• Don’t Let Angels Fear To Tread

    A disaster a day keeps the newsman in play. Can we reclaim our peace of mind by saying no to terror, by saying no to feeling terrorised? Will our world allow it? I was in Paris once, in a restaurant, when a bomb went off downstairs. It detonated in the ladies’ loo, from where my […]

  • How to be confident

    How To Be Confident

    Happy New You, we should say, as a new year takes off. Away with token resolutions. Embrace the whole enchilada of a better self fizzing with action and positive steps. For many, number one is to be more confident. Stare our fears down. Make timidity cower and then take on the world, living fully and […]

  • Do You Want The Good News Or The Bad News First?

    Daily we are enmired in a bog of dark news. Terrorism, climate change, refugees, Korea, Syria, Brexit, Trump, murders, rapes, robberies and crashes, on and on it goes. The world has become a run of endless near catastrophe. It’s a wonder we have the cheek to imagine a future at all, let alone have children or […]

  • Something Toxic Brewing in the Teenage Brain

    With the extremes of the world getting crazier all the time, being a teenager is as hard as it ever was, and a lot scarier. Two 15 year-old schoolboys have been jailed for plotting to blow up the Houses of Parliament using ingredients for explosives they found online (including fuses and chemicals). They were considering […]

  • keyboard voting

    Make Your Weekly Vote With a Click of the Mouse

    Google knows what you like. Google knows what you need. Vote Google. Basically there won’t be any news out of Britain for the next three months, except endless guff and drilldowns about whether it should leave the European Union. The country decides once and for all on June 23 in a referendum. Until then, prepare […]

  • Life in Super Spandex

    Superheroes are walking planet Earth, and not just little people. Dressing up expands identity, say fans, and it’s a budding movement, all ages welcome. But can a new elastic me match the hype? To the bat-cave! I know plenty of kids, as I’m sure you do too, who like nothing more of a morning than […]

  • What, No Visa? Europe’s Migrant Crisis

    Like King Canute sat on his chair on the surf, Europe’s politicos are helpless before the ever-rising influx of refugees washing up on beaches, hiding in car engines, doing anything and everything to get here. All year, Europe has been agonising about what to do with the migrants flooding over, nay, desperately crawling in by […]

  • British Roos Loose in the Top Paddock

    It took fifteen police officers to catch Wesley the wallaby last week, the latest Antipodean visitor to go walkabout without anybody realising. They had to use a tranquiliser dart to down the little fella. “We detained the wallaby without the use of handcuffs,” said proud Inspector Richard Mallinson of the Yorkshire Police. Wallabies are creatures […]

  • Who Wants To Be A Billionaire?

    Bad hair, face in all the papers, everybody wants something. Your partners are only after one thing and you still have to obey the law. The nation that invented fairness and cricket (and irony) is having a tough time accommodating the world’s grumpiest billionaires and keeping them in line. A penthouse unit in Knightsbridge, central […]