Dolly Parton remembered on the cover of Time

You had one job, God. And yet you shuffled the wrong 80-year-old into the exit queue.

So, yes, we are talking about the country singer Dolly Parton, alongside another octogenarian, who will remain nameless for the next few paragraphs.

When thinking about Dolly’s departure I went first to the American writer and humourist Mark Twain. He must have said something about death, I thought. This turned out to be a good hunch…

“Let us endeavour so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”

Many people, presumably including undertakers, will be sorry to hear the country star Dolly Parton has died.

Dolly did much good while she was alive, giving pleasure to millions through her music, standing up for herself and therefore women in general, was a sharp businesswoman and also by most accounts a decent person. Beneath that lacquered surface, which was a sort of disguise, she was thoughtful in how she used her wealth and influence.

Behind the country glitter, the big hair and the frocks, beyond her ‘Bedazzled, Bewigged and Bodacious Style’ as the New York Times put it, she could be fun and self-aware.

Two often-repeated quotes suggest she could rival Twain for witticisms…

‘I’m not a fashion icon; I’m an eyesore’

‘It costs a lot of money to look this cheap’.

When famous people die, suddenly we are all fans, even if we are not really. Feeling sad just seems like the right reaction. The death of David Bowie in 2016 was notable for causing much public expression of grief, including from newspaper columnists.

“A hole has been ripped in the universe and we are lost, and we will be for a good while yet,” journalist Suzanne Moore wrote in the Guardian, adding: “This grief is serious and rational.”

The death in 1997 of Diana, Princess of Wales, is often cited as the moment when mass public outpouring of grief began. Yet outbreaks of mourning for the famous can be found deeper in history.

After Charles Dickens died in June 1870, a three-day-long procession of mourners filed past the great writer’s coffin at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

But back to Dolly. Was I really a fan? Not exactly, but she wrote some great songs drawn from ordinary life, not least Jolene and Coat Of Many Colours (said to be Dolly’s own favourite). She also leaves much that is good. Her children’s literacy programme the Imagination Library, set up in 1995, posts books to children from birth to age five for free, regardless of income. Dolly started this in Sevier County, Tennessee, where she grew up, in honour of her father who had never learned to read or write. “Since then, almost 3.2 million children have registered with over 332 million books gifted”, according to the BBC.

That’s what you call a legacy.

And if you’re grieving for Dolly – and one friend certainly will be – your sadness is based in part on the loss of someone good who made life better with her music, her philanthropy and her attitude to life.

DOLLY Parton was born into poverty, eventually made millions while also enriching people’s lives, and then passed on much of her money. Donald Trump was born into great wealth, inherited and squandered millions, doesn’t have a philanthropic bone in that sad sack of a body, is mean and unkind about almost everyone (apart from dictators), and thinks only of himself.

And so it proved when he spoke of Dolly Parton’s death…

“She was unique, I mean, she was amazing. To lose her is like you lose a member of the family. We all knew her so well. I knew her a little bit. She wasn’t a very political person… she really liked me….”

Yup, it’s always about you, Donald. Did she really like you, Donald; does anyone like you at all? Seems the sharp side of unlikely.

That’s what you get, America, for electing a malignant narcissist.

Trump’s legacy seems mostly concerned with making a fortune for himself and his family. And slapping his name on things: hotels, failed casinos, failed universities, a country. If he can shove those five tawdry refugees from the alphabet on something, he feels better about himself for at least five minutes.

At present his administration is in a legal squabble to have the Trump ‘brand’ put back on the Kennedy Arts Centre – and threatening to abolish the place if he doesn’t get his way about modernising the centre.

Doris Miller

Also, a ship due to be named in honour of a black hero of Pearl Harbor, the splendidly named man Doris Miller, a navy cook who “reportedly shot down four to six Japanese bombers” (Guardian, August 22), could instead be named after, you guessed it, Donald Trump. And he hasn’t shot down anything, apart from just about everything anyone else has ever said.

As a reminder of how obsessed Trump is with himself and his endless grievances, his undying moaning, just look at the White House website. It’s been given a tacky Trump rebrand and has a crammed section dedicated to ‘media offenders’. Journalists who have narked him, in other words, by doing their job. It’s an exhaustive list.

You had one job, God.

The former Noah’s Ark pub in Deptford

A newspaper feature about ‘homes in former pubs’ transported me back to Deptford. A two-bedroom apartment in what used to be the Noah’s Ark was yours for £435,000. I cannot say if that represents value. Our first flat not far from there cost £40,000.

