Yesterday I got an e-mail from a firm called Laptops Direct headed, “Use your body to advertise our logo and get £5,000” Who could resist such an offer? Not a cheap bastard like me, so I clicked through and saw …
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The biggest racket in the world
As with many of these ramblings, there is absolutely no point to what follows; these are just the musings of an idle mind. In Tottenham Court Road, not far from my office, there is a little Scientology office, where people …
Read MoreShould a writer be paid more than a car mechanic?
Actually, I was going to call this piece “Drayton-Bird-Wanker” because somebody who obviously knows and hates me (no small congregation) put that up on the web so that I often see it when setting out to write one of these …
Read MoreDo these phrases drive you mad, too?
There are a couple of expressions that drive me to fury. Actually, that’s a lie: there are dozens. They include “activist” which means a busybody, often bogus, who gets someone else – usually us taxpayers – to subsidise various witless, …
Read MoreAn Australian talking dog story
Having been brought up in a pub I acquired a taste for silly jokes that has never left me, so I liked this one, sent to me by the publisher of Meininger’s Wine Guide, for whom I am scratching my …
Read MoreRichly deserved comic masterpiece
You know how every now and then you read something and say “I wish I’d written that”? For one reason or another I’m not really equipped to have written what follows, but how marvellous! It was sent to me by …
Read MoreWhat is this noble lion doing?
Not a very clear picture, I’m afraid, but you must admit he is a magnificent beast. He is lying at, or rather carved into the bottom of the staircase at the Hotel Plaza in Rome, an extraordinary place which epitomises …
Read MoreIt’s a mad world we live in, my masters
Here are three things that struck me when looking at the news tonight. 1. Why do the wrong people end up running things? Or to put it another way, why does shit rise to the top? This occurred to me …
Read MoreAn apology – and a comment
I usually write these things late at night, at insane hours in the early morning or in spare moments – and keep making silly mistakes as a result: yesterday I wrote “worst” instead of worse. Apologies! I should be ashamed …
Read MoreWhy we’re in a worst state than we were
In an exchange last week I was talking about a man called Will Hutton who wrote a book essentially to promote the Bliar called “The State we’re in”. (Incidentally, you can lay odds that anyone called Will is left wing. …
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