Spectator Life

A few months ago I wrote a piece for The Spectator about the surge in popularity of Elf Bars and the potential health risks of these colourful e-cigarettes. But disposable vapes are now posing a different kind of problem – for the planet.  These single-use devices, which last for around 600 puffs, head straight to landfill after users suck out their smoke. The vapes which don’t make it to the dump can be found lining the gutters of our cities, having been cast aside. In Britain an estimated 4.3 million people use vapes today, up from around 800,000 a decade ago, according to YouGov data.

When the Queen’s granddaughter Zara Phillips married the rugby player Mike Tindall in 2011, the shallower among us wondered what she saw in him. We’re not wondering now. Watching the monstrous regiment of muppets and divas competing in the latest series of ITV's I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! and seeing Tindall's equable nature – highlighted by the incompetent creative men who surround him, be they pop stars, actors or alleged comedians – makes it clear that the uncomplicated man is the smart woman’s choice. Tindall seems tremendously capable – an overlooked virtue in a romantic partner, and one that comes to the fore during the hard times.

When England line up against Iran in Doha today, the VIP seats should be studded with former players from both sides. But one who almost certainly won’t be present is a player with a solid claim to having been the greatest Iranian footballer in history. Because Ali Karimi is a wanted man. The 44-year-old is hugely influential in Iran – he has 13 million social media followers there. But he has positioned himself as such an overt critic of the country’s regime that he’s now living in exile, threatened with arrest – and worse – should he return to or be forcibly taken back to Iran.

‘It is impossible for a Brummie to open his mouth without making some other-accented Englishman hate or despise him.’ I am misquoting George Bernard Shaw, of course – but maybe the great man had the much-maligned Birmingham accent in mind when he made his famous pronouncement. In a recent study more than 2,000 people were asked to listen and react to 15 British accents. When they were asked which they would consider the most trustworthy, Birmingham ranked bottom. Yorkshire came out on top, with 60 per cent considering it trustworthy, while RP (Received Pronunciation) came in second at 57 per cent. The Edinburgh Scottish accent was third, with Welsh and Geordie rounding off the top five.

We live in a dog-crazy land. You know it’s true. There are 12.5 million pet dogs in Britain, and no fewer than one in three households have one. Which is, by any measure, a lot of dogs, especially when we’re confronting a cost-of-living crisis. Most people, of course, will already know why we have quite so many of them: they’re cute when they’re young and beautiful or handsome when fully grown; they provide companionship, yet they don’t do passive aggression or sarcasm. Most of us already have siblings, parents or a spouse for that.

Next month I will be 60. It’s an unwelcome landmark birthday as far as I’m concerned but they say that taking up a new hobby or pastime is a good way to combat the advances of old age. So I’ve decided to take up smoking. It was either that or something physical such as cycling or jogging or walking football but, to quote Ronnie Barker in Porridge: ‘What, with these feet?’ Besides, older cyclists look ridiculous, serious runners tend to look ten years older than they really are and as for walking football… what’s the point? No, smoking is easier, more pleasurable, more relaxing and even allows me to multi-task. I can enjoy a Camel Blue while birdwatching, walking the dog or listening to Northern Soul – all of which I also plan to do more of in my sixties.

The Lord Mayor’s Show is a mix of traditional buttoned-up pageantry and let-your-hair-down carnival. A bit like the state opening of parliament without all the MPs, and Notting Hill without the jerk chicken. I am a Freeman of The Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors, one of the ‘Great 12’ livery companies of the City of London. The Lord Mayor’s Show is an occasion in which the City’s livery companies – there are some 110 in all – have prominent place. What’s more, the incoming Lord Mayor has a special link to the Merchant Taylors as a member of the Company’s Court. Which is all a roundabout way of saying: I have been roped into today's show to ride atop a camel.

Last Saturday was pure sunbathing weather. I mention this because a) I’m writing from the Falkland Islands, where such occurrences are not exactly regular, and b) I spent the whole beautiful day, with two or three dozen other volunteers, drilling through rock to stake out a couple of hundred 6ft metal figures. I even had to wear a hat. This wasn’t the first time I’d attempted such a challenge. I lent a hand twice last year – first when we put up 100 Tommy silhouettes commemorating the centenary of the Royal British Legion. In the main these were set out on the sloping banks around the Stanley Cemetery and its first and second world war Cross of Sacrifice.