I worked on Deptford High Street for the best part of ten years, and retain an affection for the area, based on nostalgia and not being as young now as then.

The Noah’s Ark was a local landmark. Standing at the corner of the High Street, it had a distinctive curved frontage. A long time ago now, but I’m sure we sometimes drank in there at lunchtime.

Once I went there to interview the Flying Pickets, a group formed by left-wing actors. You may recall they had a number one hit with their acapella version of Yazoo’s Only You. One of the singers, Brian Hibbard, later enjoyed a run in Coronation Street.

Many people I interviewed in those days went on to have second or third acts, including Jools Holland of the band Squeeze, long before his big band days and long before presenting Later for a hundred years or whatever it is.

Dire Straits also once played at a festival on Crossfields Estate in Deptford. The flats were stacked up around a courtyard, and the band had a square of grass for a stage. With student friends I watched from above on a balcony belonging to someone or other.

A little light digging unearthed a further story about the Noah’s Ark. Planning enforcement officers from Lewisham Council visited the former public house after a complaint from a local resident.

They discovered that the building had been substantially demolished with only the ground floor frontage remaining. As the building stands in a conservation area, the developers were told to rebuild what had been destroyed.

The newspaper where I once worked is long gone; undue disappearance being something local pubs and local newspapers share. The office was next to Deptford station, with a view of the platform and its choreography of passing legs, cut off at the knees. A world of typewriters and carbon copies, ashtrays on the desks, lunchtime tipples in days when people still tippled.

Deptford has a grand old church, St Paul’s, consecrated in 1730. The priest, David John Diamond, was a great friend of our editor, Roger Norman. Drinks parties were sometimes held there. When Father Diamond died in August 1992, an obituary in the Independent described him as “one of the most remarkable parish priests in the Church of England”.

Roger Norman was remarkable too in his way, especially in how in the 1970s he used the South East London Mercury to stand against the National Front. He could also, after a pint or more of lunchtime Guinness, be touchy in the afternoon.

Deptford earns a few mentions in Peter Ackroyd’s book Thames, Sacred River, including that it is “perhaps most famous as the location of Christopher Marlowe’s death”. The Elizabethan playwright and poet was killed in a local pub, aged 29.

I knew about that and other unfortunate incidents. But it was new to me that, as Ackroyd also records, Peter the Great lived for several months at a house owned by the writer and horticulturalist John Evelyn. During that stay his “favourite pastime was to be driven in a wheelbarrow drunk, through Evelyn’s neat hedges”.

Other historical facts mentioned by Ackroyd include the riverbank at Deptford having once been home to “the first high-voltage power station in the world”. More gruesomely, he also mentions that the U-bend in the Thames between Deptford and the Isle of Dogs can delay the drowned in their course to the sea, earning the grim nickname Deadman’s Dock.

Another label given to the place was Dear Dirty Deptford, which could be seen as both affectionate and a reflection of the area’s poverty. The phrase was perhaps adopted from Dear Dirty Dublin, as used by James Joyce about the home city he escaped but never left.

The late historian Gillian Tindall once went in search of old Deptford. She reported that “Deptford, long ago, was a place of fertile green water-meadows, facing the Thames and adjacent to a creek. Here Henry VIII established his Royal Dockyard, in the days when he was a popular young sovereign rather than an obese tyrant. Ships built in Deptford went out all over the world for the next three-and-a-half centuries. By Shakespeare’s time, the scattered country village that had been medieval Deptford had expanded into a riverside settlement. Well-to-do Londoners came down by river to drink there on summer evenings…”

Perhaps they still do. I have always meant to return. Maybe one day I will.

Like most people, I’d never heard of the poor man; and yet there he was, in the headlines every day…

A lifetime in and around newspapers teaches you that journalists and commentators can benefit society – and also that sometimes their behaviour is appalling.

The latter is certainly the case for those who relentlessly hounded Jason Arday, a former Cambridge University professor of sociology, who died by suicide earlier this month. Arday resigned from the role after media investigations into his academic credentials.

Like most people, I’d never heard of the poor man; and yet there he was, in the headlines every day. Sociology professors are not normally granted such attention, or any attention.

Yet Arday had hundreds of articles and comment pieces written about him. His worth as an academic, and whether he only won such a coveted role for being black, was discussed endlessly, and without mercy.

I have no idea if he was suitable for the job he did, or if he made mistakes or suffered from poor judgement. But no-one deserves such a mauling.

