Columnists M - Z
Brian Viner: Farrell's unexpected sidestep would have knocked even Statto off balance
Published: 03 February 2007
It is always a pleasure to bump into the well-known betting pundit Angus "Statto" Loughran, as I have a couple of times recently, first at Ludlow races and a few weeks later in a snaking queue at Gatwick Airport. Since Angus spends about seven-eighths of his time either at sporting events, or on his way to or from them, this was more of a mild coincidence than a genuine surprise. When I phoned him two days ago he was at the Nad Al Sheba race track in Dubai, but looking forward to being home in good time for the Calcutta Cup.
Deborah Orr: If exceptions can be made for the very rich, do the same for the very poor
Published: 03 February 2007
Matthew Norman: A feeble man who has betrayed his office
Published: 02 February 2007
Thomas Sutcliffe: Cool plus cool just leaves me cold
Published: 02 February 2007
It must have seemed like the perfect marriage. On the one hand, you had Apple's latest ad campaign, which personifies the long, sniping war between Mac and PC with two characters - one uptight and nerdy, the other handsome and relaxed. On the other hand, you have a British sitcom - Mitchell and Webb's Peep Show - which depends on the odd-couple partnership of an anally retentive worker bee and a laid back, hop-head grasshopper. So, the thinking must have run, why run a big casting call for a British version of the ads when you can just piggyback on an established franchise. The demographics look just right and these guys have good comic timing anyway. It's a double win surely?
Christina Patterson: Trust me, I'm an alternative therapist
Published: 02 February 2007
"Write a list" wrote Stephen Russell, aka the "Barefoot Doctor", in one of his last columns in The Observer, "of all the ways you've fallen short. Then, wrapping your arms lovingly around yourself... say warmly, 'Well done you!' for every point listed."
Steve Richards: Manchester gets its supercasino, but who really knows how it won?
Published: 01 February 2007
Janet Street-Porter: Some English lessons on French polish
Published: 01 February 2007
On the day that the French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy paid a flying visit to London, I took the Eurostar to Paris. My day didn't include lunch with a political leader at the Elysée Palace, or a trip to a job centre. I didn't speak at a rally or pose for photographers - but we both travelled on Eurostar at exactly the same time, in different directions.
Steve Richards: Darkness descends to engulf Blair
Published: 31 January 2007
The darkness that marks Tony Blair's final months gets darker still. The cash for honours investigation began as a serious diversion. It ends by threatening to overwhelm all other matters, reducing serious policy issues to minor matters as Downing Street languishes in a fearful gloom.
Deborah Orr: How can juries understand rape unless the full horror is explained to them?
Published: 31 January 2007
Mark Steel: Jailing people has become an Olympic event
Published: 31 January 2007
Hamish McRae: Brace yourself for a new revolution
Published: 31 January 2007
Brian Viner: Country Life
Published: 31 January 2007
AS MY late father would have said, it served me jolly well right. I was on a short assignment in Italy with three other journalists I hadn't met before, and at the bar one evening we got to asking each other where we lived. The others were based in various parts of London, and were mightily interested to learn that I live way out west, meaning not Ealing or even Ruislip, but Herefordshire.
Steve Richards: John Reid is getting something right
Published: 30 January 2007
John Walsh: Tales of the City
Published: 30 January 2007
Thomas Sutcliffe: We are gambling with people's lives
Published: 30 January 2007
The unexpected success of Mel Gibson's film Apocalypto has been explained away by surprised Hollywood executives in quite a few ways - as proof of the durable virtues of the old-fashioned cliff-hanger or as evidence of an unexpected taste for the exotic. But so far as I know nobody's made much of one of its less obvious pleasures, which is that of civilisational smugness.
Andreas Whittam Smith: Ségolène, Hillary, and their big conversations
Published: 29 January 2007
John Rentoul: They say Brown lacks courage. Dare he keep John Reid? Will he have Balls?
Published: 28 January 2007
Editor-At-Large: I've seen the worst of the NHS - and now I've seen the best
Published: 28 January 2007
The National Health Service is a bit like the Labour government - nobody's got a good word to say about it. In the past week we've heard about the scandal of GPs' pay and the Tories unveiled their Big Idea, which seemed to mean that health trusts could set their own budgets and abolish targets set by central government. Then on Friday we heard about the wheelchair-bound patient who went to the bathroom and returned to find her bed had been stripped ready for the next patient - the hospital in Devon was so short of beds it seemed they couldn't wait till patients had actually got dressed before they were evicted.
Joan Smith: I didn't vote for the Olympics, so don't make me pay for them
Published: 28 January 2007
Alan Watkins: Even the most servile realise Mr Blair's time is up, but who will lead the coup?
Published: 28 January 2007
Brian Viner: Empires crumble but Williams reveals beguiling truth in wonderful comeback
Published: 27 January 2007
Four years ago this week I sat in the cheap seats high up in the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, watching Venus and Serena Williams contest the final of the Australian Open. It was my first time at a Grand Slam tennis final away from Wimbledon's lawns, and I should have been quivering with excitement, but if I quivered with anything it was heat exhaustion. Outside the Rod Laver Arena, the temperature had reached a tarmac-melting 44 degrees, and when later that same day I hotfooted it over to the nearby Melbourne Cricket Ground to watch a day-night international between Australia and England, I did so all too literally.
Matthew Norman: Naked greed and other core British values
Published: 26 January 2007
Christina Patterson: Do we want to know what the future holds?
Published: 26 January 2007
Last week the medical director of a hospital told me that it was "essential to see the situation with the stars". I didn't ask him about the moon, but I think that went without saying. And in this, it seems, the doctor would have been right. According to new research, and a review of 50 previous studies, the moon can affect your hormones, your behaviour, and the size of your lunch.
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