I’ve just given Elon Musk $8 a month to get a blue tick by my name on Twitter. The fact I haven't been able to secure one of these ticks on merit like so many other nonentities has been a source of near-constant irritation for the past half decade, particularly given how much time I spend on the site. My assumption had been that a Spectator-reading Twitter employee would eventually accept my brilliance – perhaps after reading something rude I'd written about Meghan Markle – and press the required button to make it happen. But when I finally accepted this wasn't likely, about two years ago, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I began filling out the website's online verification request form.

Golden pineapples, hotel rooms named after spies and the only curved piece of glass in the Gherkin – yes, it’s EC, the second in our series looking at the quirky history of London postcode areas. Step this way for some Square Mile trivia… There is only one curved piece of glass in the Gherkin – all the others are completely flat, the building’s famous shape achieved by the angles at which the panes are joined. The curved one is the horizontal one right at the top – if you want to see it up close and personal, book yourself a table at Searcys at the Gherkin, the restaurant and bar at the building’s summit. Having viewed the curved pane, look out of the flat ones for some incredible views of the capital. gherkinreception@searcys.co.

As ocean-going metaphors go, the news that a £1 billion cruise liner (usually charging £2,434.80 – love that 80! – for a nine-night jaunt, complete with a shopping mall, 14 jacuzzis, six swimming pools and the longest ‘dry-slide’ at sea) will host England’s Wags during the World Cup in Qatar could not have been more splashy.  This is a particularly bad time for football. The England players are off to Qatar, along with LGBT-friendly football personalities – led by ‘gay icon’ David Beckham – to shill for a country where migrant workers are treated like chattels, women are treated like children and homosexuals are treated like criminals.

George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, was bitten on the cheek by a mosquito some time in early March 1923. The bite became infected. By April he was running a high fever, had pneumonia in both lungs and his heart and respiratory systems were failing. He died in a Cairo hospital on 5 April. His death came less than six months after Howard Carter, the Egyptologist whose excavations Carnarvon was funding, first discovered evidence that there was an undisturbed tomb in the Valley of the Kings in Thebes. That was on 4 November 1922 – 100 years ago this month. A few days later, Carter, Carnarvon and his daughter, Lady Evelyn Herbert, had squeezed through a roughly-hewn hole in the wall of the burial chamber of Tutankhamun, uncovering its glittering treasures.

It’s hard to imagine how baffled the British public must have been by the arrival of David Bowie on to TV screens in the early 1970s. With his saffron hair, make-up and androgynous clothes, superficially he looked like a rejection of everything his post-war south London childhood had taught him. One of the most pivotal scenes in Moonage Daydream, the recent film about his life, is his 1973 interview with chat show host Russell Harty. Throughout this awkward cross-examination, Harty searches for a label he can stick on Bowie for the benefit of discomfited viewers. ‘Are those men’s shoes? Or women’s shoes? Or bisexual shoes?’ Harty inquires, looking down at Bowie’s strappy red and gold platform sandals. ‘They’re shoe-shoes, silly!

First comes disbelief that I have done something so extreme, followed by denial as I pick up my phone repeatedly to check it’s not just a bad dream. But no – it's really happening. Panic segues into frustration; then, finally, I arrive at acceptance. For the next three hours I will not be able to log on to social media or my favourite websites, and there is nothing I can do about it. In a last-ditch attempt to stop myself compulsively scrolling, I have spent £70 on a lifetime membership of the internet blocking software Freedom. When activated, it prevents access to specified sites across my devices until a set amount of time has elapsed.

Picture the scene: it’s 8 p.m. on a Tuesday. You’re sitting on the sofa in the home of someone you barely know, gulping supermarket wine, making inane chitchat with friends of friends as you all put off the inevitable: discussing a book only a third of the women – always women – in the room have actually bothered to read. In your head, you’re counting the minutes until you can excuse yourself for the last train home, wondering what’s happening on tonight’s Bake Off and engineering a strategy to quietly remove yourself from the group WhatsApp without appearing rude. You stifle a yawn and subtly check your watch while necking yet more wine. Sound familiar? Welcome to book club.

In his first interview since being reappointed, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly laid down some clear diplomatic water between his party and Labour – confirming that, unlike Keir Starmer, he would attend this winter’s Qatar World Cup. The Foreign Secretary won’t be alone. The Football Association expects that some 10,000 England fans will make the journey to a World Cup widely regarded as the most controversial in history (though Prince William, the FA’s president, will reportedly not be among them). So what awaits them when they get there? If the headlines so far are anything to go by, they could be in for a rude awakening.