Diary

When I finally head back to church this weekend, after a year of Covid-avoidance, it is going to feel a little strange. These past 12 months constitute the longest stretch of time I’ve been away since I was born. And I’m not going to lie, part of me liked the sudden plague-long dispensation. I’ve become

Piers Morgan may have been the UK equivalent of a TV shock-jock, but there’s another side to him. I’ve known Piers for more than 30 years — we went to the same journalism college — and he has a large heart. Years ago Judy and I and the kids were holidaying in Florida and, unknown

Safe spaces, diversity quotas, gender-neutral pronouns, culturally relative facts, heteronormative hegemony. Are my right-on credentials right on enough? Am I sufficiently penitent for being white, cis and male? Will I be cancelled or de-platformed by the Pronoun Police? What is my woke-quotient? At least as far as science is concerned, it’s a satisfactory zero. Science

Santa Monica is a soothing place to be locked down. I moved here from New York for four months in November with my two adult kids after I lost my beloved husband, Harry Evans. I couldn’t face the task of finishing a book in our empty country house where for years we’d shown each other

Spring in Somerset — again. If someone had told me last February that I’d spend seven of the next 12 months here, I’d have explained that was impossible: I’ve always been a city boy. Three lockdowns later, and we’ve bought a home here. I love it. Snow, then snowdrops, now daffodils — and the wild

Did Nicola Sturgeon lie to the Scottish parliament? A Holyrood committee into the now infamous Alex Salmond affair has been looking into what she knew and when she knew it. In its possession is Salmond’s explosive written evidence, which contradicts her account. So who is telling the truth? This SNP-chaired inquiry has been in no

My great-great-grandmother, born on a Barbadian plantation and transported to what was British Guiana in the 19th century, gave rise to a tribe that has spread across the globe. Weirdly, Covid has brought us together (via Zoom) in a way that used to be reserved for weddings and funerals. My New Yorker nephew found a

I start the week with someone throwing faeces at me. I thought people were supposed to clap for doctors these days, not hurl poo at them? Never mind. Thankfully I’m fast on my feet despite it being the early hours of the morning, and dodge the mess, which hits the wall behind me. I’m working

Monday started with me opening my bedroom windows to let what little light there is come through, only to find two workmen on my balcony looking surprised that anyone lived in the building. Since my shooing gestures weren’t understood, I had to step outside, putting myself inside the regulatory two metres, to tell them to

The thing we most need to understand right now is how you deprogram people who have been in a cult. By cult, I mean a group of people living out an imaginary world view created by a charismatic leader. These things sometimes end with the guru hopping on a private plane to escape the authorities;

Real men are not supposed to confess to feeling fear. But I am frightened, second time round, about the plague. There is superstition involved. Back in March, I had an underlying belief that I would be somehow immune. This time, I feel differently. It’s partly those vertiginous graphs and partly my gloomy streak, a ‘just-my-luck’

Among the greatest bores right now are those friends who insist on telling you, usually as if it’s some kind of state secret, that Covid lockdown hasn’t changed their lives very much. They work from home, anyway, you see. They were practising social distancing before it was cool! They’re not terribly social at the best

‘Stopping the diary/’ wrote Philip Larkin, ‘Was a stun to memory,/ Was a blank starting.’ I never really understood those lines until Covid. The pandemic has turned my diary into an acre of white space, like the gymnasium wall at school just begging for some adolescent graffiti. ‘PARTY,’ I want to scribble. ‘SMALL FLAT, 100

I’m often asked why Channel 4 recently banned an episode of my show The IT Crowd because of ‘transphobia’. I blame spell check. Before the internet, people who sent in crazy, entitled, demanding complaints were known as the ‘green ink brigade’ because of their tendency to write letters in what they thought were attention-grabbing colours.

I’m often asked when I’ll write a pandemic novel. I’m not sure I’d ever be tempted, though the backdrop of Edinburgh’s deserted streets at the height of the (first) lockdown certainly provided food for the imagination. I dare say novels will arrive — some may even be good. But I find that fiction concerning momentous

It is such a relief that Dominic Cummings has gone. Not for the sake of the country or the government — you can make your own mind up about that. No, no, I’m talking about me. Over the past year or so, the abuse I’ve received on Twitter and Facebook for reporting anything perceived to