame, do we reduce emissions now or

To Amy******@************.org: I have a LG microwave that I want to sell for $30. I am aware your ad said whites only, but I am an African American. I sincerely hope that we can put race issues aside and just do business. From Amy ****** to Me: I am so sorry that you misread my

In the end I ignored my own advice and bought an Apple iPad, purely, as I explained to my wife, ‘for the purposes of research’. The very same ‘research’ that has by now filled two or three desk drawers with a ridiculous assortment of electrical chargers, the devices they once charged mostly lost, burnt out

I am, it’s true, optimistic about the role of technology in making life more pleasant and interesting, but in some areas I am sceptical, even fogeyish. Ask me to design a perfect world and it will have electronics (and medicine) from the present day but engineering and architecture from the 1930s. My answer to any

A few years ago a leisure centre advertised ‘Keep-fit classes for the over-60s’. Nobody turned up. To broaden the appeal, they advertised ‘Keep-fit classes for the over-50s’. The sessions sold out. Not one of those joining was under 65 years of age. How many 65-year-olds want to attend anything aimed at the over-60s? And how

With the single exception of the in- flight live map with its wonderfully eccentric ideas about the relative importance of towns and cities (what’s so special about Chartwell?), I don’t often use the in-flight entertainment systems on planes. I’m not sure I want to watch Avatar on a nine-inch screen — or on any screen,

I haven’t watched Triumph of the Will all the way through, but I am fairly confident that at no point in the film does Hess suddenly turn to the crowd and say: ‘Yes, sir, your question. Row 689, the blond gentleman in black with the skull insignia? No, not you, sir — the slightly more

I don’t know if you have ever been to Paris, but it’s basically a kind of London for girls. I generally try to avoid the place, as you can’t get a decent curry and there’s nothing in the shops unless you are an anorexic dwarf. But a couple of times a year I used to

If you have used Oxford railway station recently, you may have noticed a strange electronic sign on the up platform displaying a ‘parking code’, a seemingly random three-digit number. I wondered about this and asked around. It seems that, when parking next to the station, you can either ‘pay and display’, in which case you

It takes a more ruthless person than me to walk past any of the defunct branches of Borders without feeling some pangs of conscience. I am sure the chain made some mistakes (it had a strange habit of opening vast, hangar-like stores in out-of-town retail parks such as Lakeside, places not generally known for their

Much as it pains me to use the Spectator’s pages to plug another publication, I can’t help being impressed by the Economist’s invention of a new kind of subscription service. Much as it pains me to use the Spectator’s pages to plug another publication, I can’t help being impressed by the Economist’s invention of a

I’m not frightened of flying. Or spiders. Nor, like one friend of mine, do I have a crippling fear of tomatoes. But I do suffer from mild koumpounophobia — the fear of buttons. I should add that, in my case, it is more a mild distaste than a full-blown phobia. While I wouldn’t care to

You know how it is. You’re driving down some remote B road in rural Britain and your petrol tank is running low. At last you stumble on some tiny petrol station selling some fabulously obscure brand of petrol such as Anglo or Burmah. When you pull in, the weirdest thing happens — a live human being

At an airport recently I saw a sign for the public telephones; it was a symbol showing a round telephone dial with a receiver across the top. Nothing odd about this, you may think — that is if, like me, you are over 40. If you are under 20, on the other hand, it may

I read Dennis Sewell’s article on the damaging influence of eugenics on the welfare state with interest and mostly agree with his views. I read Dennis Sewell’s article on the damaging influence of eugenics on the welfare state with interest and mostly agree with his views. Even in my most right-wing moments, I don’t want

Most debate about modern architecture revolves around aesthetics. This misses the point. I quite like the way many modern buildings look — what I hate is the way they work. Say what you like about traditional architecture, no one has ever approached the portico of the British Museum and asked, ‘Any idea where the entrance