The best tribute possible to the greatest comics ever: Stan & Ollie reviewed
You mess with Laurel and Hardy at your peril. Their fan base is essentially the entire world. Samuel Beckett adored…
Can men call women ‘girls’?
Talking to someone in her mid-twenties recently, I mentioned someone else of the same age. ‘She’s a really talented girl,’…
St Martin-in-the-Fields: the ‘Church of the Ever Open Door’
St Martin’s really did once stand in the fields, just as nearby Haymarket was a market selling hay. But the…
Notes on Davenports Magic Shop, an emporium for serious conjurors
It’s a very fitting place for a magic shop. Hidden away in the maze of pedestrian tunnels that lead from…
Second best: Why runners up are more interesting than those who come first
Who was the second prime minister? Everyone knows Robert Walpole was the first. Firsts get all the fame and glory.…
How easy is it to break into the Bank of England?
‘Safe as the Bank of England.’ So goes the old phrase. And yes, with walls 8ft thick, the Old Lady…
Climbing Everest with Brian Blessed is the nearest anyone will get to encountering the yeti
In 1969 the body of an ape-like creature, preserved in ice inside an insulated box, came to light in Minnesota.…
The highs – and occasional lows – of long-distance walking
Long-distance walking is all the rage these days. There are all-nighters staged by charities, for instance the annual MoonWalk in…
Playful, adorable – and with a real nose for trouble: In praise of the beagle
Harvey’s finest moment, he would tell you, was the chicken kiev. I’d just made the garlic butter and inserted it…
Compulsory subtitles? I read ‘em and weep
Subtitles are taking over the world. It’s increasingly rare these days for a video clip to be free of those…
Which town directly inspired the revival of the Olympics? Clue: it’s not in Greece
There were two mascots for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. One was called Mandeville, obviously because Stoke Mandeville’s games…
The great unknowns
Have you heard about the invention that cures your smartphone addiction? Whereas normally you can’t go more than a minute…
Tales out of school
In 1952, the five-year-old Michael Rosen and his brother were taken on holiday along the Thames by their communist parents.…
Gresham College
How many people need to gather together before it becomes more likely than not that at least two of them…
Diary
No sympathy from me for the Brits stuck in the European heatwave. I’ve never understood people who go abroad for…
Fighting talk — but little action — from Ernest Hemingway
On 11 May 1937, at the Gare St-Lazare in Paris, Ernest Hemingway said goodbye to a friend who was leaving…
Guilty displeasures
It is now entirely cool to adore the uncool. But what about the things we can’t admit to not enjoying?
Paul McCartney
It’s slightly galling, after years of sticking up for Paul McCartney, to read a new biography of the bloke and…
Reading the waves
Water accounts for 70 per cent of your planet, and 60 per cent of your body. Yet when do you…
The game of the name
How Wolf and Skylar pushed out John and Mary
Mistakes to remember
False memory disasters, from Keith Moon’s wedding-night abseil to Sophia Loren’s peanut addiction
Girl about town
The old ditty got it wrong: it should have been ‘Maybe it’s because I’m not a Londoner that I love…
Looking for Nessie
It wasn’t until I drove past Loch Ness a couple of years ago that I realised just how enormous it…
Discover your inner nerd
There’s a curious thing about the bowling green in my Suffolk village. The footpath running alongside it is on a…
Sir Ian Botham is a hero – and a fool
Mark Mason 28 November 2015 9:00 am
In 1981, when I was ten and Ian Botham was 26, I thought he was God. Now, the week after…