Spectator Life | The Spectator

Two tips for York next week and one for tomorrow

York’s Ebor meeting next week is one of the highlights of the racing calendar with four days of quality fare on offer from Wednesday onwards. York is a flat, left-handed track suitable for strong galloping horses yet for some inexplicable reason quite a lot of thoroughbreds fail to act on what should be a fair course for one and all. For that reason, it makes sense to back horses with strong form on the track. Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a big admirer of local trainer Ed Bethell, whose yard is in the Yorkshire Dales. Most of Bethell’s best horses have run at York at some point and there is no doubt that several of these will have been specifically targeted at this big meeting.

Sean Thomas

Bring back sex, drugs and rock n’ roll

It’s generally not hard to find a thoroughly depressing, joyless, plaintive, whiny, doom-laden, monotoned, earnest, life-sucking, soul-less, uninspiring, hapless and gloom-inducing article in the leftier British press. In fact, I sometimes wonder if the editors have sacked all their journalists, installed ChatGPT, and simply sit there, sipping Waitrose crémant, as they punch in evermore negative and melancholy prompts like 'write an article about why something (gardening, cake, quantum engineering) is racist' or 'do a travel piece on the joys of zero emission yurting in Macclesfield'.

Jake Wallis Simons

The dangers of cargo bikes

My first encounter with the cargo bicycle came more than ten years ago. I was a features writer at the Sunday Telegraph and had three very small children; my assignment was to spend a few weeks trying out three different designs for ferrying kids and shopping and then reach a verdict on which was best. What is a cargo bike, I hear you ask? Put simply, it is a monumental pain in the arse What is a cargo bike, I hear you ask? Put simply, it is a monumental pain in the arse. It is either a bicycle or a tricycle with a box bolted to the front, in which you put your children and other things.

Alec Marsh

Why the British seaside still reigns supreme

It’s the time of year to revisit one of life’s great imponderables. British seaside holidays. Why do we do them? Which other experience – save perhaps attending a British boarding school in the past – does as much to remind you of the essential unfairness of life? Forget the costs involved (if Marianna Mazzucato wants to get Britons worked up about ‘rent-seeking’ she should start with holiday cottages) we have the weather to contend with. Like gazpacho, the British seaside holiday would be idyllic if the whole thing were only 20 degrees warmer, but it just wouldn’t work There you are on the beach, having spent 15 minutes viciously applying suntan lotion to your protesting children, only to complete the task at very the point that it starts to rain.

17 August 2023

Mark Solomons

In praise of Michael Parkinson

Different generations will have different memories of Sir Michael Parkinson, who has died aged 88. If you’re a little older, you’ll remember that Parkinson led a golden age of chat shows when they were about the guests rather than the host. He was a master of the art and, though famous, never came across as a celebrity interviewing other celebrities. And never for the sake of a pre-prepared one-liner to get a cheap laugh. He would ask a question then sit back and let the interviewee answer, at length if need be He would ask a question then sit back and let the interviewee answer, at length if need be.

Olivia Potts

Fish and chips: the fast food that made me

The last meal my parents had before I graced the world with my presence was fish and chips, so I like to think it forms part of my origin story. Growing up on the coast, fish and chips featured in all its forms: bags of chips clutched on windy beach walks; takeaway fish suppers brought home by Dad, steam escaping from cardboard boxes; and the ultimate luxury, a sit-in experience at Colmans, the South Shields king of fish and chip restaurants, accompanied by a slice of bread and butter and a cup of tea. I was built on fish and chips; salt and vinegar course through my blood. Battered fried fish was brought over to London by Jewish immigrants coming from Spain and Portugal, via the Netherlands, as long ago as the 16th century.

Mary Wakefield

The insane craze for dog ice-cream

During the few hot days we had in June, I came across my first tub of dog ice-cream nestled among the Häagen-Dazs in my local supermarket. Scoop’s vanilla: ‘Tubs that get tails wagging.’ My first thought was that it was a joke, or perhaps for people who identify as dogs. So I looked it up as I stood in the queue, and it was as if a door opened onto our national psychosis. Purina ‘Frosty paws’, Wiggles and Wags ‘Freeze-Fetti’, Frozzys dog ice-cream, Pooch Creamery Vanilla, Wagg’s Sunny Daze blueberry, Higgins dog ice-cream, Dogsters ice-cream-style treats, Jude’s, Smoofl, Ben and Jerry’s… the market for dog ice-cream is limitless and it crosses the socio-economic spectrum.

