Simon Collins

Aussie life

15 February 2025 9:00 am

In the UK, where I have just spent a few weeks, Christmas officially starts when you can’t enter a supermarket…

Aussie life

25 January 2025 9:00 am

The public shaming of elite pole vault coach Alex Parnov reminds me of the time I was sent to cover…

Aussie life

18 January 2025 9:00 am

As if Hollywood’s elite didn’t have enough to be worried about, the Governor they elected, and whose homelessness laws and…

Aussie life

11 January 2025 9:00 am

It’s hardly surprising that Doris Day’s jaunty homage to Marcus Aurelius ‘Que sera, sera’ was one of the 1956’s best-selling…

Aussie life

4 January 2025 9:00 am

Like many Speccie readers I was shocked by the public expressions of anti-Semitism which blighted the closing months of 2024.…

Aussie life

14 December 2024 9:00 am

It is customary for magazines like this to devote some of the final issue of the year to an appraisal…

We have seen this show before

9 December 2024 9:47 pm

Streaming services have created a new strain of déjà vu, and this is how it works. You start watching a…

Aussie life

30 November 2024 9:00 am

Let me be absolutely clear: when I referred to the next president of Australia’s most important military ally and economic…

Aussie life

16 November 2024 9:00 am

I am not worried about being outed as a recipient of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ hospitality. Yes, it is true that…

The waking of the woke

7 November 2024 6:28 pm

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Aussie life

2 November 2024 9:00 am

Despite historically owning less property than men, women have always exerted a powerful influence in the sector. Like lyre birds,…

Aussie life

12 October 2024 9:00 am

‘When I was 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around,’ wrote Mark Twain,…

Aussie life

5 October 2024 9:00 am

At the same time you were hearing about the second attempt on Donald Trump’s life, you can be sure that…

Aussie life

14 September 2024 9:00 am

Cynics will say it is just a coincidence that Qantas sacked its longest-serving board member a few days after I…

Aussie life

31 August 2024 9:00 am

You can take the boy out of advertising, but you can’t take the copywriter out of the middle-aged man. I…

Aussie life

17 August 2024 9:00 am

O wad some pow’r the giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us! said Robbie Burns. And nobody…

Aussie life

3 August 2024 9:00 am

Imagine if, instead of returning to the USA to become its third president, Thomas Jefferson had died in France on…

Aussie life

19 July 2024 11:00 pm

Not very long ago, the propensity of some Australians to sit around watching other people do things on screens rather…

Aussie life

6 July 2024 9:00 am

For most of China’s 1.4 billion population, 2024 has been the Year of the Dragon, which makes it, according to…

Aussie life

22 June 2024 9:00 am

Being an AFL umpire does not look like a job for the thin-skinned. Given the passion of the code’s fan…

Aussie life

8 June 2024 9:00 am

Encomium or insult, tribute or travesty; the line between portrait and caricature can be a very fine one. Readers who…

Aussie life

25 May 2024 9:00 am

It is a point of principle for the residents of the smarter parts of Manhattan not to notice – and…

Aussie life

11 May 2024 9:00 am

As the terrible events in Bondi Junction last month reminded us, fortune doesn’t always favour the brave. Indeed, the courage…

Aussie Life

27 April 2024 9:00 am

Almost exactly 50 years before James Cook’s first encounter with the Gweagal and Gameygal peoples on the shores of what…

Aussie life

13 April 2024 9:00 am

It’s been a long time since the beer garden of the iconic Oaks Hotel in Sydney’s Neutral Bay lost all…