Innehållsförteckning för April 2024 från The Oldie

Oldie-readers will have a favourite screen role among the 40 or so played by Marlon Brando (1924-2004). Brando would have been 100 on 3rd April. There was the brutal New Orleans redneck Stanley Kowalski (pictured), bellowing ‘Stella-a-a-a-a-!’ up the tenement steps to his wife in 1951's A Streetcar Named Desire. What about the ex-boxer and longshoreman mumbling his iconic ‘I coulda been a contender…’ speech three years later in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront? Or, ushering in the second act to Brando's career, his inimitable turn as the mob patriarch Don Corleone in 1972's The Godfather? Then there's the ageing lothario who finds an unusual use for a dab of fridge-cold butter in the following year's Last Tango in Paris. Or perhaps the extraordinary cameo Brando played in 1979's Vietnam…

Gyles Brandreth's Diary Where was Leslie Caron? Was she there? On 14th February, I hosted a Valentine's Day party at the Grosvenor House Hotel on London's Park Lane. Walt Disney stayed at Grosvenor House on his honeymoon. As girls, the future Elizabeth II and her sister, Princess Margaret Rose, learned to skate on the hotel's ice rink. The rink is still there, under the floorboards in the Great Room, the largest function room in Europe. More recently, Mrs Biden stayed at Grosvenor House when she came to Charles Ill's coronation. The White House booked out 200 rooms at the hotel to ensure the First Lady's security. My party was to celebrate William Shakespeare and the King and the Queen. William Shakespeare couldn't make it, but David Mitchell, star of Upstart…

WHAT IS microflirting? Microflirting is when you flirt with someone in an extremely subtle way, with plausible deniability. It's a flick of the hair. A narrowing of the eyes. A focusing of interest. In a digital context, it might involve liking the occasional post or lingering too long over a reply. It is not flirting, exactly, but it is a necessary prelude to flirting, a way of testing the water, so that when you accelerate to, for example, licking your lips and saying, ‘How about it, big boy?’, you can be reasonably sure you haven't got the wrong end of the stick. Semantically speaking, microflirting is part of the same family as microaggression, which is a way of describing those small acts of unpleasantness, intentional or not, that can really…

To celebrate turning 80, I went on my first fast. No food, tea or coffee. Just water. For the first few days it was hell, but the after-effects have been very positive. It's said that fasting can help with diabetes and Alzheimer's. Rishi Sunak fasts for only 36 hours a week. My fast was meant to last for ten days, but my naturopath (or natural-health practitioner) saw that, after four days, I was in such discomfort and so weak that he weaned me back on to food earlier than planned. My appetite had already shrunk, so it was a slow process. First, the water of one fresh coconut (absolute ambrosia – it felt as if the nourishment was reaching every cell in my body). Carrot juice with fresh curcumin, and…

When I was eight, we often played strip poker and roulette at the billiard table after dinner. My brother, then aged 11, my father, 68, and I began the game heavily clothed in layers of tops, hats, scarves and socks. So nothing untoward happened. But the poker games were always serious and fiercely competitive, interspersed with screeches and guffaws of silliness. This would attract the attention of our mother, who would peer round the door, raise her eyes heavenwards and tut while clutching a tea towel, a book of poetry or a cat. This of course set us off once again. Playing roulette was also a big favourite. My father spluttered ‘Rien ne va plus’ and ‘Faites vos jeux’ as we possessively protected our chips and shouted at the wheel.…

Mary Killen's Beauty Tips Rubber, a fabric once considered the preserve of perverts, has now become almost mainstream. And it's not just the predictable attentionseekers – Cher, Madonna, Kim Kardashian – who flaunt it, looking like giant human sex toys at Met Galas and the Oscars. Its more demure iterations are now favoured in high society as well. Think junior influencers such as Lady Amelia Windsor, Lady Lola Bute and Princess Olympia of Greece. The wholesome actor Timothée Chalamet wore a green latex trench coat to kick off the Wonka film press tour. ‘Rubber fetishists’, as they were known when I was junior, were a secret society. We used to chuckle, in the 1970s, about the incongruous factory run by a (distinguished intellectual) acquaintance out of an old watermill in…

Jem Clarke is in his very, very early fifties, is five foot zero inches tall and has never left the family home in Cleethorpes, which he shares with his parents… Mother has revealed she was once engaged to the East Coast's most prolific housebreaker. The topic came up when she was talking about his sister. She's recently been moved into high-end residential care, at a home mother calls Doolally Towers. Mother says, ‘You've got to be fully doolally to get into that one. Which is a good job because you'd have to be doolally to pay those prices, for slightly better furnishings and a fleur-de-lys piss pot.’ As Father pruned his eyebrows with the kitchen scissors, Mother said she regretted calling off the marriage to Britain's best burglar: ‘If your…

Postcards from the Edge It's best if we prepare for any big life change. Sadly, I've been gradually preparing myself for one: to quit driving by this autumn. I feel quite forlorn at the thought of parting with my dear little Renault Modus. I've almost developed that ‘soul in the machine’ idea, evoked in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This battered little vehicle has been so loyal, hardy and constant. It's never let me down and coped with all weathers. It is a modest jalopy next to the shiny big ones on the road, but it's so well loved. Saying goodbye will be hard. The first indication came when the garage said it probably wouldn't survive another MOT, later this year. And I must face the fact that…

