If you believe the internet, I was the Israeli army’s answer to Jason Bourne
One of the strangest and, in a weird way, best things to have happened to me in the past year…
Ian Rankin’s diary: Paris, ignoring Twitter and understanding evil
After ten days away, I spent last Friday at home alone, catching up on washing, shopping for cat food, answering…
High life
Those who forget the pasta are condemned to reheat it, tweeted Jon Ronson, a man I’d never heard of until…
Club class won’t fly any more
I’m getting a lot of abuse on Twitter for saying that having been a member of the Bullingdon is more…
Isis takes its British schoolgirl jihadis seriously. Why don’t we?
When the first schoolgirls ran away to Isis I had some sympathy for them — at least, I could see…
Twitter speak
‘Tweeting’s like text messaging, isn’t it?’ said my husband confidently, though not, as usual, from any knowledge of the matter.…
Barometer
Caught working The government announced a crackdown on illegal workers. How many illegal workers are caught in Britain? — From…
The feminists who fell for a bleeding hoax
Did you know that tampons were just another brutal expression of the oppressive patriarchy? I must confess that I didn’t…
Flashmob rule
It is the duty of MPs to resist Twitter storms and online petitions
Real life
‘No, I do not do WhatsApp.’ That’s pretty much all I ever seem to say to people nowadays. They ask…
Dying for attention
In the social media age, breaking ‘the last taboo’ is de rigueur
Low life
After hitting me with the cancer diagnosis, the urologist offered me the choice of a longer life in exchange for…
Diary
For the first time since the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team six years ago, a Test match side…
Why we lie to ourselves about opinion polls
A strange ritual takes place on Twitter most evenings at around 10.30 p.m. Hundreds of political anoraks start tweeting the…
Liberal absolutism may be the worst kind of all
This week I would like you to share the deep pain of a liberal who has been called ‘right-wing’. This…
Naming and maiming
Jeremy Clarkson has been getting it in the neck from Twitter’s (I was going to say) tricoteuses — but social…
Why do bright schoolgirls run away to Syria?
How could they? How could girls brought up in the wealthy West abandon their families and their own bright futures…
Twitter style
I don’t know if you tweet — No! Don’t turn over, I’m not going to get all techie. I do…
Gagging order
Why has politics turned into stand-up?
Law, democracy and rape
‘This was the rule for men that Zeus established: whereas fish, beasts and birds eat each other, since there is…
Net effect
Channel 4’s Cyberbully (Thursday), written by Ben Chanan and David Lobatto, turned out to be a brilliantly gripping drama, even…
The secret of my most amazing achievement ever
Just before Christmas I achieved something so totally, incredibly amazing that I think it probably ranks among the greatest things…
Signs that the virtual mob is starting to rule
Are we heading for a new barbarism? Is this the return of the 18th-century mob? Here are more questions than…
How to keep your corporate reputation: forget the CSR, just get the basics right
A theme of this autumn has been conversations about corporate reputation and how it is guarded or lost. To name…
Wish list
Annie Nightingale 25 July 2015 9:00 am
Compilation schompilation. Having been in music for as long as I have you would think I had a good idea…