Chas Newkey-Burden

When I was a child, I always wanted to watch television during supper, but my dad wasn’t keen. He preferred family conversation and as we chatted over a meal he would try to gently steer us towards more pleasant subjects rather than the vulgar or provocative topics I tended to propose. ‘A meal is a sacred thing,’ he’d tell me.  I spent my secondary education at a bizarre school run by a quasi-Vedic cult, where table manners were also important. Before lunch, we

Over the past few months, I’ve been training for the London Marathon, so most weekends I’ve been out running more than 20 miles at a stretch. I carry the usual bits to make these long slogs vaguely civilised – energy gels, a water bottle, a couple of fruit pastilles. They help, of course. But there’s one thing I absolutely cannot do without: music.  Non-runners sometimes ask

Life is riddled with things that impersonate something in a hideously disappointing way: the regret of Pepsi, the affront of the rail replacement bus and, for runners, the tedium of the treadmill.  They are one of the most tiresome inventions to scar this planet, offering a mind-numbing bastardisation of one of life’s joys. I’m a

France is holding local elections and the candidates are falling over themselves to appeal to a peculiar demographic: dog lovers. A candidate in the south-west city of Albi is promising shared human-dog drinking fountains, with the upper level for the owner and the bottom level for the pet. Her opponent has bitten back with a plan

A broken-down washing machine is generally regarded as definitely a Bad Thing. There is the expense and hassle of repairing or replacing the machine, the prospect of a flooded kitchen, and the sudden realisation that your underwear stock is … less abundant than you hoped.   But when our washing machine expired recently, I was secretly thrilled because it gave me an

Everyone is giving up something these days. Even before this week’s flood of new year’s resolutions, we’re in the age of subtraction as people shed vices like old skins. Cigarettes, alcohol – those villains have been booed off the stage by the newly health-conscious, whose accusing stare is now turning to a fresh culprit: caffeine.