The service for the first female Speaker of the Commons, Lady Boothroyd, was held at St Margaret's, Westminster. Tony Blair's Defence Secretary, Lord Robertson, said, ‘You didn't mess with Betty Boothroyd. A few tried; all failed. When she said, “Call me Madam,” it wasn't a quip. It was an order.’ Robertson said, ‘It took 17 years, three by-elections, two general elections and innumerable selection conferences before she was elected for West Bromwich West and into what was to be for her, her first love, the British Parliament. Many might wonder if a man would have had the same hurdles to jump or indeed the same tenacity to keep going at it.’ Robertson was reminded of Nancy Reagan's words: ‘A woman is like a teabag. You only find out its true…

I was a young local journalist when I met Tommy Trinder (1909-89) in 1982. How I enjoyed the stream of stage history and theatrical anecdote. He recalled working with a troupe, with one lad on stilts who couldn't fit under the proscenium arch – ‘I had to stop people walking into his knees. Came from Bristol, called Archie Leach. You'd know him as Cary Grant.’ And so the stories kept pouring out from Tommy. ‘Where was I born? Sunny Hill, Streatham. Went recently to find the old house. A chap sees me casing the joint and I tell him I was born here. He says, “Why, you're Tommy Trinder!” I agree, and suggest they put up a blue plaque. ‘“Can't do that until you're dead,” he said, reasonably enough. So…

Love from Venice: A Golden Summer on the Grand Canal By Gill Johnson Hodder & Stoughton, £25 Every now and again, a dream-like book slips on to the shelves, having battled its way past a politburo of marketing executives with their spreadsheets. Such a book is Love from Venice. I loved it. It concerns a young woman, in love with her fiancé, with a city and with a family. To say that it is in the genre of Bonjour Tristesse is not quite fair, but just as Françoise Sagan evoked a French summer, so too Gill Johnson has recreated the world of Venice in the summer of 1957. The author, then 25, left her staid job at the National Gallery. Her husband-to-be was working in Paris, and, on a tenuous…

I Am Not Afraid of Looking into the Rifles: Women of the Resistance in World War One By Rick Stroud Simon & Schuster £22 We think we know about the First World War, but all most people really know is snatches of war poetry and pictures of the Somme battlefield. We are largely ignorant of the fact that it was also an intelligence war, with an early version of the code-breaking Bletchley Park and organised resistance in Belgium and occupied France. When German soldiers invaded Belgium, they committed atrocities, murdering, torturing, deporting, looting and, in a few instances, burning people alive. They had been told that they were there to repel a French invasion (see under Ukraine now). One result of these atrocities – a scandal at the time but…

I've played a hell of a lot of different roles, but they're all me – with different hats on. Sid James on the Carry On films Acting must be scaled down for the screen. A drawing room is a lot smaller than a theatre auditorium. Arthur Lowe Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing. Harper Lee Bigamy is the only crime where two rites make a wrong. Bob Hope In Britain, an attractive woman is somehow suspect. If there is talent as well, it is overshadowed. Beauty and brains just can't be entertained; someone has been too extravagant. This does not happen in America or on the Continent, for the looks of a woman are considered a positive advertisement for…

‘Did I say I have a TV set now?’ Philip Larkin wrote to Kingsley Amis in 1979. ‘Where's all this porn they talk about?’ Our so-called permissive society, he complained, ‘never permitted me anything as far as I recall. I mean like WATCHING SCHOOLGIRLS SUCK EACH OTHER OFF WHILE YOU WHIP THEM’. Larkin would have been delighted by Sky's new drama Mary and George, misdescribed in the publicity material as ‘an audacious historical psychodrama’. The rise and rise of the dim George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham (Nicholas Galitzine), stage-managed by his stone-cold mother, Mary (Julianne Moore), is porntastic. Mary spends a happy night with a whore called Sandie (Niamh Algar), and George, sent to France in order to advance the family, navigates the heaving, humping, groaning bodies draped around…

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591-1666) was known as (Il) Guercino, ‘the Squinter’. He became one of the most popular artists among 18th-century British Grand Tourists, who avidly collected his drawings as well as paintings. His considerable success in life and afterlife is the more surprising in that he came from a family of peasant farmers near Cento in Emilia-Romagna. Although conventionally described as largely self-taught, he evidently benefited from his apprenticeship to the Bolognese Benedetto Gennari, since he learned his early Caravaggesque manner from him. He was also strongly influenced by Ludovico Carracci's Madonna and Child with Saints in a church at Cento, and at an early age won the praise of Carracci himself. Early in his career, he also painted Claudian classical landscapes. Poussin's Et in Arcadia Ego is world-famous,…

EASTER BUNNY'S DREAM PICNIC Dust off the Easter bonnet and tuck a primrose in your buttonhole. The hens are back in lay. Church festivals mirror the farming year. That's why eggs are back on the menu on Easter Sunday along with the usual symbols of rebirth – nuts, seeds, newborn animals and the first green shoots of spring. That explains pussy willow on window sills in parish churches, roast lamb with mint sauce and fake fluffy chicks on marzipan-layered fruitcakes. It also explains marzipan fruits in Belgian shop-windows and lambshaped butter-moulds in Danish hardware stores. Each to their own. Perfect for a picnic in the park on Easter Sunday. Skip the roast lamb and escape to the great outdoors with a plain potato salad, fresh bread, farmhouse butter – and…

