Last week, there was really only one story. And it wasn’t that a children’s television science-fiction character, who never reproduces or has sexual relations with anyone, is now played by a human of a different gender than at any point previously. Despite this, like all the other crying centrists, I wept hot snowflakes to witness…
The only available room in Birmingham last Tuesday night was an Airbnb on Edward Street. Usually the Birmingham tourist board are giving them away free, with incentivising jars of Bovril and vouchers for the legendary Hurst Street cafe Mr Egg. “Eat like a king for under a pound!” But tonight, Birmingham was buzzing. There was…
It is very easy to sneer and criticise without offering any viable solutions yourself. And I should know. I have been doing it for the best part of three decades now myself, across a variety of media, to deadlines, for money, like a snowflake Clarkson. But I am a shallow and cynical entertainer, not a…
It was Andrew Rawnsley’s column in last week’s Observer that first made me aware of the danger a no-deal Brexit would pose to British sperm supplies. Up to 50% of our sperm is imported into the United Kingdom from Denmark alone, its cross-border movement currently micro-managed by EU organ and tissue directives, but now red…
The Herefordshire legend of Black Vaughan tells the story of an evil 15th-century nobleman who returns in various spectral forms – a black fly, a black dog, a black bull, some gerbils – to molest farm girls, spill milk, and upset apple carts. But the dead aristocratic pest is eventually subdued by 12 priests and…
“The skinhead smashed the still steaming grill plate of the state-of-the-art Breville sandwich toaster into his red face, to stem the violent impulses rising within him. His skin fizzed, like cold piss on a hot Guy Fawkes bonfire. Ancient burnt pieces of cheese and tomato, remnants of his well-heeled host’s cocaine-fuelled midnight snacks, buried themselves…