Terence Blacker

Terence Blacker: Now weed out all those idle and clueless GPs

Published: 02 February 2007

In any other profession, the incompetent and the lazy would be called to account

Terence Blacker: Donate your moobs to the less well-endowed

Published: 31 January 2007

The vogue for moob-reduction has yet to reach the part of England where I live. Relatively unevolved when it comes to the question of cosmetic surgery, East Anglians tend to believe that a man's breasts - "moobs", as they are now called - are an essential part of who he is. Perhaps we lag behind the rest of the country but when, on the High Street, a vast economy-pack mother, father and children trundle by, scoffing chips, with their various boobs, moobs and choobs wobbling away in unison, they are simply regarded as part of the local scenery.

Terence Blacker: Back to the old Tory basics of cutting art

Published: 24 January 2007

It is as if south London has slipped into some grim time-warp and suddenly finds itself back in the mid-1980s. That proud Conservative council Wandsworth has just announced a cost-cutting offensive and, to show how seriously it takes the business of keeping down taxation, it has started by hammering a local fringe theatre.

Terence Blacker: Be creative: think up an alibi to tell the wife

Published: 19 January 2007

There was one small but significant omission from The Independent's excellent new pull-out feature 40 Ways to Improve Your Creativity, published this week and already pinned to the wall above my desk. Nowhere among the 40 tips ("Connect", "Be childlike", "Spitball", "Use distraction loops" and so on) was there a mention of the creative tool that has always been particularly popular and useful among the most actively creative: having an affair.

Terence Blacker: The Queen's role of a lifetime is a class act

Published: 17 January 2007

It seems unlikely that the royal households at Balmoral, Sandringham and Windsor Castle will have stayed up on Monday night to find out how The Queen - the film, that is - fared at the Golden Globe awards in LA. There may have been one or two discreet whoops and high-fives in the ranks of Her Majesty's distinctly camp retinue, but royal life will doubtless have continued at its regular, sedate pace. The Queen does not do showbiz.

Terence Blacker: All politicians are B'Stards, obviously

Published: 12 January 2007

Nobody unzips his fly with quite the dramatic élan of Rik Mayall. It was part of The Young Ones 25 years ago, and the routine has improved with age. There are several brilliant unzippings during Mayall's bravura performance as Alan B'Stard in the West End Production of Marks' and Gran's The New Statesman, the last of which is followed by a high-energy sex scene, complete with flailing limbs, gurning facial expressions and comical gasps of climax.

Terence Blacker: Soon nothing will remain unpublished

Published: 10 January 2007

When you go out today, it might be prudent to have your camera handy, your mobile cocked for photographic action. If you happen to see a soap star out shopping, and take a quick snap, you might earn yourself a few hundred quid. Catch something really worthwhile - a royal girlfriend getting a parking ticket, a film star revealing some of her underwear while getting out of a car - and you could be looking at £1,500. If you happen to be on hand at a major news event - Pete Doherty in the gutter, a celebrity kissing someone they should not be, or perhaps just a particularly interesting everyday stabbing - you will soon be able to pay for a holiday in the sun.

Terence Blacker: Something wholesome to feel patriotic about

Published: 05 January 2007

Love of country can be expressed in the butcher's, the greengrocer's, the kitchen

Terence Blacker: Politicians, prostitutes and scruffy morality

Published: 03 January 2007

That old stand-by of British life, class prejudice, has made a terrific start to the new year, with a couple of obituaries that have positively crackled with snobbery. Marmaduke Hussey - "Duke" as he liked to be known (in his famous letters, Henry Root addressed him as "Your Grace") - received a pasting from one obituarist for being less of a toff than he claimed. The young Duke's school fees at Rugby, it was reported with some shock, had been paid by the public purse.

Terence Blacker: Why can't I smoke and be merry?

Published: 29 December 2006

It was a scene that has probably been enacted in varying forms this week in houses across the country. At a moment of post-prandial contentment, the householder lit up a Christmas cigar. A couple of puffs in, he was asked with all the ice-cold moral authority a 12-year-old girl can muster - that is, a lot - to put it out.

