The original ‘IT girl’, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson was the poster-child for the wild debauchery of the 1990s. Tanned, toned and sporting shoes that cost more than the average mortal’s monthly salary, she encapsulated my fantasies of adult hedonism like no other. Splashed across the tabloids on a weekly basis, she became almost as high-profile as...
Empathy’s a funny old thing. When it comes to three-legged kittens and fake cancer posts, the Brits dish it out by the bucketload. But while a sad-faced, one-eyed donkey pleading for human saviours can generate 14 million Facebook shares, it’s a different story for poverty-stricken migrants. “HE’S NOT 14!” A Daily Mail reader screeched into the...
It’s as aesthetically appealing as solidified dog sick, but when it comes to hipster cool points, Hackney has them in bucketloads. Crowned by the media as London’s most talked about district, edgy pop-ups are emerging faster than professional lifestyle consultants can wipe the coke crystals from their nose on a Monday morning. It’s not that...
It’s been a politically charged week to say the least. The Tories are revelling in their victory, promising to abolish The Human Rights Act, reintroduce entertaining methods of animal cruelty and stop those scrounging disabled bastards from leeching the salaries of Eton-educated self-made millionaires. The increasingly anguished left have taken to Twitter in umbrage, as though...
As someone who usually spends weekends consuming vast quantities of cheese-filled baked goods, I’m not sure what possessed me to join in the UAE’s first Spartan race challenge. Let’s call it peer pressure, or a temporary moment of madness. It started with training sessions two weeks ago, where hulking great tanks of Schwarzenegger-muscle completed squats...
Sporting advertisements don’t generally fill me with joy. Fronted by swishy-haired, ab-crunching, green-smoothie-drinking treadmill unicorns, they serve no other purpose than to make me feel as useless as I did on school sports day. I am no athlete. If anything I’m the opposite of an athlete: Skinny, squishy, nesh and all too happy to sacrifice...
“What if I fall off?” “You won’t fall off.” “They said the same thing about the Segway and I ended up headfirst in a bin next to a crowd of Japanese tourists.” I use this story as an example of my ability to attract catastrophe, because prior to this epic fall, only George Bush and...
Oscar Pistorious killed his girlfriend. Except he didn’t just kill ‘his girlfriend’, did he? He killed Reeva Steenkamp, an independent, successful woman, whose name barely gets a passing mention in the articles concerning her death. Reeva was a South African model who supported her family through her career. She took part in awareness campaigns on...
Fish and chips must be one of the most glorious dishes on the English menu. Dripping in salt and fat like congestive heart failure on a plate, it’s one of the few take aways that requires a coronary stent after consumption. Whilst I have serious passion for the occasional battered treat (not a euphemism), recently...
January is the worst month of year. After a drunken chorus of Auld Lang Syne when the clock chimes midnight on the 1st, we’ve all slumped into a doom filled cloud of misery by the 3rd. Lying in a pile of discarded diet menus and Christmas credit card bills it’s hard not to feel that...
Jesus’ ability to turn water into wine probably explains why he had more followers than Stephen Fry. If he was on Twitter today there’d be a crowd of city girls forming Belieber inspired fan groups in a bid to get their grubby paws on some of his budget cocktail recipes. Sadly I’ve never found a...
One of the most difficult things about cooking (apart from clearing up the catastrophic mess that trails in my wake) is maintaining variety. Given the choice, I’d happily eat mashed potatoes with every meal. Like clouds of salty, buttery fluff on a plate they can pretty much be teamed with any food in the universe....
