celebrities
Smoking is sexy again
It’s a summer’s day in Suffolk, some time in 1992. My best friend Rebecca and I are both 14 and…
Tribal loyalties
In his ‘journey into the psychology of belonging’, Michael Bond focuses on the positive side of tribalism, leaving its darker aspects mostly unexplored
Wicked smaht
When I was ten years old I had a babysitter who was a beautiful graduate student at an Ivy League…
Open book
365 Stories I Want To Tell You Before We Both Die is a podcast that experimental filmmaker Caveh Zahedi started…
Dear Mary: How can I hang out with smokers at parties without freezing?
Q. As a young woman I tend not to wear that much to social events in the evening, but I…
Guess who’s coming to dinner with Angela Huth?
Anglea Huth, the broadcaster and author of some 18 books, has now written her memoirs, Not the Whole Story. And…
Ainsley Harriott is still unaccountably amused by almost everything: Costa Del Celebrity reviewed
These days, when it comes to people who used to be on the telly, the answer to the classic newspaper…
The left-wing bias on Celebrity Gogglebox was excruciating
This week I want to put the boot in to Gogglebox (Channel 4, Fridays). Not the mostly likeable, everyday version,…
What fun it will be if Trump becomes president
I suppose spite and schadenfreude are thinnish reasons, intellectually, for wishing Donald Trump to become the next American president (and…
I’m a Celebrity is like The Simpsons: good if you’re thick; even better if you’re not
The best bit in I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! (ITV) will be when the prisoners finally revolt…
Reality check
Why I had to say no to Celebrity Big Brother
Rough-Huhne
I love Grayson Perry. You might almost call him the anti-Russell Brand: a genuinely talented artist who also has some…
Selfie obsession
People can’t seem to stop taking pictures of themselves – and their private parts. It’s the ultimate expression of our increasingly puerile and narcissistic society
Talking pictures
Beaton was the great inventor. Apart from inventing not only himself but his look, his voice, his persona and a…
That sinking feeling
When Napoleon Bonaparte captured Venice in 1797, he extinguished what had been the most successful regime in the history of…
Unmade in Chelsea
Once below a time (to quote the man himself) the bloated poet Dylan Thomas slouched back to New York’s Chelsea…
