Terence Blacker

Terence Blacker: Looking for love? Pick up a book

Published: 22 September 2006

Men in the habit of behaving badly - irresponsible or adventurous, depending on your point of view - claim there are certain useful ways of attracting female attention. One is to wander the aisles of supermarket with the almost-empty trolley of a sad singleton (a chicken pie, a packet of frozen peas, some roll-your-own tobacco), occasionally asking where the extra virgin olive oil is to be found. Another is to sit alone in quiet contemplation in front of a picture at an art gallery.

Terence Blacker: Is the Rabbit really a girl's best friend?

Published: 20 September 2006

From Bugs Bunny to Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, from The Curse of the Were-Rabbit to Watership Down, our little bob-tailed friends have always been something of a favourite among film-makers. But those expecting more bunny-fun from Rabbit Fever, a film to be released this week, will be in for a surprise. The rabbit in question turns out to be a mechanised sexual aid, and the fever is what it causes in the women who use it.

Terence Blacker: Get in touch with your inner adult

Published: 15 September 2006

America leads the way down the yellow brick road to infantilism. We skip merrily behind

Terence Blacker: The funniest writer of our generation

Published: 13 September 2006

In these distinctly unfunny times, it a rare benediction to be able to enjoy one of those unexpected moments of pure comic pleasure which break through like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day. It happened to me while reading this weekend's newspapers and, briefly, all was right with the world. Martin Amis was back and making me laugh.

Terence Blacker: British sport has a knack of producing unlikely heroes

Published: 08 September 2006

Crouch looked so fragile it seemed as if the slightest puff of wind would blow him off his matchstick legs and leave him in a crumpled heap

Terence Blacker: Don't shoot that puppy - take it for a walk

Published: 07 September 2006

Instead of commuting, non-office dwellers get a sense of forward movement by 'buying the papers' and 'filling the bird-feeder'

Terence Blacker: Our poor, unloved leaders need that 'cuddle factor'

Published: 06 September 2006

No politician is entirely sane. The more senior a minister becomes, the greater the need for impulse control and emotion management

Terence Blacker: The many benefits of living life the poultry way

Published: 05 September 2006

Hens who want to breed fluff out their feathers, an approach occasionally tried by humans, but rarely with the dead-eyed determination of a hen

Terence Blacker: IVF for lesbians and other topics to avoid at Balmoral

Published: 04 September 2006

The announcement by Cherie that she was going to sing a traditional Native American menstrual chant would have been a worry at the best of times

Terence Blacker: From private hell to public exploitation

Published: 01 September 2006

Would it be unspeakably heartless to suggest that, in the matter of his poor dead mum, the moment has arrived when Andrew Motion should live up to his name and move on? In 1969, Mrs Motion suffered a terrible hunting accident, and remained in a coma for three years. She died nine years later, never having left hospital.

Terence Blacker: British humour has always been in a class of its own

Published: 29 August 2006

Even now comedy hacks are no doubt churning out jokes for Christmas stocking-fillers on 'How to Be a Chav'

Terence Blacker: Deadly animal virus causes activists' rage

Published: 25 August 2006

It is sometimes difficult to resist the notion that many of those who feel most passionately about the rights of animals have picked up some ghastly virus, perhaps while rescuing beagles from a laboratory, that has eaten its way into their brains. Certainly some of the behaviour of activists bears more resemblance to that of a dog with rabies, or a heifer suffering from Mad Cow Disease, than that of most normal human beings.

Terence Blacker: I must ask Roger about that...

Published: 22 August 2006

He had such an intense, skittish engagement with life that it is hard to think of him in the past tense

Terence Blacker: Confessions of a rural porn star

Published: 18 August 2006

Hardly a weekend goes by these days without the appearance of at least one newspaper feature in which some ex-metropolitan announces that he or she had moved to the country and had found it all a terrible disappointment. The shops are far away. There are great big, roaring machines driving through cornfields. The air smells of cow-poo. Dinner-party conversation revolves around discussions about compost heaps.

