You know the saying? Goes alright till it goes all wrong. Prince Harry would have done well to have heeded it before he issued his latest scathing statement attacking the press. Whilst the timing of this statement may well have been taken out of Harry’s hands to pre-empt a counter move, it shows that vigilance…
I write this as we emerge blinking from the events of the past week, a week marked by two articles that have reached depths of cruelty that are reminiscent of the dark days of the Evil Empire of the Red Tops. Yes, we’ve seen the demise of kiss and tells, but these were a brief…
Imagine the fairy tale, the one with the young bored shepherd races into town day after day crying wolf. Day after day, until finally there is a wolf – and he, along with his herd, fall afoul. It’s a story with a famous message for all children, but it has another overlooked message….
Jessica Mulroney, perhaps the closest and most loyal of Meghan Markle’s inner circle has posted to Instagram citing racist bullies as behind the criticism of her friend. Sorry, but this is an example of the inner circle clutching at straws. It’s the Sussexes insistence on a version of privacy in an age of absolute scrutiny,…
The Edinburgh Fringe is noisy. No, not the plaintiff wheezy whine of the devil’s bellows. I’m overwhelmed by the nauseous pollution; the brash posters littering the streets. Gaudy graphics constructed to hypnotise one’s peripheral vision. Loud marketing. Dumb ubiquity. Hopeless strategy to attract an audience. On the last count, walking a 400 yard stretch (imperial…
On April 7th, 1994, late at night, in a long-since rebranded Glaswegian hotel, a tape was recorded of two brothers that would launch the beginning one of the longest running and most entertaining rock n roll feuds of all time. The Wibbling Rivalry tapes, a drunken argument between the crown princes of rock n roll…
It took half a century for us to work out that smoking had certain negative qualities, and it took another twenty years for the legislators to do something about it. Big Tobacco was a formidable opponent to change for several reasons. Yes, it was massively lucrative, provided thousands of jobs and sold an aspirational product…
One of the minor, but depressing, changes to our society is that since Brexit, and the cultural and media zeitgeist got sucked into a political chaos-loop there is no part of national celebration that the zealots and partisans can’t ram their agenda through. Last week Dawn Foster, outrider for Jeremy Corbyn, criticised ‘centrists’ for basing…
Barbie, in a way, is like dog food. Neither a small child or a dog can take either product to the till and pay for it themsevles. In fact, neither can reliably articulate what they want and why they want it at all. It’s an unusual marketing challenge – aimed at convincing adult humans, that…
As the last litter pickers weave their weary way homeward from Worthy Farm, it’s time to take a long view on the talked about highlights. Nowadays, particularly in the media, cultural phenomena are often judged far more on its perceived moral worth than on its superficial entertainment value. Once upon a time, art was simply…