Following his death, certain usual suspect columnists deleted tweets and social media posts attacking Arday. Others carried on laying into him, for theirs is a shameless pursuit.

I honestly don’t know enough about this to comment further, other than to say that I do know a witch hunt when I see one. Oh, and surely Cambridge University must have questions to answer about staff care.

And those columnists and presenters who hauled up this one man as a gotcha example of what they think is wrong with society really are beyond the pale.

Image by Erich Röthlisberger from Pixabay

HERE are two questions about reading. Both were posed by women, neither of whom I know. Have the ‘damn phones’ harmed our ability to concentrate on literature – and do older men still read books?

The first was put by the novelist Naomi Alderman in a newspaper article; the second in a post on Threads by a woman called Carmen.

Alderman feared modern life was leading people away from books. She told a friend who suggested a couch-to-5k style plan to revive the joy of reading. So she set up just such a scheme through her Substack.

It is worth pausing to explain what Substack might be. Broadly, it is a media platform that allows writers to publish their thoughts in essays or commentaries. Slower and longer in form than is normal on social media platforms, Substack can be an interesting place to hang out.

As for Alderman, she worries that even those of us who love books have been seduced by the lazy distractions of our phones.

Now if you seek an ageing man who never fritters time on his phone, you’ve come to the wrong corner of the old-guy room. The hours I have burnt on that nonsense could have been spent on something useful. But that hasn’t put me off reading novels, newspapers, factual books, and enough crime novels to construct my own locked room.

As a member of the book group in our local bar, I read at least one book a month, often more. Here is a rundown of this year’s reading. And to explain, at our book club we set a theme each month, and then all read different books inspired by the topic. The theme for the next one is capital cities, as seen in my choice below…

London Clay, Journeys In The Deep City, by Thom Chivers (unfinished at the time of writing).

An unusual but fascinating account of what lies beneath the streets of London. History, geology and subterranean exploration, from buried rivers to lost Tube stations, touched by the writer’s grief for his mother, who died when he was 13. If the second half is as good, it’s a deeply engaging and captivating dive into the hidden landscapes of our cities.

The Glassmaker, by Tracey Chevalier (also unfinished at the time of writing).

This came from our shelves and was a present from me to my wife; it had to be put aside, reluctantly, to read the book above. This time-skipping historical novel tells the story of Orsola Rosso, a Venetian glassmaker working in 1486; and, in a bold twist, across subsequent centuries. The writing is sparkling, and deep research brings everything to life, as Orsola, another of Chevalier’s wily female protagonists, wrestles with societal constraints. Looking forward to resuming the story.

River of Shadows by Valerio Varesi

An atmospheric Italian crime novel set in the frozen and waterlogged north as Commissario Soneri investigates the deaths of two elderly brothers with a shared suspicious past. Great atmosphere, good food, an eccentric policeman – and sex in surprising places.

The Silk Stocking Murders by Anthony Berkeley

A Golden Age detective novel, written in 1932, and one of the first to feature a serial killer, as hunted by the crime writer turned sleuth, Roger Sheringham, who outwits his friends at Scotland Yard. Almost modern in feel, although some social attitudes give off a loud clang.

A House for Mr Biswas, by VS Naipaul

This lively, funny, dark and very human novel was written in 1961 and tells the story of a man who claws his way free of abject poverty, fighting his in-laws at every turn. It’s a tremendous evocation of Caribbean life, and Mr Biswas is a tragi-comic hero of Dickensian proportions, a lowly man lifted by his delusions, his boiling rage, and buoyed by malice.

History of the Rain, by Niall Williams

A holiday read back in May. This magical, funny, tragic Irish novel is set on the banks of the river Shannon, in Faha, County Clare, “where everyone is a long story”. Confined to bed with an unidentified, debilitating blood disorder, 19-year-old Ruth Swain becomes the omniscient recorder of her community, through recounting the convoluted history of her own family. It is also a book filled with literature, especially Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson.

There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak

Another holiday read, as just as captivating as History of the Rain. Elif Shafak composes a hugely ambitious novel told from many perspectives, ranging from ancient Mesopotamia and Vitorian England to contemporary London. A drop of water links three main strands that seem separate but wrap together in the end. Politics and the preciousness of water fill these poetic pages.

The Crow Trap by Ann Cleeves

Another holiday read and a jump back in time to catch up with the first Vera Stanhope novel. Three women from different backgrounds come together at an isolated cottage on the North Pennines to complete an environmental survey. Each knows the meaning of betrayal, and no-one knows who that woman who resembles a mad bag lady might be, until she formally introduces herself halfway through the murder mystery. It’s Vera, of course, and she’s a tremendous creation, more interesting, more tortured, than her TV self.