Michael Simmons

In defence of drunken freshers’ weeks

I don’t remember much of freshers’ week at Edinburgh. Friends have helped to fill in the blanks. I vaguely recall a police officer handing out vodka shots to show how easy it was to fail a breathalyser test. A famous DJ had his set in the union cut short because he played the song ‘Blurred Lines’. It had been banned by student politicians. I have hazy memories, too, of my first interactions with posh English women. One assumed I must be gifted since I’d made it into university from a Scottish state school. Another asked if I was limping because I’d overdone it at the ‘introduction to reeling event’ (I have cerebral palsy). Posh English men were no better. At a party exclusively made up of Old Harrovians, I was laughed at when I got out my Android phone.

Tanya Gold

A Margherita in Tolkien’s Middle-earth: Pizza in the Courtyard at Sarehole Mill reviewed

Sarehole Mill is four miles south of the centre of Birmingham. If this were a fairy tale, and it should be, it would follow that Birmingham swallowed Sarehole a century ago, like a dragon and its prey. I like Birmingham: I like its optimism, its violence and its multiplex, which can match any American Midwest mall in competitive dystopia and idiocy. Birmingham has energy, and that swallowed Sarehole, but unfortunately for Birmingham, there was a writer who cared: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.Sarehole was his childhood palace, and now, more reluctantly I would imagine, his memorial pizzeria.

Neil Clark

Real football fans watch non-League football

Oxford City vs Rochdale at Court Place Farm doesn’t have quite the same ring as Chelsea vs Liverpool at Stamford Bridge, but last Saturday’s match was important all the same. At this level, you feel part of the match, which never happens in an executive box at the Emirates ‘The Hoops’, Oxford’s oldest football club, founded in 1882 when Gladstone was prime minister and Old Etonians won the FA Cup, were playing their first ever home game in the fifth tier of English football. Rochdale, whose 102-year membership of the Football League ended in May, were playing their first away game in the Vanarama National League.

16 August 2023

Melanie McDonagh

I’m bored of Disney feminism

It is, I know, a bit early to be thinking about 2024, but to help with the forward planning, here’s a film to avoid next year: the Disney release of its new, non-animated, musical version of Snow White. The original animated version of 1937 was a classic if ever there were one. Stewart Steven, the late editor of the Evening Standard, remembered seeing it as a boy when it was released: ‘I was completely terrified’, he told me, speaking for a generation of children. It was a triumph of animation; the songs were terrific – the seven dwarves’ ‘Hi Ho, Hi Ho’ is immortal; and the episode where the princess, fleeing the huntsman through the trees, is tormented by clinging branches and malevolent eyes is fearful. It’s just a pity that most of us now see it on a small screen.

Esther Watson

Men, please take off your necklaces

Vogue recently announced that Harry Styles had travelled to Normandy where he had his portrait painted by the British artist David Hockney. It wasn’t the meeting of two cultural icons that caught my attention, or the fact that the unphased Hockney described the world’s biggest popstar as ‘just another person that came into the studio’, but instead it was Styles’s sartorial choices. https://twitter.com/TheHarryNews/status/1686731114033938432?s=20 The gym bros I went to school with are downing a protein shake in pretty pearl necklaces Styles has long been associated with the gender-bending fashion trend we have seen in recent years.

Paul Burke

Punk’s fake history

If you were born after 1970 and don’t remember punk, you’ve almost certainly been misled by people who do. You’ve probably been told – through countless paean-to-punk retrospectives, documentaries and newspaper culture pages – that it was a glorious, anarchic revolution that swept all before it. I can tell you first-hand that it wasn’t. Punk was as middle-class as a Labrador in a Volvo. It was invariably the posher kids who abandoned Pink Floyd, Genesis and Yes Far from being hugely influential, punk was a passing fad that made little impression on the charts and left the lasting legacy of a spent firework.

15 August 2023

Ross Clark

My disturbing experience in a Paris lavatory

I am happy to add my name to many reactionary causes, but sorry, I draw the line at trying to save the urinal from the onward march of the unisex loo. On Sunday, equalities minister Kemi Badenoch published proposals to oblige every new building to incorporate separate toilet facilities for men and women. To be fair to her, she isn’t trying to prevent architects from designing unisex facilities where every loo is in effect a little private bathroom, with hand-washing facilities incorporated – her beef is with the subtly different ‘gender-neutral toilets’, which are large rooms full of toilets and sinks which can be used by members of either sex. In some cases, these have been known to force women to walk past men standing at urinals.

Zak Asgard

I escaped Totnes. But only just

Totnes is like any other small town in England insofar as there are limited shops and people will try to sell you mouldy produce at an ‘organic’ price. Other than that, it’s a different world. This is the same place that started its own currency – albeit unsuccessfully. The same place that fought back against Costa Coffee and won. And the place where, one day a year, people lose their minds over the prospect of an orange being rolled down a hill. Make of that what you will. The town’s population swells and people drink and spend time at the beach and listen to old men playing the fiddle while high on ketamine I moved to Totnes after university. I grew up in London, which makes me pretentious and impatient.

