Articles

In a Paris cab last week, an Algerian driver picked up on something I said and told me the French word ‘hasard’ (chance) came directly from Arabic. He had seen me on a TV programme the night before and said as an ‘ecrivain’, I ought to know that. First, I still feel odd when people [...]

Ok, ok, I give in (to my Twitter followers and Facebook friends) and will explain recent bagpipe tweets. Along the way I will muse (blog and vlog) on identity.  I’ve been up in Scotland making a film for Scottish Television about bagpipes. It is part of a series STV are doing later in the year [...]

It’s obviously becoming stand-up-for-oldies week. Yesterday David Frost on his 70th birthday. Today another veteran into his eighth decade on the planet in the form of John Prescott. John is of course perfectly good at standing up for himself, as anyone who followed 2001 election visits to North Wales will remember. But in an era [...]

The birthday dinner, which kept me from both the Champions League and The Speaker last night, was for broadcaster David Frost. Seventy.  Any suggestion the veteran broadcaster might be slowing down was dispelled when his son Wilfred announced to the gathering at one point that first thing this morning, his Dad was due to be [...]

I’m out at a birthday dinner tonight, so will be spared the difficult choice between Champions League football and BBC 2′s new reality TV/elimination-contest programme, The Speaker. Reality TV and elimination contest are two concepts usually enough on their own to make sure I don’t watch, but I hope I’m right in saying this one [...]

There are not that many circumstances in which I feel sympathy for that collection of individuals, mainly male, described as ‘world leaders.’ They have reached the top in their chosen path; they have support systems which make their lives, whatever the scale of pressure on them and their time, run fairly smoothly; above all they have [...]

More than once, I had a mobile phone suddenly tossed my way as Tony Blair realised the car was about to arrive. Usually it was obvious when the journey was coming to an end and he could sign off in traditional polite fashion. But sometimes, we would just arrive, the car would stop suddenly, and a door [...]

I had no idea, until I saw a tiny item in a French newspaper  on the Eurostar back to London yesterday, that there had been a European Commission competition to honour the first ‘green capitals of Europe.’ Congratulations to Bristol on being shortlisted. Commiserations on missing out. And congratulations to Hamburg and Stockholm for having [...]

I promise that my tweet of last night – wondering whether David Cameron as Prime Minister could have delivered the G20 deal – was not merely rhetorical.  If the polls are right, and don’t change some time soon, then Cameron may be the next PM, suddenly dealing with global economic issues, war and a planet [...]

Tony Benn said yesterday  that almost all progress starts on the streets, and that the people at the top are usually the last to get the message. Tony and I disagree about a few things, not least on the neccessity of changes that had to be made to the Labour Party, to escape the futility [...]