Hotels

A Roald Dahl tea? It reminds me more of Jimmy Savile

One Aldwych, an Edwardian grand hotel near Waterloo Bridge, is serving a Jimmy Savile tribute tea. It is not explicitly called a Jimmy Savile tribute tea; of course it is not. That would be tasteless, and people would not come to One Aldwych to eat it; it might, in fact, be lucky enough to get a picket, a dazzling marketing dream. No, it is called the Scrumdiddlyumptious Afternoon Tea and it is tied, in sugary, monetised chains, to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a musical featuring a man dressed as a Fisher-Price toy (and possible diabetic), child torture and obesity, and explicit abuse of small minority workers, which is playing

Griff Rhys Jones: Burma, My Father and the Forgotten Army

Burma, My Father and the Forgotten Army, with Griff Rhys Jones, is on BBC2 at 9pm on Sunday, 7th July. I have spent a week with old, old men, interviewing veterans who served with the West African regiments in Burma in the 1940s. It’s for a television programme about my father’s war. The young men who were shipped off to the Far East are nonagenarians now and, black or white, universally charming and calm: unhurried, unflappable and brimming with patient good humour. At first, I thought that that’s what must happen as you approach your own centenary. But then I realised it might be the other way round. Perhaps this