Daily mail

The Airbnb accommodation at Paddington, chez Mohammed, was a fourth-floor room measuring about nine feet by five. As well as having a single bed, this small space was extraordinarily well equipped, with a wardrobe, huge fridge, sink, draining board, ironing board, microwave oven, kettle, two electric hobs, a set of saucepans and enough cutlery and crockery for a select dinner party, and a television set. The room’s heat, which came from an unidentifiable source, was tropical. The mattress had a couple of broken springs and was horribly filthy, but the sheet covering it smelt freshly laundered and for just £22 a night I was well pleased. When I switched on

I really will miss Paul Dacre when he steps down as editor of the Daily Mail. There have been times, I must admit, when I have attacked the Mail’s grotesque behaviour and stupefying hypocrisy, but the following are good and true points to be made about Paul. 1) He fully, properly edits, and his proprietor has the sense to let him do so. 2) He values good writers, and pays them accordingly. 3) He is brave, especially in not minding the disapproval of polite society; and this courage has enabled him to crash around in the china shop of political correctness at a satisfying decibel level. For us in Sussex, there may

Eamon de Valera used to say that if he wanted to know the true feelings of the people of Ireland he needed only to look into his own heart. You could say the same about Paul Dacre, shortly to step down as editor of the Daily Mail. When it comes to the sentiments of Middle England, or at least quite a bit of it, he knows what it loves and fears because those are his own sentiments. He doesn’t second guess his readers; he is properly authentic. I knew him from his brief, two year stint at the Evening Standard, and he was the best editor I have ever worked

I am boycotting Center Parcs. Admittedly, this is not going to have an enormous impact upon my life. It’s a bit like announcing with great pride and fervour that I am boycotting Clare Balding or Pakistan or goat’s cheese. All of those things I am perfectly able to live without and already do so. I will never eat goat’s cheese, visit Pakistan or watch Clare Balding. I did once visit Center Parcs, mind — about ten years ago. It was excruciatingly awful — the kids hated it as much as we did. Extortionately expensive, restrictive, boring and full of who I can only describe as ‘tossers’ cycling along tarmacked lanes

How to signal your virtue is one of the most perplexing problems in modern etiquette. It has to be done, obviously. No one can get on in life, or at least on Twitter, without making clear to friends and strangers that they are for good things and against bad things. So pressing has the need for self-promotion become, people stop me in the streets and ask: “How do I do it, Nick? How do I boost my profile and maybe getting a slot on Radio 4, while I’m about it?” I’m tired of being bothered, so I’ll put my reply on the Web. The path of the self-righteous is strewn

Virgin Trains has announced that it will no longer sell the Daily Mail on board its services nor offer it free to first class passengers on the basis that ‘We’ve decided that this paper is not compatible with the VT brand and our beliefs’. It goes on to say its staff have objected to the Mail’s ‘position on…immigration, LGBT rights, and unemployment’ – although it fails to expound exactly what it finds so offensive about the Mail’s coverage on these issues. So is it a victory for the ‘Stop Funding Hate’ campaign – or a reflection that the Daily Mail has been at the forefront of criticism of Virgin Trains

Last Saturday, the high-street chain Paperchase ran a promotion in the Daily Mail offering two free rolls of wrapping paper. Nothing objectionable about that, you might think, even if the design was migraine-inducingly awful. I have lost count of the number of times I have been dragged into this ghastly emporium by my daughter on a weekend in pursuit of some over-priced piece of tat. Not recommended if you are nursing a hangover. Later that day, the left-wing lobby group Stop Funding Hate launched a fusillade against Paperchase on Twitter for having the temerity to advertise in Britain’s second-best-selling daily newspaper. ‘Is a Daily Mail promotion what customers want to

A funny thing happened on my way to lunch last week. I opened the Daily Mail and read a few snippets about the Camilla–Charles saga by Penny Junor, stuff to make strong men weep with boredom. But then a certain item caught my eye: ‘Camilla and the Queen finally met in the summer of 2000, when Charles threw a 60th birthday party at Highgrove for his cousin King Constantine of Greece… They shook hands, smiled at one another, Camilla curtseyed, and they had a moment or two of small talk before going to different tables for lunch.’ Hey, wait a minute, I told myself. You were there, for God’s sake,

This month marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Nigel Dempster, once the world’s best-known gossip columnist. For three decades he was paid a fortune by the Daily Mail to provide juicy tittle-tattle about the royal family (he was a close friend of Princess Margaret), the aristocracy (particularly priapic minor baronet Dai Llewellyn), tycoons including Jimmy Goldsmith and racing figures such as Robert Sangster, as well as mainstream TV stars like David Frost and Robin Day. Alas, by the time of Nigel’s death (from the awful effects of progressive supranuclear palsy) his Diary page was already an anachronism. His brand of gossip was in its death throes. His cast

So now we know who’s really responsible for the horrible attack at Finsbury Park Mosque: it was the Sun wot done it. And maybe the Daily Mail too. No sooner had Darren Osborne allegedly crashed a hired van into Muslim worshippers than certain so-called liberals were stringing up the tabloids. The low-rent press poisoned his mind, just as it’s always poisoning plebs’ minds, they claimed, without a morsel of evidence. He could take the Guardian for all we know. They present their tabloid-baiting as a challenge to bigotry, when anyone who knows anything about history knows that fearing the tabloids and their dim, malleable readers is classic British bigotry. Just