FOOTBALL'S CRAZY FANS When it comes to football, things are not happy in Sheffield. But, even as the city's two great clubs, United and Wednesday, languish, marooned at the bottom of their respective divisions, a local councillor called David Cheetham came up with a bright idea he thought might alleviate the seemingly relentless suffering his constituents are going through. ‘Get all United and Wednesday fans to swap season tickets with each other,’ he wrote on Twitter. ‘That way, they get to watch each other getting battered every week and everyone's happy.’ It was an intriguing idea. Wallowing in your neighbour's pain is part of being a football fan. Nothing makes you chuckle quite as much as seeing your fiercest rival suffer. And Mr Cheetham knows what he is talking about:…

Across 1 Server finding first ace after measure of pressure (7) 5 New company sees celebrity backing place (5-2) 9 Drink firms needing answer (5) 10 What was that – extend a further invitation? (4,5) 11 More endless fighting as result of visit to dentist (10) 12 Said case of spirits to be missing (4) 14 Spotted girl on grand feature of church (7,5) 18 Partnership put forward by union (5,7) 21 Take a sly look back at cost of board and lodging (4) 22 Fresh carcass not inviolable (10) 25 Strangely ignorant about iodine and post-war austerity (9) 26 Spitting feathers at international tariff (5) 27 Drug, one taken during a short run (7) 28 Gave up profit, outwardly exposed (7) Down 1 Supporter needing one tor a row…

IN COMPETITION No 303 you were invited to write a poem called Best Wishes. Polly Sharpe's sad tale began, ‘My dad was cool, he played guitar, / He shagged a woman in HR, / My mum said he had gone too far, / Divorced him for deception.’ Bill Holloway's narrator stipulated, ‘Your taste may be for oysters, lentils, punk, a ton of Brie – / That's fine, my darling, fill your boots, / Just don't wish them on me.’ Rob Salamon's wishes were enemies of happiness: ‘A robin hops. Clouds drift. Another day /Of yearning for that faraway,/ Unlived life I wish I'd had.’ Bob Morrow wrote that, now formality's gone, ‘For the Keirs and Eds and Rishis, / I'll end my letters with “Best wishes”.’ Commiserations to them and…

Rowley Leigh Covid just about killed lunch. The patient was already on the critical list: anyone who dined between 2008 and 2020 could see the signs: the absence of wine, the presence of briefcases and ‘business papers’, the prevalence of‘healthy food’, the disappearance of the cheese board in favour of ‘Just the bill, thank you.’ Lunch, in all its sybaritic splendour, and sense of time suspended, lunch as a celebration of idleness and debauchery, was already dead. Covid merely administered the last rites. When Le Gavroche, the last bastion of gourmandism, announced it would no longer open for lunch, it was merely confirming our worst fears. Lunch was dead. Lunch – as a celebration of idleness and debauchery – was already dead I spent my working life either cooking lunch…

Until my mother was in her seventies, I'd never heard her swear, but in her old age she started cussing like a trooper. I remember her repeatedly lambasting her sewing machine with the pinking shears and yelling, ‘You absolute bugger, you f******g well WILL work, you WILL work!’. Abandoning the principles of a lifetime is liberating. Having almost never bought a ready meal, nor eaten junk and always cooked from scratch, I'm discovering that I'm now a lot less fussy. Cooking for me and my husband is increasingly an assembly job – usually something on toast. Mind you, if you are throwing things together, they need to be good things. It's helpful that today's ready-prepped food is much better than it used to be and there's more good stuff to…

I heard the news today. Then I rolled over and went back to sleep. Allegedly, I have retired – well, not quite. A year ago, I moved from rural France to Riverstone in Fulham. It's a new agerestricted (65+) retirement community next to the Thames. Community it is; retiring it is not. Such developments have received mixed press in the UK. I don't understand why. Other countries seem to design them better and they're more than popular amongst senior citizens. But then London now has Riverstone. More time is the best part of retirement, not getting up at 6.30 everyday to commute to work. No more jangling alarm clock. Waking plays a different tune. Roll over under a warm duvet and enjoy an extended involvement with a downy pillow. I'll…

In my young day, when we dressed up for a party or disco, parents and grandparents would exclaim in horror, ‘You're not going out dressed like THAT, are you?’ They tut-tutted over our tiny skirts, croptops, stilettos and beehive hairstyles. Today, it's more likely to be the young who look at us oldies in shock as we sashay around in our sequin skirts, leopardskin leggings, skintight trousers and stilettos or, worse, huge bovver boots. And it's not just older women who upset their children and grandchildren by what they wear. The men are doing it too. Instead of fading into the background in three-piece tweed suits, old men are now imitating 80-year-old Mick Jagger with his crimson satin jacket, open shirt, gleaming white teeth and dyed hair. No wonder our…

Luxury watches are having a moment, or at least their absence is, as the recent spate of high-profile thefts testifies. So it's probably not the best time to invest in a sought-after rarity beloved of sports and movie stars, even if you have the unfeasibly enormous funds to do so. As Coco Chanel said, decent diamonds represent the greatest value in the smallest volume. Watches – which rarely exceed 45 mm across and are often much smaller – are not dissimilar, though the best are a beguiling combination of extraordinary precision craft with inspired design. Even with the means to buy a rare piece, there is such a discrepancy between supply and demand that you'd be unlikely to get your hands on one without being a ‘friend of the brand’…