David Cohen

So long to the father of Americana

Robbie Robertson, the revered songwriter who died last week aged 80, was an immensely important composer. Over six decades in the entertainment business, Robertson worked alongside a small galaxy of musicians and singers, most famously Bob Dylan, who probably spoke for many when he said the Toronto-born artist’s death came as ‘shocking news’ for those of them still left. When he died, Robertson had just completed his fourteenth film composition for Scorsese America’s ‘traditions, tragedies and joys’ were Robertson’s lyrical trade, according to his most frequent collaborator of the past 45 years, the film director Martin Scorsese. In a long conversation I had with Robertson in 1988, he told me that he thought of his recordings less as music and more as literature.

14 August 2023

Gus Carter

The Greggs delusion

Everything about Greggs is fake. You can smell it as you walk down any British high street. There’s an astringency, a hint that what lingers in those ovens is more than butter, flour, eggs and salt – that their food has been adulterated with something unnatural. What you’re smelling is an approximation of pastry, an attempt by the Greggs customer development unit to ‘curate an authentic baked goods experience’. Of course, we all secretly know the food is fake. The texture of the baguettes suggest that they’ve been salvaged from a 1970s deep freezer found buried beneath a Midlands business park. And the fillings. All that slimy pink ham. The medical cross-sections of boiled egg.

Josie Cox

Could you find love with a business degree?

‘D’you know what the acronym MBA stands for?’ The 27 -year-old who asked me this had a deep tan and fluorescent teeth. He may have winked, but the eye twitch was more likely a nervous tic from looking at himself in the mirror so much. I responded with a look of indifference tinged with fear. ‘Married’ – he paused for dramatic effect and demonstratively looked at my wedding ring – ‘but available.’ I felt nauseated.

Liam Pape

Why Americans love the Fringe

‘It’s like the Olympics of performing’ says Los Angeles-based comedian Greta Titelman on the Fringe’s reputation over the pond. ‘It’s a big honour – but you will likely have a mental breakdown at some point during your run.’ Like over 350 US-based acts this year, Greta has opted to spend August in Scotland’s capital at the largest arts festival in the world. With just over 3,500 shows in total at this year’s Fringe, Americans are well over-represented. But appeals to them about the Fringe? ‘My show is about sex, and luckily, you people have sex too’ ‘I have been working on my hour for years and I feel finally mentally and emotionally prepared to absolutely stun the masses of Edinburgh’ says Greta.

12 August 2023

John Mac Ghlionn

Harry Kane should have gone to Saudi Arabia

It’s official, folks: Harry Kane is off to Germany. England’s captain this morning joined Bayern Munich for an initial £86.4 million. The 30-year-old will sign a four-year contract. The Germans are understandably excited. In the UK, though, most football fans were left scratching their heads. Bayern Munich? Why? Kane could have gone to Saudi Arabia and played alongside the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Sadio Mane Some will say they’re a club with a loyal fanbase and a strong history. Yes, but the same can be said of Leeds United and Celtic, so don’t pull that card. If this were the year 2000, Kane’s move would make complete sense. But this is 2023, a time when no one outside of Germany really cares about the Bundesliga – and for good reason.

11 August 2023

Penworthy

Two tips for Ascot’s Shergar Cup meeting

Amid the fun and games that always accompanies the Shergar Cup meeting at Ascot, there is at least one horse that goes to the Berkshire track on a deadly serious mission. Connections of PRYDWEN are hoping he can win the Dubai Duty Free Shergar Cup Stayers handicap (tomorrow, 2.10 p.m.) for two reasons. Four teams of three jockeys compete for a trophy with points awarded for all of the six races based on the finishing position of the horses First, the two-mile contest is worth nearly £40,000, a nice enough pot in itself, but, more importantly, victory would mean the horse incurred a 4lbs penalty for the Sky Bet Ebor Handicap on 26 August.

John Mac Ghlionn

The unbearable smugness of Bill Maher

Bill Maher has many fans. But no one is a bigger fan of Bill Maher than Bill Maher. His smugness is as apparent as it is nauseating. That self-satisfied grin, forever etched on his face, gets on my nerves. I’m sure I’m not alone. Twenty years ago, Maher, the human equivalent of Marmite, made his first appearance on HBO. Since then, his show, Real Time with Bill Maher, has grown in popularity – and for good reason. It’s a great show. Good comedians must be able to poke fun at themselves, not just members of the audience. Maher obviously never got the memo Not necessarily because of Maher, but more because of the eclectic guests (one of his very first guests was Ann Coulter) and supremely talented joke writers. You see, Maher is a poor interviewer and an even poorer comic.

