The X Factor

Proof that the British hardly ever had a stiff upper lip

10 October 2015 9:00 am

The last time I cried was September 1989. That was my first week at public school. The reason I cried…

Jazz soloist Charlie Parker with his saxophone c. 1946

Music for the masses

22 August 2015 9:00 am

As pop music drifts away from many people’s lives, so its literature grows ever more serious and weighty, as though…

Even Cilla’s biographer admits that critics were justified in knocking the ‘prurience ‘of Blind Date

In a world of their own

6 December 2014 9:00 am

Cilla Black has become a strange creature during her 50 years in showbiz. When her husband Bobby was in hospital…

Will she or won’t she kill the President? Ellen Sanders’s family on tenterhooks

Losing the plot

18 January 2014 9:00 am

You know the holiday season is over when, instead of being torn between The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing…

Double standards

26 October 2013 9:00 am

Will the women on ITV’s The X Factor (Saturday) stop perving? I suppose there are two ways to tackle the…