The remaining books are:

This Sporting Life by David Storey, the brutal 1960s classic about rugby league player Arthur Machin who becomes something of a celebrity and rises above the restrictions of his class, only to become disconnected from everything.

An Evening of Long Goodbyes by Paul Murray. A properly funny novel from the Irish writer who rarely disappoints. Charles Hythloday sets about the heroic squandering of his family inheritance. Drinking, greyhound racing, vanishing furniture, old movies, Dublin lowlife, eviction and the perils of community theatre all feature.

Christine Falls by John Banville. Originally published under the pen-name Benjamin Black, this is the first in a series of crime novels set in the boozy, dank Dublin of the 1950s, and featuring his hero Quirke, who runs the pathology department of Holy Family hospital. Superbly written and plotted with panache (although the ending is odd).

And not to forget Midnight Blue by Simone van der Vlugt, a Dutch historical novel that resonates with the Glassmaker; The Progress of a Crime by Julian Symons, a classic murder case; and The Nancys by RWR McDonald, a charming and funny novel about Tippy Chain, an 11-year-old New Zealand girl and super-fan of the Nancy Drew books.

Oh, and two gathering dust by the bedside, which I believe were read this year…

How To Be Right by James O’Brien (enjoyably scathing political essays); and The Narrow Bed, Sophie Hannah’s bleak, funny and ambitious take on the procedural crime novel.

So, yes, Carmen, on Threads. Here is one older man who definitely reads books.

Fire, Field, Firefighter image from Pixabay

As wildfires rampage through parts of France and Spain, causing more than 330,000 people to be evacuated, try this headline for size – “Spain’s far-right party falsely claims wildfires are not linked to climate emergency.”

Of course they do. Perhaps they swallowed the same stupid pills as our own Reform UK. Let’s hear instead from Víctor Resco de Dios, a professor of forestry engineering and global change at the University of Lleida in the Catalan region of Spain. You know, one of those experts the right disparages. Here he is in the Guardian:

Although it’s difficult to predict how far things might go, we will soon be unable to rule out Dantesque scenarios like those seen in California or Australia, with fires or fire complexes reaching hundreds of thousands of hectares or even a million hectares…

That’ll get those climate-denying twerps putting their fingers in their ears and chuntering petrol-flavoured nonsense. For illustration, see how councils run by Reform UK spend more time dismissing the climate crisis than sorting out anything local.

Their equivalent in Spain is the far-right Vox party, which blames the fires on excess vegetation in rural areas, and not enough money being spent on firefighting services.

In a post on X, that favourite haunt of the raving right, Vox said: “It’s not climate change, it’s the lack of clearing of the woodlands and the means to combat the fires.”

Both things can of course be true at the same time. Rampant vegetation, especially after wet winters encourage growth and scorching summers then dry everything to a crisp, can increase the risk of fires. But those fires are in turn fanned by our increasingly unstable climate.

As long ago as 2015 the BBC reported that Spanish scientists were amazed after a fire swept through more than 20,000 hectares of forest in Valencia in 2012. While most trees were charred, in the middle of the devastation, a group of cypresses stood tall and green.

So, yes, there are things we can do to restrict or contain fire. Perhaps cypress trees should be planted amid the all-too-flammable pine trees that rise on those sandy beaches.

But climate instability is still real.

Some of the right will deny this even as the ground beneath their feet burns. And if that brings to mind an image of Nigel Farage wearing pink trousers and hopping around in his yachting shoes as the lawn in one of his houses smoulders, so be it.

But now to France, where the fire in the Gironde region is only nine miles from the outskirts of Bordeaux. As yet the city is not officially under threat, although the fires are approaching the western suburbs.

Back in 2010, at a time of plenty (of freebies), I went on my last press trip. We stayed in Bordeaux for the wine festival but also had a day out on the coast, with a trip to the Bay of Arcachon, where we puffed up the Pilat sand dune, said to be the highest in Europe, then sailed across to Cap Ferret peninsula for a waterside lunch. Later, we were taken in a small boat round the bay.

This week thousands have been forced to flee parts of south-west France, and the authorities gave people in the Cap Ferret 30 minutes to leave, according to BBC journalist Joanna Kent, who was on holiday at a campsite there with her family.