Andrew Cunningham

What teachers really do over the summer holidays

Already we’re deep in the school summer holidays. Hell for parents, who still have to keep their kids occupied for weeks on end; heaven for teachers, with all those weeks off. The biggest danger with so much time off is that, after a few weeks, your brain becomes addled For those of us fortunate enough to teach in independent schools, the holidays began on 1 July, which by now seems an age ago and we don’t go back to school until September. Two whole months off, on full pay. Long enough to forget about troublesome teenagers; long enough to dream dreams of new careers. A sense of space and peace that lasts... well, until A level results day on 17 August, when reality bites again. So what do we do with all that time?

Simon de Burton

How Cuba was overthrown as the cigar capital of the world

A reputation for excellence has long maintained the status of everything from French wines to Scottish tweed – but globalisation has disproved the myth that the best of any particular product can only come from one country. Cuba is no longer seen as the source of the finest cigars thanks to the increasing dominance of its near neighbour, the Dominican Republic.

10 August 2023

Peter Hitchens

Real cyclists don’t use e-bikes

An impossible 45 years ago, I decided the moment had come to get back on my pushbike. I had long hated the way the motor car was taking over the world and wanted to play my part in changing this. I also had a more selfish reason. After two years on the Fleet Street diet of lunchtime excess, I could already see my first heart attack was not far off. I was in my late twenties and getting almost no exercise. I knew of people in the newspaper business who did so little walking that the uppers of their shoes wore out before the soles did. Something had to be done. In those days, bikes had not moved on since my childhood days, pedalling my heavy green Hercules over the Sussex Downs on summer afternoons. The brakes were as feeble, especially in the wet.

Linden Kemkaran

Testosterone transformed my life. Why won’t GPs prescribe it?

Last summer, I became a participant in a covert drugs deal. I have never considered doing anything illegal, but I was desperate. This is how it happened. I was on a weekend away with friends, some of whom were women in their forties and fifties. I discovered that one friend, who lives an ex-pat life in a Middle Eastern country with fantastic private healthcare, had recently been given testosterone gel as part of her HRT medication. She had noticed a sharp and very welcome improvement. She reported feeling more alert, less forgetful, more able to get up off the sofa and be active and less likely to anxiously sweat the small stuff. I was fascinated. I had been on HRT (oestrogen and progesterone) for about six months, but I still felt terrible. Pre--menopause, I was full of energy.

Robin Oakley

Tom Marquand was the star of Goodwood

On no course in Britain does jockeyship count for more than at undulating, tricksy Goodwood and although Frankie Dettori was able, on his final appearance there, to treat the expectant crowd to a couple of flying dismounts after victories on Epictetus and Kinross, the week’s top rider was clearly Tom Marquand. One racing sage told me during the week, ‘Racing will desperately need another Frankie to engage the public’s attention’ – and when I proffered Tom and his wife Hollie Doyle as a twosome who could do so together, the rejoinder was: ‘Of course Tom’s got the ability but he’s just too nice.’ He meant that you simply couldn’t imagine Tom Marquand winning headlines by stealing another jockey’s whip mid-race like Lester Piggott or scrumping a trainer’s cigars.

Bruce Anderson

Port is fashionable once again

I once drank some excellent port at Ted Heath’s table. The invitation came as a surprise, but it almost certainly had nothing to do with the monstre (un)sacré. The dinner took place during a Bournemouth party conference at the Close in Salisbury. Ted had an unofficial PPS, a then Tory MP called Robert Hughes. Rob had a sense of fun and mischief. There would have been little scope for either while he was enduring the sullen maunderings of the Incredible Sulk. Anyway, he was given a chance to amuse himself when asked to organise a dinner party. He included me. The young are being encouraged to drink port and even mix it – a criminal offence This would not have been Ted’s choice. I had never been polite about him in print, nor to him in person. But he was at one disadvantage.

9 August 2023

Zoe Strimpel

I’m cancelling rat girl summer

Rat girl summer is a typically absurd TikTok meme that most women –indeed, most humans – born before 1990 would probably struggle to understand. But it’s a thing. And here’s what it means, according to the Washington Post: it is ‘a TikTok movement that emphasizes living like a rat: scurrying around the streets at all hours of the day and night, snacking to your heart’s delight, and going to places you have no business going to’. After a content creator called Lola Kolade encouraged followers to ‘embrace the rodent energy’ in June, #ratgirlsummer has been shared over 25 million times on TikTok.