Philip Patrick

I was robbed in Tokyo recently, an experience as unexpected as it was distressing. Despite long years in London, plus decades of rough and ready globetrotting to some of the sketchiest places on earth, I have never been a victim in any of these notorious crime hotspots (I feel snubbed especially by London), but this was the second such experience in supposedly the safest city in the world.   What are the odds? The first time I dropped my wallet in a branch of the bargain bucket Don Quijote store and later received a phone call from the staff saying they had it, with ID cards intact but 50,000 yen gone. This time there was no phone call, it’s all gone, a similar amount of cash but far more worryingly, my entire suite of credit and ID cards.

The Rolling Stones’ resilience is hard to get one’s head around. In a world of fleeting cultural phenomena, they just keep going… and going… and going. Earlier this month, under the pseudonym ‘The Cockroaches’, the band released 1,000 copies of a vinyl-only single (their 124th in their 65th year of rocking) ahead of a new studio album which will come out this summer. The combined age of the three surviving principals Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood is 242. The band are so venerable that even jokes about their age are getting old: their ‘Steel Wheels’ tour was dubbed ‘Steel Wheelchairs’ back in… 1989.  Full disclosure: I’m hardly a Rolling Stones fan.

Ever fancied an extra family member or new best friend supplied on demand and available for as long as required? Ever dreamt you could summon up a surrogate to explain yourself out of an awkward romantic entanglement, or a presentable spouse to secure an employment opportunity (like Alan Partridge’s rented wife in the ‘Hamilton Water Breaks’ episode)? All of this, and more, is readily available in Japan, for a fee, courtesy of the ‘companionship agencies’. This decidedly odd business is the subject of the film Rental Family currently on release across the UK.

The Japanese are fascinated by the scandal concerning the aristocrat formerly known as Prince Andrew. The main themes resonate powerfully. The concepts of duty, shame and being a burden to one’s family are deeply woven into Japanese culture and so embedded in the language that it is hard to express yourself without touching on them. There are at least four expressions for ‘black sheep of the family’ in Japanese and one of the very first kanji I learned was for the word ‘muru-hachibu’ (eight against one) which means ‘sent to Coventry’ (shouldn’t that be Norfolk now?).   There might also be a sense of ‘there but for the grace of god’ relief for the Japanese in watching a fellow constitutional monarchy floundering.

It is testament to the decline of Manchester United that the sacking of their manager, Rubin Amorim, on Monday has been treated as a second-order story. True, rather dramatic events in South America have put such things into their perhaps proper perspective, but you do feel that even if it were an especially slow news day, this once momentous event at English football’s second most successful – and some would still say greatest – club wouldn’t have elicited much more than a shrug. Amorim has gone out with a bit of a whimper, though the unkind might say he never really arrived. His departure, it appears, was precipitated by a confrontation with director of football Jason Wilcox over a clash of responsibilities.