Conviviality rocks. We oldies may be long in tooth with a creak in the bones – but we could teach youth a thing or two about having a jovial time. The finest of wines and the greatest of food, all served up amid an atmosphere filled with pithy anecdotes accumulated during our lives well lived. Everything about these evenings is utterly perfect – apart from the unfortunate impact it can have on our waistlines. Overindulgence costs, but medical science has now come up with a way to slash the physical tariff that comes alongside the jolliest of times. A new medical revolution is afoot that could extend our health spans and allow conviviality to come with less of a physical toll. A new wave of weight-loss drugs could herald the…

Peter York (p11) wrote The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook with Ann Barr. He also wrote Dictators’ Homes and co-founded the management consultancy group, SRU. Griff Rhys Jones (p30) starred with Mel Smith in Alas Smith and Jones and Not the Nine O'Clock News. With Mel Smith, he founded Talkback, the TV production company. A N Wilson (p43 and p65) is author of Confessions: A Life of Failed Promises. He's just written a minuscule book for Queen Mary's Dolls’ House at Windsor Castle. Hugo Vickers (p59) has written biographies of Queen Mary, the Duchess of Windsor and the Queen Mother. His biography of Clarissa Avon, Anthony Eden's wife, comes out in November.…

There it was, in a cardboard box behind the brown furniture in my West London lock-up, absolutely packed with meaning and promise. The Goblin Teasmade of 1979. Insanely British – what other nation could devote a whole household shrine to morning tea-making, or could build in so much technical ingenuity to prolong the magic moment? I should explain, in the interest of clarity for the tiny minority of OZdze-readers who don't know the Teasmade's role in our national life and its astonishing list of competencies. Basically, the Teasmade, launched on the waiting world in 1936, is a bedside device that makes you a pot of tea whenever you set it to. It's also an alarm clock, bedside light and, in some cases, a radio. In its most familiar form –…

Teenagers who came up to London in the early ‘seventies headed straight for Big Biba – in the former Derry & Toms Art Deco department store in Kensington. It was an inviting Aladdin's cave. Bentwood hatstands groaned with slinky maxi- and mini-dresses, many slitheringly bias-cut, in black, plum; rust, aubergine; bottle green. Feather boas, once preferred by prostitutes, fluttered on top. Biba's swirling black-and-gold Mucha-esque logo (inspired by a nearby undertaker's) increased the raffish allure. The seventies Biba Dolly combined moon-faced innocence with bravura and an appealing hint of sleaze. Sizes were aimed at the young and skinny, who'd never seen anything like it – and wanted it. Their mothers would be appalled: what bliss. And what affordable prices. Twiggy said girls could afford something new each week. Other departments…

Are siestas good for us? The question has dogged nap-takers like me for many years, even though I always feel better for an afternoon kip – and am in good company. Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill and Thomas Edison all believed in the power of the snooze. But until now, it's been difficult to know with certainty the health benefits of a spot of shut-eye. And so I've always felt a bit shifty about my siesta habit. One problem is that napping has historically received scant attention from researchers. A second is that those with chronic health conditions often become sleepier in the day, making it hard to know whether having a siesta made them worse or they were already unwell. Finally, the research is contradictory. Some studies are in favour…

If we judge ourselves by how we treat our most vulnerable citizens, then ours is a failing nation. There are 82,000 children in care in England. These are children the state has taken from parents deemed unable or unfit to care for them. They are now under the care of a corporate parent – the local authority, the state, you and I. And, as parents, we are doing a terrible job. It's not just that these children don't go to good universities or earn as much as their peers. These children die young; they are likely to be homeless after they are 16, and experience poor physical and mental health. They are far more likely to have kids who are also taken into care, and so the bleak statistics go…

On 30th July 1763, James Boswell took a boat down the Thames with Samuel Johnson. Boswell asked the great man if knowing Greek and Latin was ‘necessary’. Johnson had no doubt, replying, ‘By all means; for they who know them have a very great advantage over those who do not.’ Late in life I became a history teacher and found myself in a girls’ grammar school, where I lasted for nine years. I was once standing in a classroom while two girls were puzzling over the knotty word ‘osmosis’ in their GCSE biology homework. They'd completely forgotten what it meant, probably because they had never understood in the first place why it means what it does. So I told them. Incredulous, one said, ‘How could you possibly know that? You're…

Town Mouse One of the greatest pleasures afforded by city life is completely free. You don't need to work hard, go into debt or struggle in any way and it's available to everyone, prince or pauper, man or mouse. It's the park bench – a temporary escape from grind, bustle and the consumerist race. My own favourite benches line the main walkway in Kensington Gardens. I eat my cheese sandwich on one at lunch, doze, read, observe the habits of the exotic ducks, ponder the imponderables, and consider the majesty of the city around me. A public bench means freedom. Park benches are romantic, anonymous zones. We imagine spies meeting on them, and lovers. They are refuges. We don't like sharing them with strangers. Bench etiquette determines that you should…