Terence Blacker: How geeks became the new sex gods

Published: 27 December 2006

A relatively uncomplicated matter in a changing world, one would think, is the question of what makes one human being physically attractive to another. Beyond that unconvincing chat-show cliché about the most important erogenous zone being the brain, we know that, in the real world, looks matter, and we tend to assume that the basic ingredients of allure remain more or less consistent.

Terence Blacker: Spare a thought for Castro's lonely victims

Published: 22 December 2006

He is beaten, kept in solitary confinement and shackled when allowed out of his rat-infested cell

Terence Blacker: Sex, drugs and shame: a perfect media crime

Published: 20 December 2006

"Yuk," wrote the newsreader Huw Edwards after I'd suggested that broadcasting the BBC news from the site of a bomb blast the previous day was prurient and melodramatic. Coincidentally, the same useful word occurred to me seeing Huw, concerned expression in place, presenting the news last week from the neon-lit streets of Ipswich.

Terence Blacker: Why I've joined the ranks of the non-readers

Published: 15 December 2006

A small number of books stay with you for life and the chances of finding new ones recede with every year

Terence Blacker: Get in touch with your feline mysticism

Published: 13 December 2006

Now and then, the advertising industry latches on to a subtly significant change in the way we live our lives. It discovers that a good way to sell to women is to make men look silly, or that buyers of lager actually like to be told that a brand is "reassuringly expensive".

Terence Blacker: We should not grant privacy to celebrity adulterers

Published: 08 December 2006

Like the ancient gods, the famous act out little parables of human desire and fragility

Terence Blacker: Don't look at me, look at all my good works

Published: 06 December 2006

There will be radio listeners whose self-soothing repertoires have been tested to the limit over the past few days. Those who happen to be thermostatically impaired may even have become disregulated. They had been listening to the 2006 Woman of the Year, Camila Batmanghelidjh, on the Today programme.

Terence Blacker: Men: hedgehogs on an emotional motorway?

Published: 29 November 2006

They can be tricky things, metaphors, when they fall into the wrong hands. Ghastly accidents of mixture and coagulation can occur. They can obscure and confuse, when they were meant to enlighten.

Terence Blacker: A nation in denial about its attitude to booze

Published: 24 November 2006

While other drugs have become the focus of social pressure, alcohol remains essentially cool

Terence Blacker: Why Blair's nanny state might just work

Published: 22 November 2006

A visitor from another planet would find many aspects of daily life in this particular corner of Planet Earth something of a puzzle. Why is it that so many millions of human beings are prepared to watch a small number of people called "celebrities" doing nothing in particular on TV? Who are these "tabloids" who seem to be able to tell those in government what to do next? And what, above all else, are the "yobs" who seem to spread fear everywhere they go?

Terence Blacker: Cameras in the courts will not serve justice

Published: 17 November 2006

The thrill of punishment has put bums on seats since the first gibbet was built

Terence Blacker: A shallow sign of our sanctimonious times

Published: 15 November 2006

A perfect symbol for the times in which we live has just been discovered. A T-shirt which allows those whose idea of a good time is to mime playing an imaginary guitar to someone else's music has been invented in Australia. This easy-to-use virtual instrument "allows real-time music-making, even by players without significant musical or computer skills", says its inventor. Without significant musical skills? The thing is a shirt. What it provides is merely illusion and fantasy in return for no skill or effort or talent at all.

Terence Blacker: The planet will be saved on the playing fields of Eton

Published: 03 November 2006

'Whenever we fly to Gstaad or Mustique, the little chap pipes up with an awkward question about the carbon footprint'

Terence Blacker: Never trust a mutant being from the Divine Lighted Realm

Published: 02 November 2006

A druid healer with the ability to cure cancer, Aids and first-degree burns, he was now working his magic on animals - at the low-cost rate of £1,500

Terence Blacker: There's more to ghosts than just Hallowe'en trickery

Published: 01 November 2006

The house was old, stately and creakily beautiful. No one had lived there for some time. One night, I was awoken by a sound...

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