Mark Mason talks about trivia via books, articles, guided walks and the pub.
Not long ago, I woke up in hospital, in pain, with a damaged back, but grateful for the sleep that a couple of doses of morphine had secured. ‘Morning,’ said a sixtysomething man who appeared by the side of the bed. ‘I’m Derek, I’m a volunteer here.’ ‘Hello Derek.’ ‘I’ve bought you some cornflakes.’ I
No man ever watched a £20 note flutter from an opened Father’s Day card and thought: ‘How disappointing — not enough thought has gone into that.’ If you’re a son, you’ll know this already. But if you’re a daughter, remember that the sexes are different. Women want presents, actual objects, things that show your loved one
It’s a real skill, writing about a journey where nothing ever happens. We shouldn’t be surprised that Simon Armitage is so good at it: he’s a poet, and therefore used to reporting on nothing happening, or rather spotting the little things that are always happening but the rest of us are too busy to notice.
They say that death and taxes are the only two certainties in life. But there seems to be a third, linked to death and as painful as taxes. It’s the astronomical cost of organising a funeral. My partner’s father died recently, and for the honour of a bog-standard cremation in a far from fashionable part
I knew there had to be a point to Monopoly. The game itself is tedium made cardboard, the strongest known antidote to the will to the live. There is a 12 per cent chance that any given game of Monopoly will go on for ever (the other 88 per cent just feel like that). In
How many of the people driving mobility scooters these days actually need a mobility scooter? The invention of the vehicle was a great move forward (literally) for those who genuinely needed it: the disabled and the infirm. But then another group of users appeared. Rather slowly, admittedly, and wheezing as they did so, before settling
Egypt’s revolution of 2011 didn’t just get rid of President Mubarak: it did a pretty good job of clearing out the tourists, too. The political uncertainty since then has made people wary of visiting — meaning more space and lower prices for those who do make the trip. But you’d better be quick if you
My favourite fact about gyms before reading this book was that the average British gym member covers 468 miles per year and the average British dog walker 676. Eric Chaline’s history of the institution has offered up some competition on the fact front — but my cynicism remains undimmed. Chaline, a personal trainer and weightlifting
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/Viewfrom22-19Feb2015.mp3″ title=”Mark Mason and Lara Prendergast discuss the personal space invaders” startat=1422] Listen [/audioplayer]It’s the shoulders you have to watch out for. If he’s pressing them back as his hand comes out to shake yours, then beware: you’re about to meet a Space Invader. It’s tricky, being an alpha male in polite 21st-century society.
Could the current generation of parents be the first ones who won’t want their children to go to university? Until now that mortarboard photo on the sideboard has always been the dream, visual proof that your offspring have munched their way to the top of the educational food chain. Advancement by degree. But that was
Every day the Isle of Wight becomes England’s smallest county: when-ever the tide comes in, the island steals the crown from Rutland, if only for a few hours. Taking the Wightlink ferry reminds you that the isle gave us the hovercraft, Christopher Cockerell’s early experiments there involving a hairdryer and some empty cat-food tins. Less
You know how it goes with corporate speak. A strange new habit grows and spreads, creeping largely unnoticed into the language, until one day you hear a sentence so bizarre, so divorced from normality, that it brings you up short. It happened to me the other day. A call centre operative, in the middle of
There can’t have been many trumpet players more nervous about their solo at the Albert Hall than the one who opened the performance there last night. His orchestral colleagues surrounding him on stage, a huge cinema screen hanging directly over his head, a full house waiting as the credits began to roll – and then
A few years ago, you may remember, the distressing news went round that George W. Bush’s library had burned down. Both books had been destroyed, and what was worse he hadn’t yet finished colouring one of them in. The gag relied on a snobbery about what is in truth a wonderful and noble activity. The
The end of the year seems a good time to think about lasts. Not many of us ever do. Firsts are always landmarks: the first time you taste alcohol, drive a car, have sex. Then the first time your child talks, walks, goes to school. All are noted at the time, stored away in the
Why does everything these days have to be a superlative? Why must writers scream for our attention, yelling that the guy in their book blows everyone else out of the water? Bob Hope, claims Richard Zoglin in this biography, was the most important entertainer of the 20th century. In fact, he adds, you could argue
During the D-day landings, members of the parachute regiment, finding themselves behind enemy lines at night, needed a way of telling whether someone nearby was friend or foe. Their solution was a pair of codewords: one man would call out ‘fish’, the other replied ‘chips’. Brits seem to reach for the words as easily as
Have you ever experienced the joys of Jawohl, meine Herr’n? If not I strongly advise an appointment with YouTube. The song features in the 1954 film Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war (‘The Man who was Sherlock Holmes’), and is performed by Hans Albers and Heinz Ruhmann, mainly while soaping themselves in the bath (one each
When you think about it, Radio 4 is mostly a pile of old toss. Money Box qualifies as an anaesthetic, the dramas couldn’t act their way to the nearest street corner and Sheila Dillon from The Food Programme just needs a slap. That’s even before we reach the five most depressing words in the English
When people ask why I’m obsessed with the Apollo moon missions, I always want to reply using the same phrase: ‘Because they were out of this world.’ I never do, because it happens to sound like a very bad joke. But it’s the truth. For the first time ever, mankind left its home turf and