Sophia Waugh: School Days Some school trips are pointless – particularly from an English teacher's point of view. Geographers can go and look at a beach. People ‘studying’ media are taken to the Harry Potter Studios and Disneyland Paris. But to persuade the powers that be that it's worth taking a group to the theatre in school time is well nigh impossible. Even if the play in question is one they are studying for GCSE. We can arrange trips for evenings and weekends, but the trouble is that the children we most want to come are the very ones who are least likely to give up their time. So we were delighted to be able to take a group of 40 pupils to Bristol to Poetry Live!, a celebration of…

The Doctor's Surgery No one could have learned of the recent incidental finding, during a procedure for prostate enlargement, of cancer in the King without a feeling of real sorrow and commiseration. He had ascended to the throne only 18 months earlier, at the age of 73, and this seemed an especially cruel blow: a terrible misfortune, and not just for him. Of course we don't know the precise diagnosis, let alone prognosis, which might yet be good, as we all hope. We are told by the Prime Minister that the cancer was caught early, and cancer caught early has a better prognosis in general than that caught late. Incidental findings of cancer are by no means rare. In one review of patients undergoing scans for coronary artery disease, between…

The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the Middle East, 1979-2003 By Steve Coll Allen Lane £35 Saddam Hussein was indisputably an obscenely bloody tyrant. But after one has waded through this forensic analysis of the follies and missteps leading up to the Second Gulf War, it is hard not to feel a tiny bat squeak of sympathy for him. By the late-1980s, at the height of the Iran-Iraq war (which he, of course, had initiated), the United States was steadily supplying both sides with military intelligence, despite repeatedly assuring Saddam that the White House had his back alone. Guided by US spy satellites, Iraqi tank formations would attack Iranian troops armed under the secret Iran-Contra deal with more than 4,000 US and Israelitrafficked TOW anti-tank missiles. Meanwhile,…

Burma Sahib By Paul Theroux Hamish Hamilton £20 George Orwell's first novel was called Burmese Days and was based on his three years as a policeman for the British Raj (the force was organised from India). Twelve years after he wrote it, he admitted, ‘I dare say it's unfair in some ways and inaccurate in some details, but much of it is simply reporting what I have seen.’ Orwell depicted a brutal, racist, nasty lot of British people, beating criminals with canes, insulting and torturing potential dissidents and having no sympathy with the indigenous population, its culture, religion or ethos. It is not a very good novel, but it contains within it superb reportage, and no one who has read it will be surprised that Aung San, the father of…

I'm really angry that nowadays many people don't say sorry for having done or said something wrong or offensive. Instead they try everything to avoid doing so, using several different methods. Recently a mobile-phoneuser bumped into me – but said nothing. On another occasion, a hefty bloke stamped on my foot. ‘Oops,’ he mumbled as he rushed past. ‘Oy – that hurt,’ I roared, seething with rage. Some well-known people also skirt round apologising. A television celebrity who had used offensive language when arguing with colleagues announced later, ‘It makes me upset that I might have upset people.’ In a Wimbledon championship, a player who had smashed a ball into a stand in a fit of anger announced, ‘It was completely unintentional. Luckily, it wasn't close to anyone.’ She was…

Harold Pinter Theatre, London, until 15th June Is Jez Butterworth Britain's greatest living playwright? Alan Bennett, Michael Frayn and Tom Stoppard are all still with us, but Butterworth, the author of critically acclaimed dramas such as The Ferryman and Jerusalem, is a generation younger – and, at 54, he's reaching the peak of his powers. He burst onto the stage in 1995 with Mojo – a dark, dynamic thriller set in a 1950s Soho nightclub. Written in his mid-twenties, it was an incredibly accomplished debut, drawing comparisons to Harold Pinter. Pinter played a gangland villain in the 1997 film – so it feels fitting that Butterworth's new play is playing in a theatre named after his theatrical godfather. Like Mojo, The Hills of California is about the sleazy underbelly of…

KOREAN PAEAN Undoubtedly, the worst time to go out for dinner with friends is after a drinks party. It's not just because everyone is sozzled or because we've all gorged on irresistible canapes. It's because no one can make up their minds where, when and with whom they want to take vittles. I had booked a table for four at 8pm but, within minutes of arriving, John asked, ‘Would you mind terribly if I brought my cousin and her husband?’ Idiotically eager to please, I fell into the bonhomous trap of saying, ‘Of course – no problem,’ in the certain knowledge I would have to leave the building to get a signal to call the restaurant, who confirmed my theory that restaurants hate tables for six because they lose two…

INSURANCE HIKES If you haven't renewed your car insurance recently, you're in for a shock. Expect increases of 50 to 110 per cent – though an industry insider told me that in his company they're ‘only’ 30 to 40 per cent. Reasons? As usual, a combination. Higher inflation, worldwide supply-chain difficulties and modern cars requiring more expensive repairs, especially electric vehicles (EVs). Another cause is a consequence of supply-chain difficulties: delays in spare parts mean that policies providing you with a car while yours is off the road are paying hire-car charges for much longer than hitherto. I heard recently of someone who has been told it will take at least four months to deliver a new wing for his Defender – and that for a modern car still in…

