Author Archives: Paul

Well, to the surprise of nobody, Emannuel Macron defeated Marine Le Pen to become France’s youngest leader since Napoleon. Time will tell whether he turns out to be France’s Justin Trudeau or, as seems far more likely, France’s Ed Miliband. His grandiose promises are unlikely to be fulfilled but the voters were desperate. It was […]

One of my filial duties was to take my mum there two or three times a year. She was in her element, haggling with East End stallholders while her “boy” ferried the foliage to and from his Cortina. My wife took over this tradition and I had to perform pretty much the same tasks for […]

A law came into force in France today banning unhealthily thin girls from modelling. This vogue for stick thin models started with Twiggy. She lived near us and my eldest sister remembers her well. They used to get the 183 bus to Guy Hayward’s dance hall in Harrow when they were about fourteen. Twiggy was […]

Many years ago, I briefly lived in Ealing. But while I was there, the council switched from Tory to Labour. I was fine with that, on board with Labour’s ethos of increased spending on schools, parks, libraries, social housing and care for the elderly. But that’s not what happened. After a huge and immediate hike […]

….is finally retiring from public engagements. We tend to forget that he’ll be 96 in June, so most people his age retired 30 years ago. Actually, most people his age are dead. Whatever you think of him, his stamina and dedication to duty have been extraordinary. I know what my mum thought of him. She […]

Dave & Ansil Collins? Well, I imagine most people thought the same. But no, Dave and Ansil didn’t actually meet until the recording of this track. Ansil Collins was a keyboard player but for this record, producer Winston Riley brought in Dave Barker to do a lot of largely improvised shouting over the riff and […]

Yesterday was Mayday Bank Holiday. It was dull, wet and miserable and yet Jeremy Corbyn’s cornerstone election pledge is four more Bank Holidays: St.George’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, St. David’s Day and St. Andrew’s Day. Has Corbyn never experienced the Scots supporting anyone but England in the World Cup? Or visited pubs in North Wales […]

I don’t know who said that about boxing but I can’t help but agree. It’s sporting competition stripped down to its hardest and most basic and I’ve loved it ever since I can remember. I watched Ali, Frazier and Foreman in the 70s; then Leonard, Hagler and Hearns in the 80s, awed by their courage, […]

To the Coach & Horses in Soho to meet my old friend Andrew Holt. He lives in Sydney and I hadn’t seen him for years. In fact, the last time we had a drink was in New York on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center about six weeks before 9/11. That famous bar […]

…is that he went to Studio 54. In 1978, Disco Donald, like the legendary nightclub he frequented, was regarded as the very model of New York liberalism. Many years later, this was still the case. In Sex & The City, Samantha described Big as “the new Donald Trump”, as though no higher compliment could be […]