Articles

First, before getting onto the subject in the headline, a restatement of the basic message in my excessive tweets re last night’s Paralympics opening ceremony. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Danny Boyle’s Olympics ceremony made me proud to be British, and proud to be Northern. Last night’s made me proud to be a citizen of a country [...]

The excitement (mine) is mounting … Not quite to the peak of the day I trotted out in front of 72000 people at Old Trafford with Diego Maradona (I never talk about it as regulars know) and three other World Cup winners as team-mates … Nor even an excitement to match election days 1997, 2001 [...]

Here is a piece CNN asked for on what I think will be the long term significance of the Olympics in London 2012. I always thought London 2012 would be a success but never imagined it would be quite the triumph it has turned out to be. From the brilliant opening ceremony to the festival [...]

Just back from another fabulous day in and around the Olympic Park. To any of you who have missed my blog musings in recent days, apologies, but I have been loving every minute of every day just absorbing and enjoying as much sport as I can. But it is less about the sport than the [...]

I am biased. What I say on here, or when speaking in public, reflects a view that is biased towards the left, towards progressive causes, towards causes I believe in and values I hold. Even when I was a journalist, though I strove to get my facts right, I always admitted that my journalism was [...]

With apologies to Gorkana, who interviewed me a while back, and to whom I said I would post the interview when they ran it, here it is a few days late. They chose to run it on the day of Danny Boyle’s brilliant Olympics opening ceremony, so in common with many others on the planet, [...]

It was as a result of a mid morning phone call from Tessa Jowell that I went to my diaries for 2002 and 2003 and tweeted some of the key moments in the history of the Olympic Bid. She was calling from the athletes’ village, where she is staying for the duration of the Games [...]

I have introduced you before to my friend Mark Wright, a Labour activist and Elvis impersonator. He does however have an even bigger musical passion than The King, namely The Boss, and alerted me to an interview Bruce Springsteen has given to The New Yorker, in which he talks about his father’s mental health problems [...]

If I may use a Bullingdon-type expression, I never much fancied the cut of the jib of Chris Huhne when he was Secretary of State for Environment and Climate Change (remember that.) Too much about himself, too fond of the media positioning. I don’t know Ed Davey, his successor, but I wish all power to [...]

First impressions matter. Nowhere is that more important than in the growth industry of event security. I like my security guards to look like Howard Webb, tall and strong, with a pleasing manner but really firm authority. I do not feel safe when I am patted down by young men half my size with bad skin, [...]