Is there anything you can't leave home without? My Rosa Mosqueta skin oil, a heated appliance for my hair and Nytol. Do you travel light? I travel heavy. I've never mastered packing. I hate packing. That's why I don't travel that much. My PA is a very good packer and she will occasionally say, ‘Go away. I'll do it.’ And the case is always the last one to come off the turntable. Or, in Israel once, my case came off first. I was overwhelmed with the joy. Later the phone rang and a man said, ‘Is that Mrs Rosenthal?’ And I said, ‘Yes,’ and he said, ‘I think you have my suitcase.’ What's your favourite destination? I'm excited by cities – New York, Tel Aviv. They're cosmopolitan, everything is there…

Ask Virginia Nanny from Hell Q We live next door to two high-flying business people. They're lovely parents, when they're around – but the rest of the time the child is looked after by a French au pair and we can hear her screaming at the little girl. As a result the child is very withdrawn. Should I tell the parents, or would I be interfering? Name and address supplied A If you spotted a newborn baby lying in the middle of a motorway you wouldn't hesitate, would you? Of course you're interfering – and quite rightly. Ask the parents round for a drink as soon as possible and tell them exactly what you've told me. If you can get recordings, so much the better. If they get defensive, well, you've…

Dancing has allowed me to grow old both gracefully and disgracefully. It's been a joy – well, until I hit 80 last year. Suddenly my brain and body had minds of their own, and I was furious that they no longer obeyed my every word. As soon as I could walk, I was responding to music by moving around the living room, which my parents called ‘dancing’. It still seems a minor miracle that children dance without ever having seen or been taught a step. That was me. I fell in love with dance and dance fell in love with me. I am often asked if anyone can dance and I refer them to John Travolta in in Saturday Night Fever. One minute, he's walking down the street; the next,…

Christian Lamb At 103, people often ask me if I have any rules that allow me to live so long. I can't say that I do, but the thing is to go on enjoying myself and try not to think about how many people I depend on. Since I first fell over, cracking all sorts of bones, I do exercises taught me by a magic physio, including how to negotiate stairs and allowing me to approach taxis. My daughter, Felicity, found me a selection of carers, nearly all from South Africa, who make delicious fried sandwiches with melted butter. With careful weeding, they have become friends. The way my family celebrated my 100th birthday still astonishes me. Felicity invited my descendants, including 15 greatgrandchildren, to a lunch party at her…

Feeling a bit inhibited between the sheets? Well, take your inspiration from ancient Greece. Yes, they nailed philosophy, tragedy and comedy and scaled the sublime heights of architecture and sculpture with the Parthenon. But they were also much more open about sex. When I visited the museum on Apollo's holy island of Delos, a mere handful of tourists listlessly ambled through rooms containing some of the greatest Greek sculpture on earth, including the crouching, roaring Delos lions – set up in honour of Apollo by the islanders of Naxos in 600 BC. The tourists ignored the lions to pose giggling around a small display cabinet containing a stone frieze of two jousting, winged penises, each with its own tail – each made out of two penises, naturally. Below was the…

Councillor accused of sewing hat at meeting Courier and Advertiser Businessman threw sausage rolls at wife in cocaine row Times Public toilets closed in cost-cutting trial reopen Argus £15 for published contributions SIGN UP! SIGN UP! for the FREE Oldie newsletter Every Friday, we will send you the very latest stories and features – the more timely stuff which doesn't make it into the magazine. And a joke from the late great Barry Cryer. Plus you get advance notice of our literary lunches, reader trips and courses. Don't miss out. Go to www.theoldie.co.uk and enter your email address in this box: Sign up to our weekly e-newsletter…

WHO WAS Simon Dee? Sixty years ago, on 28th March 1964, the first broadcast was made from Radio Caroline on Britain's first pirate radio ship. Simon Dee (1935-2009), aka Cyril Nicholas Henty-Dodd, made the initial announcement: ‘Hello, everybody. This is Radio Caroline, broadcasting on 199; your all-day music station.’ The Observer stated that Caroline planned ‘to broadcast modern light music records every day from 6am to 6pm’. Dee left his £45-per-week (plus commission) estate-agency job for £15 per week as a DJ. Caroline broadcast from a former Danish passenger ferry anchored off the coast of Felixstowe, outside UK territoria waters. Its founder, Ronan O'Rahilly, responded to the demand for an all-day music channel, which the BBC's Chairman reputedly compared to ‘having the pubs open all day’. The ‘needle time’ agreement…

London has always been the capital of culture in Britain. But during the fifties and sixties, there was a concerted move by actors to move to the Sussex coast. It was started and largely led by Laurence Olivier. Olivier decamped to Brighton after marrying his third wife, Joan Plowright, in 1961. The tabloids were waiting for him and he made headline news. Olivier had hoped, far away from Fleet Street, to escape from unwelcome press attention – and that there would be little professional bitchiness from less talented rivals. But he was doomed to disappointment. He had known Brighton well from an early age. His first theatrical appearance was at the Brighton Hippodrome in August 1925 in The Unfailing Instinct – he fell flat on his face while walking on…

Whenever my daughters say, ‘I was sat’ (which is frequently), I ask them who exactly plonked them there. I am becoming a dreary, Canute-like pedant, fighting a long-lost battle, given there is hardly a broadcaster on Radio 4 who seems to know the difference between ‘sitting’ and ‘sat’. Plenty of oldies moan about deteriorating grammar standards, but sloppy grammar is a symptom of a far more serious decline in general knowledge, literacy and conversational and written fluency. The first GCSEs were taken in 1987. From then on, teenagers were required to do far less writing. From 2025, the Edexcel exam board will allow English Language and English Literature GCSEs to be typed in full. Thus the yawning intellectual divide between the over-50s who did O-levels and the under-50s restricted to…