Terence Blacker: The true face of alternative comedy

Published: 15 August 2006

Jim Davidson's show is filthy and, by all civilised standards, goes too far

Terence Blacker: China's latest source of cash - its wildlife

Published: 11 August 2006

These are hard times for big-game hunters. Across Africa, poachers, showing not a trace of hunting etiquette, are reducing their sporting opportunities. Zimbabwe, once a mecca for those who liked to bring down something big, has become a hopeless shambles. So the news that a country new to the game-hunting lark is about to auction off rights to shoot animals could not have been better timed.

Terence Blacker: The simple truth about our children

Published: 08 August 2006

Predictably enough, British parents emerge as dysfunctional in almost every way

Terence Blacker: Why do women still want to be losers?

Published: 04 August 2006

It is difficult not to be mildly depressed while reading about this week's triumphant women, the accidental porn star Paris Hilton and the former bank employee Helen Green.

Terence Blacker: Inane royal gossip is spreading like a rash

Published: 01 August 2006

At a time when the nation was at its most gawping and gormless in its attitude towards royalty, the comic genius Willie Donaldson invented a character called Talbot Church. A court correspondent of the most oleaginous, simpering and prurient kind, Church had as his journalistic byline "The Man the Royals Trust", and passed on vapid insider gossip in a tone of great seriousness. Prince Andrew, he revealed in a book of royal facts, often joined his brother Charles's meditation sessions and once startled orange-sheeted worshippers by levitating over a lit gas-ring in the manner of an Indian fakir.

Terence Blacker: A walk on the wild side with Margaret

Published: 28 July 2006

How the caravan industry must have cheered when it heard that a senior politician was an enthusiast of holidays on wheels. How it must have groaned when that politician turned out to be Margaret Beckett. Somehow Mrs Beckett fits the role rather too perfectly. To imagine her brewing up a cup of tea , parked in a lay-by in her Bailey Pageant Champagne, requires little imaginative effort. She has the air of a natural-born caravanner - practical, careful with money ("No, honestly, I prefer baked beans on toast"), contemptuous of luxury.

Terence Blacker: Mr Blobby's path to enlightenment

Published: 25 July 2006

The nation has been roused from its summer slumber by a double slap of morality from the Bishop of London and the creator of Mr Blobby, Noel Edmonds. Each will have his supporters, some siding with the case for selflessness, responsibility and global awareness advanced by the bishop while others opt for the Blobbymeister's formula for happiness of a more directly personal type. There is, frankly, no middle way.

Terence Blacker: Where have all the grown-ups gone?

Published: 21 July 2006

The Prime Minister of Lebanon has enough problems at present but, even so, he might have been distracted by one trivial, nagging question when he met the BBC's Middle East editor this week. What on earth has Jeremy Bowen been doing to his cheeks?

Terence Blacker: The fashion for invoking the name of God

Published: 18 July 2006

Headline-grabbing chaplaincies have been announced at nightclubs, shopping centres, in the City

Terence Blacker: Inside every politician lurks a red-top hack

Published: 14 July 2006

A former minister of the Crown has been articulating his thoughts in the press about some recent sporting events. Referring to allegations (false, as it happens) that a footballer's girlfriend was, while he was playing in the World Cup, taking cocaine and in bed with another man, the former minister was "encouraged by a Sunday paper's revelations about Peter Crouch's girlfriend. At least she can allegedly score regularly even if he can't." Other members of the England team, in the opinion of the former minister, were "tosspots", "knackered" and "scramble-egg brained". Turning his thoughts to tennis, he welcomed the fact that the Spanish player Nadal was not accompanied by "WAG-style slagettes ... with their tits hanging out."

Terence Blacker: The merits of bringing back national service

Published: 11 July 2006

It would offer a parachute into adulthood, a taste of work without pressure

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