Articles

Am still undecided whether to drive or train it to Norwich. Will be a last minute decision. At least the sun is shining, and I have lunch with Delia to look forward to on arrival. I know name-dropping is frowned upon, but lunch with Delia before Norwich v Burnley is a Campbell tradition. I hope [...]

I have bowed to the democratic demands of my Facebook and Twitter friends, and agreed to accept an invitation to guest edit the New Statesman. When I put up an update saying I was mulling over it, a whole load of messages came through basically saying there was nothing to mull, and I should get [...]

Tory blogger Iain Dale, who has many qualities, not least supporting a team that wears claret and blue, suggests I should be hiding away in embarrassment at Peter Mandelson’s ‘tirade’ against Starbucks boss Howard Schultz (didn’t he do the Peanuts cartoons, or was that Charles?) The reason for my embarrassment, says Iain, is that last [...]

I sat recently at the back of a focus group and watched people discuss their favourite and least favourite brands. It was a business rather than a political exercise, but there were as ever some interesting political points to emerge. At the end of a long discussion, in which the economy dominated, and people admitted [...]

A friend up north tells me that one of the local papers in my home town of Keighley, Yorkshire, has a report I ought to know about. It says that ‘Politicians and pop stars, academics and business chiefs are being challenged to say why they love the town where they grew up.’ I am listed with [...]

What a joy it must be to support a team close to your home. Here I am, just gone eleven, and I’m home after watching Arsenal give a football lesson to Cardiff, a bit like Burnley gave a lesson to Arsenal when we dumped them out of the Carling Cup. Now we get the chance [...]

It has been interesting to see what kind of twittering or Facebook status updating provokes the most intense responses. Blogging about Boris and the F word started a lively debate. The stuff I did last week on mental health likewise. But football remains the Number 1 talking point for the nation I would say.  As [...]

I stand to be corrected (and will happily publish such a correction here) but I think I am right in saying no national newspaper editor sends their children to State schools. This is worth bearing in mind when you read the relentless diet of negativity against State schools in our national media. The same applies [...]

Sorry to go on about Dave Cameron again (oh ok, I’m not sorry at all) but I saw him blathering on the story about the 13-year-old who became a Dad. He had exactly the same intensity of expression he applies for soundbites on economic calamity, ministerial scandal, diplomatic crisis, global warfare and pestilence or how [...]

I never read any of the freesheets handed out in London on the grounds that I am unsure which are pouring more money into the evil that is Paul Dacre and his Mail newspapers. But as I travelled on the tube last night it was impossible to escape front pages about Boris Johnson and the [...]