Features

When I came to play back the recording of my recent interview with Bob Marshall-Andrews, the serially rebellious Labour MP for Medway, for a second or two my blood ran cold. As I remembered it, while I’d been drawing him we’d had a wide-ranging conversation about Blair, Brown, socialism, globalisation, MPs’ allowances, the constitution, the judiciary, the media and society at large. But instead of all that my tape started halfway through a long, rambling and very funny anecdote about a hotel where Marshall-Andrews had once stayed in Wales. My contributions, meanwhile, seemed to consist solely of monosyllabic grunts, occasional barks of laughter and increasingly frequent protestations that I must be getting home as I was feeling very ‘tired’.

Sarfraz Manzoor talks to Philippe Petit, whose stunning walk between the Twin Towers in 1974 is the subject of a new film — and discovers the mirror image of the horrors of 9/11 It was one small step, but for Philippe Petit it was to be a giant leap into immortality. The date was 7 August 1974, the location New York City and the 24-year-old Frenchman was standing on the top of one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center preparing to commit what became known as the artistic crime of the century. Petit, tousle-haired and baby-faced, had been planning this moment for the past six years and now, perched 1,350 feet above the New York streets, he was about to take his first step onto the steel wire he had suspended between the Towers. It was 7.

At a recent dinner party in the British embassy in Kabul, one of the guests referred to ‘the Afghan-Pakistan war’. The rest of the table fell silent. This is the truth that dare not speak its name. Even mentioning it in private in the Afghan capital’s green zone is enough to solicit murmurs of disapproval. Few want to accept that the war is widening; that it now involves Pakistan, a country with an unstable government and nuclear weapons. But in fact the military commanders know that they are dealing with far more than just a domestic insurgency. Weapons, men and suicide bombers are flooding in from Pakistan every day. Like it or not, war is being waged on Afghanistan from Pakistan.

An apology to all readers: a couple of weeks ago, in a public-spirited sort of way, I offered advice as to how to go about getting stabbed. Although I hope you will accept that I was well intentioned, the article was clearly deficient and even offensive in two important respects. First, I neglected to explain how one might go about getting stabbed twice — and, since I wrote, the window for that particular opportunity seems to have been closed. Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, unveiled an exciting plan to let stabbers loose in hospital accident and emergency wards, where they might joyfully run around stabbing people who are recovering from having already been stabbed by someone else, as part of a rehabilitative process for the stabber.

Mark Leonard, Britain’s pre-eminent analyst of modern China, says the Olympic genie is out of the bottle. The prospect of global scrutiny has actually increased repression as the authorities try to stamp out dissent. But digital technology is impossible to police ‘For years we couldn’t wait for the Olympics to start. Now we can’t wait for them to be over.’ That is how a Chinese friend described the horrible limbo in Beijing as a control-freak state tries to anticipate and eliminate any possible challenges to its glorious coming-out party on the 8th of the 8th, 2008.

I was once kidnapped and held hostage by political terrorists in South America. My ordeal only lasted about an hour — but it was rather frightening. Like Ingrid Betancourt, it was partly my own fault for ignoring obvious security advice. Unlike her, I was able to talk my way out of it. It is hard to imagine the six years of continuous terror and abuse this doughty lady experienced at the hands of the Marxist terrorist group, FARC, in Colombia. Her release, in a bold exercise by the Colombian Armed Forces, is, rightly, a matter of universal rejoicing and a triumph for President Uribe.