WASHED AND READY TO EAT

If something didn’t smell right about the UK handling of the pandemic, the British public was never going to notice. But they knew that if they couldn’t smell something, they really ought to get a Covid test sent to them in the post. There has been something incredibly British about the DIY swabs and their delivery via the gig-economy workers of Amazon, hasn’t there? Touch of corona? I’ll pop something in the post to you. Should be with you tomorrow. I suppose it was inevitable that we’d need some new kind of system. After all, the coronavirus outbreak was the first thing in the history of the NHS that couldn’t be cured by paracetamol, rest and plenty of fluids. This understandably left GPs flummoxed and anxious. The UK decided pretty early on that if you were ill with a novel pathogen – which proved deadly in maybe 1% of cases – you really shouldn’t go to the doctor. You should STAY AT HOME and spread it quickly to your flatmates or family members. And because they were now at ...

If you exclude Caractacus - a small fish given to me as a present in my early 20s (complete with bowl) - I'd never had a pet before Lil. This rescue cat was a lovely little creature, but never one for sitting in someone's lap. Perhaps her early experiences had taught her to be wary around humans. But over time, there was plenty of affectionate marking, nudging and purring, as she grew to know and love the members of the family. A poisoning incident affected her kidneys back in 2016. We still don't know what it was she ate or drank, but ultimately it's led to a very hard decision today. We agreed that to stop her suffering - and because of a fairly obvious deterioration - that it was better for the vet to put her to sleep. She died very peacefully. I cried a lot more than I anticipated. Earlier this year, Lil had benefited from a couple of days on a drip and then seemed to get a new lease of life. But just over a month ago, she had to spend a whole week as an in...

The letter from Donald Trump to Kim Jong-Un, which cancels the leaders’ proposed summit in Singapore, will certainly go down in the political annals. Of course, it’s entirely possible that commentators will remember it as a prelude to some catastrophic conflict on the Korean peninsula. If we’re honest, it may signal the end of a brief window, early in 2018, when people naively thought that war might be averted. I sincerely hope it doesn’t have such grave historic significance. But as a copywriter, I can weep a thousand tears without a single shot being fired in anger. What’s extraordinary about the text is that it’s clear Trump actually played a major part in writing it . We can tell because it is so atrociously and bizarrely constructed. There can be few jurisdictions in the modern world where Presidents and Prime Ministers still draft their own correspondence. And if your President was one Donald J Trump, you’d sure as hell keep him the f*** away from Microsoft ...

There is something so bizarrely British about the health response to the assassination attempt in Salisbury on former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. A week after the event, everyone who was in the vicinity of the deadly nerve agent has been urged to wash their personal possessions. Now, let’s think this through. This chemical was so toxic that it left two people fighting for their lives. A police officer involved in the early response was also hospitalised and made severely ill by it. The table in the restaurant visited by Sergei and Julia was reportedly so contaminated that it had to be destroyed. But if you happened to be nearby – perhaps even dining in the same part of the restaurant sometime after the unfortunate victims departed – no need to worry. Run a baby wipe over your phone. A week later. What about clothes? The Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies recommends washing them. In a washing machine preferably, she says. Err… as opposed to the o...

At one level, the woman on BBC Question Time who expressed concerns about who was going to make her post-Brexit coffee at Pret was rather silly. She should have realised that her comment was going to paint her as a pampered and affluent London Remoaner. It’s an easy trap to fall into. I remember being in the audience 25 years ago for one of those terrible daytime TV discussion shows – Kilroy or The Time The Place or similar – and we were discussing childcare. Some lady started prattling on about nannies and I had to remind her that this wasn’t actually most people’s experience of childcare arrangements. So the message is clear: think before you open your mouth. On the other hand, you can’t help feeling the Pret lady had a pretty valid point. Virtually no one, as far as I can tell, who works in frontline hospitality in London comes from the UK. Many will be citizens of other EU countries and have the name badges with the flags to prove it. These are indeed the peo...

It's difficult to know what to make of this claim from celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. He adds greater texture to his pasta so that it 'holds more sauce'.  This begs a number of questions: Does more sauce really cling to his enhanced pasta? Is sauce being clingy really such a good thingy? And if the sauce weren't 'held' by the pasta, what disaster would befall the diner?  Surely they could just spoon it up from the plate or lick their bowl clean?