In Perth City Hall, a neoclassical landmark in one of Scotland's most attractive cities, curators are preparing for the homecoming of the most iconic lump of rock in Scottish – and British – history. During the 20th century, Perth City Hall was a venue for everything from political rallies to pop concerts, from Margaret Thatcher to the Bay City Rollers. Since 2005, it's been empty. Now it's reopening, after a L27 million refit, as the sleek new premises of Perth Museum. Perth Museum boasts half a million precious objects, spanning several millennia of world history, from Māori costume to ancient Egyptian statuary – but its principal attraction hails from just up the road. From 30th March, the centrepiece of its revamped display will be the legendary Stone of Scone. The…

Oldie Man of Letters There is a dear little exhibition in the London Library at the moment. Tiny books are displayed in a glass case – dolls’-size Bibles printed in the 16th century, minuscule books illustrated by Kate Greenaway, etc. This comes at a time when Queen Mary's Dolls’ House at Windsor Castle is replenishing its library. When I go to Windsor, which I sometimes do to research in the archives, it occurs to me that the castle itself, as remodelled by Wyatville, is really a child's toy fort – and the only grown-up-looking thing about the place is the famous Dolls’ House there. This was built a century ago, in 1924, as a present to Queen Mary from a grateful nation after the Second World War. She liked tiny…

Country Mouse If we were to believe the lamentably inexperienced minister currently posing as Defence Secretary, we would be well advised to stay indoors to dodge conventional incoming Iranian missiles. If the rookie is correct, purveyors of oaken tables, stout enough to break the inevitable falls of masonry, will be doing a roaring trade. ‘Nothing is written’, to quote the wise words of T E Lawrence. Yet, judging by the increasing size of the typical television screen, even in the tiny parlours of our rustic hamlet, we are not suddenly going to revive the tradition of conversing on our doorsteps as we puff clay pipes, or of joining communal outdoor games like dancing round the village maypole. Instead we will anaesthetise our fear by staying inside, glued to our individual…

De gustibus non disputandum is all very well in its way. But, having just discovered that Salvador Dalí's Crucifixion was voted Scotland's favourite painting in 2006, I must speak out. It is a question not so much of taste as of fittingness. Obviously I can't convert Scotland, but I think that such a travesty of what the crucifixion is all about is asking for repudiation, especially as we now approach Good Friday. I have always been against the prettification of the cross but never more so than recently, having just read Tom Holland's Dominion, with its preface on crucifixion. He gives us all the hard and cruel historical facts of this most horrible of executions. Deliberately to beautify the cross is, in my view, indefensible. Jesus's cross is his cross…

l once met Myra Hindley SIR: I was interested in ‘I Once Met Ian Brady’ (February issue) because I once worked as an agency nurse at Holloway Prison. After a few months, I looked after the inmates of the long-stay wing. On noticing a new face, I asked her name – ‘Myra Hindley’ was the bemused reply. She looked totally different from the images I'd seen in the newspaper. She was tall and slim with dark hair and seemed quite personable. She was a divisive figure on the wing. I remember a bucket of hot tea being thrown over her; and a couple of convicted murderers went on hunger strike to show their displeasure with her. But she also attracted a group of loyal followers. The prison officers couldn't believe…

History When devolved government returned to Northern Ireland earlier this year, Rishi Sunak channelled his inner Inspector Clouseau. ‘Now is not the time’ (to debate reunification), the headlines ran, conjuring up images of the new First Minister, Sinn Féin's Michelle O'Neill, leaping out of a cupboard, Cato-style, and bashing the PM over the head with a proposed border vote. Historians are notoriously bad at predicting the future. So I won't presume to say when the time might be right. A recent poll – from 2022 – showed that support for the Union hovered around 48 per cent, but crucially only 31 per cent in favour of unification. Don't-knows, independence and ‘other answer’ make up the rest. That would seem to support the view that O'Neill would be wise to wait.…

When anyone mentions standing on one leg while cleaning their teeth or walking backwards, it's a giveaway. They have been following the weirdly addictive Michael Mosley series, Just One Thing. Even if they've heard most of the advice in childhood (an apple a day/ early to bed and early to rise…), they lap it up from Dr Mosley. If they prefer, Mosleyites can hear programmes that promote ill-being instead. Series such as Things Fell Apart, in the softly irritating voice of Jon Ronson, or the brave Marianna Spring's Why Do You Hate Me? expose online weirdos and fantasists, and the havoc they wreak. James Bartlett's The Gatekeepers presents the silicon squillionaires who never imagined, when they invented social media, that one day monarchs and popes would choose to communicate to…

Having inhaled the guileless memoir of the 12th Duke of Beaufort, a topping read, chocker with Grade-I-listed anecdotes and Woosterish incident, I am now aware that the author – the artist formerly known as Bunter – is a singer in a prog rock band. I was only dimly aware of it before. I'd seen him around plenty, but I'd never heard him sing. He always seemed to be a slight hazard at parties, with his sudden sideways crashes on the dance floor. Twenty years ago, I remember chatting at one party and, as I come up only to his waist, I spotted that his belt had a bronze buckle with the letters MBA on it. Given that his name was (then) Harry Worcester, known as Bunter, this seemed puzzling. ‘Stands…

