BY JAMES BEMBRIDGE ‘Just write,’ my editor said. What a load of Woman’s-Weekly-self-helping bollocks. Did Monet just paint? Did Whitney Houston just sing? Did Jemma Jameson just wiggle that tremendous arse of hers? I think not. That arse made men pawns to her star, just as my writing will make – ‘You’re disgusting!’ some small, hen-faced woman says, and I realise I’m thinking aloud again … Continue reading A Christmas Miracle
BY JAMES BEMBRIDGE 12:30 pm, The Beaujolais, Soho. A meeting with Cloe. Behind us, a table of lunching women – that is, women who don’t lunch. About their bones, dresses hang like sheets caught on a telephone pole. One braves a grain of mozzarella, hesitates on it, and then returns it to the plate. ‘Filling, isn’t it?’ she asks. The plate is one of two … Continue reading The Secret
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN Last Friday night, deep in a den of iniquity on Soho’s Frith Street, it occurred to me that the boom-boom and boom-booms of nightclubs no longer appeal to me. The days of waking up at midnight in my bachelor flat on Great Titchfield Street and thinking it a fair scheme to pop by Bar Madrid for tequila and tango were already distant. … Continue reading Boom Boom
BY JAMES BEMBRIDGE The things people will do for a lick of screen time, I think, looking at a woman disgracing herself before a producer. Shall she be on that show again? The one that won her a retweet by Jordan Peterson. She might, he says, more with his hands than voice. I’m at a party to celebrate the opening of my friend Alex’s production … Continue reading Sunset Over Westminster
BY JAMES BEMBRIDGE ‘You seem an odd choice for a guard,’ I told the chap on the door to no reply. He stood pressed against the railing, dressed in Victorian finery and smelling of mothballs. His silence I put down not to rudeness but to his being a stuffed bear. ‘James!’ some lovely voice called from inside. ‘Oh, you’ve met Monty! I’m so pleased.’ This … Continue reading Bear Magnet
BY JAMES BEMBRIDGE At 5 pm on Wednesday, March 15, 2017, Isobel Weber died much as she lived: dressed in high fashion, sipping champagne and surrounded by no one. Turn the clock back two years, and I’m sitting with her in the Kronenhalle restaurant, Zurich, struggling to make sense of what she’s saying. Her lips are moving, but they’ve just had about 5 vials of … Continue reading Hollow Fillers
BY NIALL McCRAE Cash is not king nowadays. Certainly not on the bustling King’s Road in Chelsea, where my efforts to buy a coffee were frustrated by a ‘card only’ regime. On principle, my bank card stayed in my pocket, as I offered the exact coinage (typically over three quid for a flat white in this posh part of town). Consequently I walked a long … Continue reading Cash Dethroned on the King’s Road
BY FRANK HAVILAND As a child of the eighties, I hope you’ll forgive my assertion that pretty much any life truth can be found in The Princess Bride (a lockdown must if you haven’t seen it, and well worth a revisit if you have). As a 9-year-old boy, I marvelled at the battle of wits between Cary Elwes’ hero ‘Wesley’, and Wallace Shawn’s criminal mastermind, ‘Vizzini’. … Continue reading Malignant Mayor
BY FRANK HAVILAND Who would be a police officer in today’s London? When it’s not high heels, rainbow cars, and the latest colours from Maybelline, it’s being instructed to kneel, so those oppressed Black Lives Matter activists don’t bruise their knuckles as they sucker-punch you. And with whites now advised to attend ‘unconscious bias training’, ‘undo their whiteness’, or suffer calls for the ‘abolition of … Continue reading Discharge Dick
BY LEE BEING (Part I of Lee’s escape from London to the countryside can be found here. Part II is here) Everyone is so damn ANGRY over EVERYTHING in London. Because EVERYTHING IS POLITICAL (postmodernism – the prevalent school of thought in the capital). You can’t voice anything you oppose without taking a deep breath because it’s a hotbed of angry and reactionary, skinless wonders. That, dear reader, … Continue reading The Cosmopolitan Choke Part III
BY JAMIE FOSTER A quick scan of Sadiq Khan’s Twitter account turns up the usual expected content. World women’s history month appears alongside several tweets boasting about the London Mayor opening the latest artwork to go on the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square. There are attacks on the Tories for perceived misdemeanours and buy-ins to hashtags like #visitthetheatre. In amongst all of this there is … Continue reading Sadiq Khant?
BY ASGHAR KHAN Back in 2005 the car theft capital of the UK was Sheffield. Now it’s London. West Yorkshire came in at seventh, proving that car theft is not simply restricted to urban and suburban areas, with thieves operating easily in quieter rural areas. Car thieves in Sheffield back in 2005 were uneducated local lads with links to chop-shops who’d strip down the stolen motors … Continue reading Car Thieves: from Sheffield to London
