Terence Blacker

Terence Blacker: Music is more than a business, it's the beat of life

Published: 06 July 2007

Nothing provides a more potent and joyful sense of community than shared music

Terence Blacker: Forget university if you want to coin it

Published: 04 July 2007

Hurrah, hurrah. A new rich list - the millionaire register which now seems to be released with the regularity of pop charts, suggests that Brownite hard work is back in fashion. Communication is for wimps. The media years of Blairism, with its soundbites and charm offensives, have given way to a new, no-nonsense firmness of purpose, a dogged, grinding determination to get on.

Terence Blacker: A bizarre custom redolent of a dark, vanished era

Published: 29 June 2007

The habit of puffing on dried tobacco leaves had widespread, totemic appeal in that tempestous time of change

Terence Blacker: If May be fine, stick up an estate agent's sign

Published: 28 June 2007

Urban-country people like the idea of small shops, but when they find it's impossible to get monkfish or fair-trade coffee, scurry off to the supermarket

Terence Blacker: Harriet Harman: even more charismatic than Stephen Byers

Published: 27 June 2007

Her opening witticism, 'I am neither bowler nor batter, and am rather too sensible to play silly mid-on', is still repeated in legal circles

Terence Blacker: Sometimes a stint in jail can be a smart career move

Published: 26 June 2007

Teenage girls buying Paris Hilton's 'Jailbird' accessories will begin to understand the dangers of binge-drinking while driving a Mercedes

Terence Blacker: It was the summer of love, but I wasn't getting any

Published: 22 June 2007

For all the sex and drugs that Rod and I enjoyed, it might have been Bognor on a wet Monday

Terence Blacker: A nation in thrall to the tyranny of tears

Published: 20 June 2007

That popular British sport, the mass back-pedal, is back in fashion this week. Bob Geldof is not a saint. The question of world poverty is not as straightforward as it seemed. It was not necessarily a good thing to allow a revered comedy writer to insert Make Poverty History propaganda into one of his sitcoms. The BBC was wrong to trundle along in the comfy middle carriages of the liberal bandwagon.

Terence Blacker: Save us from this unisex uniformity

Published: 13 June 2007

It is probably a great scandal, what will be going on next month at the 125th gathering of the Bohemian Grove club. Some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful men will be meeting in the redwoods of northern California. There will be millionaires, defence chiefs, bankers, media magnates, heads of university and, a recent innovation, one or two artists and musicians. In the past, George Bush and Dick Cheney have attended. Richard Nixon was a guest, but found it "the most faggy thing imaginable". Every year the keynote speech is made by Dr Henry Kissinger who, by hilarious tradition, is interrupted by a Mexican band as he starts to speak.

Terence Blacker: Give us our daily supply of outrage

Published: 08 June 2007

Perhaps the time has come to draw up a petition against petitions

Terence Blacker: The bishop and his daring suggestion

Published: 06 June 2007

Under the deceptively calm leadership of Dr Rowan Williams, the Church of England is going through one of its proactive phases. Whenever some new survey causes a fuss about the way society is going, there will be a bishop, one of God's marketing team, on hand to add that all-important spiritual element.

Terence Blacker: Can a public figure any longer be a serious person?

Published: 01 June 2007

People begin to feel that celebrities are answerable to them - that they belong to them

Terence Blacker: Harry Potter and the childish politician

Published: 30 May 2007

The good news is that Gordon Brown has broken with the recent tradition which requires party leaders to name Ian McEwan as their favourite novelist. Rather less welcome is the revelation that one of the first things he will do once he becomes Prime Minister is to read a children's book, the final Harry Potter adventure by J K Rowling.

Terence Blacker: Being wasteful is not a personal liberty

Published: 25 May 2007

We are being watched from every street corner. Those slightly creepy men from Google are turning our computers into domestic spies. But the surveillance that really has the British people worried, at least if one believes reports in the family-values wing of the press, is the microchip that could be included in our dustbins. A Tory shadow minister has even pronounced upon the subject. "We face the prospect of bin chips quietly being fitted in bins across the country to spy on families without their knowledge," says a man called Eric Pickles.

Terence Blacker: Wanted: adulterers, slobs and sadists...

Published: 23 May 2007

A lucrative double vacancy for ambitious media professionals has just become available. No outstanding writing skills are required but the two applicants should have a high threshold for personal embarrassment. They will also need to be a married couple and hate one another. Applications from adulterers, slobs and domestic sadists will be particularly welcome.

Terence Blacker: Are the bald ready for the trauma of hair?

Published: 18 May 2007

It sounds enticingly simple. A snip of epidermis will be removed from the scalp. The activity will stimulate cell activity including the regeneration of hair follicles. If the effect of a gene called wnt is boosted, hair could well begin to grow where none had previously been. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania believe that their findings have "opened a window" in the great quest for a cure for baldness.

Terence Blacker: The world according to Sir Alan Sugar? Now there's a thought

Published: 16 May 2007

Will a replacement for Thought for the Day work any better? A transcript of the first celebrity version leaves room for doubt

Terence Blacker: You've seen the Pink List - now here's the Grey List

Published: 15 May 2007

Unlike gays, greys have never made a fuss about coming out. They have dared to be dull

Terence Blacker: Will anyone listen to the views of farmers?

Published: 09 May 2007

The political landscape is changing, with a new Prime Minister, Cabinet reshuffles and shifts of power around the United Kingdom, but, when the music stops, we can be sure that one thing will not have changed. Those in power will, like those who write about public affairs, come from our large cities. The landscape itself will be scantly represented.

Terence Blacker: When the Queen invited the Queen to dinner ...

Published: 08 May 2007

'So, it turn out that you're behind all this nonsense? Bloody show up, woman. Remember, damehoods can be taken away as easily as they are given'

Terence Blacker: Madam Whiplash will never run out of punters

Published: 04 May 2007

Bored of made-up stories, people are hungry for real pain experienced by real celebrities

Terence Blacker: Lewd but likeable: the key to Naim Attallah

Published: 02 May 2007

A mighty slab of autobiography, self-adoring, self-promoting and self-published, has just appeared in the bookshops. It will sell few copies - nearly 800 name-dropping pages about the life of a moderately successful businessman is not an obvious bestseller - but it will receive pages of publicity in the press. The British media has a peculiarly soft spot for its author Naim Attallah, the Palestinian businessman who for a couple of decades supported small but worthwhile publishing enterprises (The Literary Review, The Oldie, Quartet Books) employed some good-looking Sloane Rangers and held good parties.

Terence Blacker: Why I'm not sold on 'The Apprentice'

Published: 27 April 2007

It celebrates the attitudes which, away from the office, are deplored as yobbish

Terence Blacker: You're on my roll of honour, Sheryl

Published: 25 April 2007

It would seem a fairly obvious rule of public life that references to daily, intimate activities be kept to a minimum. If a book called Tales from the Smallest Room were published, it would do little for the reputations of those included. Evelyn Waugh died there, Joe Orton spent a lot of time there, Rula Lenska once got stuck in there and George Michael was arrested there: it is all one needs to know. When the former star Jade Goody announced to the world's press her preference for quilted toilet paper, her days as a celebrity were numbered.

Terence Blacker: What is it that makes us such bad losers?

Published: 20 April 2007

English sportsmen represent the spirit of the nation, and that is their undoing

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