RHUBARB The rhubarb plants in my kitchen garden, which are now almost 20 years old, are still growing a vigorous crop every year. Some are forced with a covering of straw under an upturned dustbin, and the pink stems will be ready this month. We let others grow without cover, and their stronger stems are used during summer in various dishes. Apart from putting compost on the roots during winter, I find our rhubarb looks after itself. It is best grown from crowns, which are available now, or as potted plants in late spring. Picking of the stems is not advised in the first year. It hadn't occurred to me that there are different varieties of rhubarb. Timperley is an old favourite for early forcing, and Poulton's Pride is said…

DISTILLED WISDOM We are a resourceful species. This was driven home to me recently in Goa. There, around this time every year, millions of cashew ‘apples’ ripen, each with a solitary nut, painstakingly extracted from the fruit. It is not in the Indian nature, however, to let things go to waste – particularly not fermentable sugars, of which cashew apples contain an abundance. Traditionally, the apples are de-seeded and trodden in an open stone tank: a colmbi, much like the lagar used for the treading of port grapes. (Given Goa's Portuguese heritage, I wonder if there is some connection.) The juice is then fermented in large earthenware pots for a few days, wild yeasts work their magic, and the resulting liquor (neero) is distilled twice, producing a spirit of 40˚…

There is a good argument brewing between old and new technologies. It isn't a resurgence of the Luddites. Instead, it's the old guard accusing the youngsters of theft. It's all to do with Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI allows computers to read and process gigantic amounts of information in the blink of an eye (or faster). It may help us mere humans make more informed decisions. That's the idea, anyway. The problem is that the information being processed has to come from somewhere. For a while, there have been audible grumblings from some longestablished sources of knowledge (mostly news organisations) that AI is mercilessly plundering their websites to do its work, without citation or payment. This has recently come to a head and provoked several lawsuits in America, most notably from…

Taking a Walk The first days when the light lifts with the earliest hint of spring are all the more magical after a wet and windy winter. The sun had elbowed through chill-inducing cloud by midday, and snowdrops were popping up on roadsides when we took a walk at Chatsworth. A walk with a gang of old friends is a rare and special event. My former university mates and I were so engrossed in catching-up conversations in the car park that we incurred the wrath of other arriving walkers. They tooted with impatience as they bustled in to park and open doors, as deferentially as chauffeurs, for imperious dogs riding on back seats. The dogs were on leads, but the children were unleashed and ran across the irresistible swath of…

Robert Bathurst ‘s numerous credits include Cold Feet, Toast of London and Downton Abbey. He's been in numerous West End shows and is the Audie Award-winning natrator of audiobooks, including Dorothy L Sayers's first three Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. Arlene Phillips is a celebrated choreographer and director who shot to fame when Mary Whitehouse said her dance troupe Hot Gossip was too racy for television. She's instantly recognisable as the TV judge on shows like Strictly and Dancing on Ice. Simon Berry sold wine for his family firm, Berry Bros. & Rudd, for 40 years. At 60, he retired to write plays. The Dame and the Showgirl, about Dame Edith Sitwell meeting Marilyn Monroe, starring Emma Thompson, is on Audible and will hopefully reach a stage near you this year.…

As Sir Les Patterson might have phrased it, my boredom threshold is so low, it could parachute out of a snake's bottom and still freefall. I have given up on more books than I have finished – and I can't stand literary novels or most poetry. I stopped going to the theatre when what I most looked forward to was the interval. Shakespeare, I've decided, is frightfully overrated: actors spouting yards of gush, little of which sinks in. On my few (these days) visits to the cinema, I spend much of the film glancing at my watch. Audiences are always drinking and snacking, or checking their phones. Television is tedium, with its police procedural dramas, camp chat shows or programmes starring Toby Jones and Olivia Coleman. I used to take…

In 2010, I watched a four-part BBC documentary called The Young Ones. Langer's book, Counterclockwise – How to think yourself younger and healthier had just been published. The ubiquitous Dr Michael Mosley and Harvard psychology professor Ellen Langer, were overseeing an experiment. Six celebrities, Liz Smith, Lionel Blair, Dickie Bird, Sylvia Syms, Derek Jameson and Kenneth Kendall, all then in their 70s or 80s, agreed to spend time living as though it were their heyday – 1975 – to see if they could ‘trick’ their minds and bodies into rejuvenation. A country retreat had been retro-fitted, as it were, with authentic 70s decor and equipment. The TV would show only 70s programmes and the available music would be LPs from the early 70s. The celebrities would dress in 1970s clothes…

In the latter part of 2011, when I was 67, I remember thinking to myself: ‘This is curtains.’ I was in a hotel in Wicklow, waiting to join an Old Girls’ School Reunion. But I was plagued with breathlessness, night sweats, and horrible-looking phlegm. There were paroxysms of coughing and feelings of exhaustion. A chest infection seemed to have developed into a chronic, if episodic, condition. I thought I'd be saying goodbye to the Old Girls. As I'd been a heavy, and enthusiastic smoker (though I quit, I still haven't fully repented of the nicotine habit, thinking back to all the good times sharing ciggies), it was to be expected that I might develop bronchitis, emphysema or lung cancer. So this was the penalty for my sins – an Irish…