On a visit to a crisis centre in Bordeaux, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, said this was the “toughest” situation the country had dealt with “since the second world war”.

Bordeaux has a population of around 850,000. It’s a lovely city to visit, or it certainly was when I was wined and dined there. Yes, bribes of a food and drink nature were swallowed, for the last time ever as it happens, but it’s still a great city.

The tall classical buildings, once hidden under layers of soot, were cleaned up, as was the once-neglected quayside area on the Garonne river.

The wide boulevards throng with people. None of this happened by accident. The city was transformed by a political act of will from Alain Juppé, the unpopular former prime minister who later became mayor of Bordeaux.

As well as attending the wine festival, we went on outings and tastings around the Gironde region, including to the ancient wine town of Saint-Emilion nestling amid some of the most famous vineyards in the world.

To date the vines around Bordeaux are safe. But a huge area of high pressure, or ‘heat dome, is covering most of Europe and sealing in the dry and hot weather.

Here in the UK we are very much on the edge of all that but the heat is building again across parts of England and Wales. Tomorrow temperatures are forecast to reach 30C in the Midlands, where our heat-averse son lives, while East Anglia and southern England may hit 35C.

As Andy Burnham was on the verge of becoming prime minister, a headline in the Guardian read: “Burnham promises an end to Labour infighting after taking over as party leader.”

Squint and you might see something else. Like one of those pictures with ambiguous meanings (the space between two outlined faces forming the shape of a vase, and so on).

‘Man who became prime minister thanks to Labour infighting promises to end Labour infighting…’

Blink and it’s a silhouette of two faces again. Blink once more and it’s a vase used as a murder weapon in a game of political Cluedo.

Since actually becoming prime minister yesterday, Burnham has promoted his allies (usual political behaviour) and seemingly pushed aside anyone closely aligned to Sir Keir Starmer (ditto).

As for the rest, what is there to say? Some of us, it’s a select club with plenty of room to mingle, think Starmer had a rough deal from his party. Forcing him out was an act of cowardice, a panicky surrender to fragile Labour egos. But it happened, so meet the new boss. Burnham gave a good speech in Downing Street, coherent and passionate, and he makes all the right noises. Can he deliver? Too early to say, but here’s hoping.

Nigel Farage, by the way, says it was him who deposed Starmer. Yeah, whatever. Incidentally, Farage and his gang increasingly resemble children who knock on doors and run away. They shout abuse through letterboxes but scarper whenever anyone asks about that five million quid.

Meanwhile Farage hides in one of his many houses, possibly High Dudgeon Manor, on Quids In Avenue.

Never mind Nigel, it was the malign role of opinion polls that also did for Starmer. And Reform UK’s apparent ascendancy is itself based on endless polls, quite a few by entirely partial sources such as GB News. All those opinion snapshots allow  the BBC to explain their addiction to promoting Farage by saying that he is making the political weather.

Opinion polls are useful when an election is near. Other than that, they tell us little. If we followed all the polls there would be a general election every other month.

Farage bellows that we should be having one now. Yet our parliamentary system allows prime ministers to come and go mid-term. They hop off the train, or are more usually pushed off, and a shiny-faced new conductor jumps on board, and on we go.

It’s not perfect but mostly it works. When the Tories were changing leaders almost every other week, or so it seemed, you didn’t hear a peep from the editor of the Daily Mail about how there should be a general election. Funnily enough, he seems to have changed his mind now.

Incidentally again, this post on Threads from the satirically inclined Sir Michael Take, supposedly ‘the former Conservative MP for Dorset East’, is a neat response to the Mail’s front page below:

Well done The Daily Mail! 👏 Burnham must be held to account for the failures of his regime so far. His removal of VAT from electricity bills has already come far too late & could’ve been done yesterday. If he hasn’t solved the cost of living crisis by Friday then he must go!

Anyway, much of this has been said before, and said too often by me. As Burnham brings us all a bit of Manchester – no bad thing, but then I was raised near that place – let’s leave him to it for now. I wish him well in the knowledge that the only other likely options appear to be a Farage government (increasingly unlikely but possible), a Tory renaissance, or a hatchet-burying marriage of the two.

DID you read about Burnham in a newspaper, glance at the TV news or spot something bob past in the endless flow of social media?

I still buy one copy of the Guardian a week, on a Saturday, followed by The Observer on Sunday. Oh, and the occasional copy of the Yorkshire Post at the weekend.

It’s a dwindling habit, and newspaper readers are getting older. This is illustrated by my in-laws. Now approaching 90, they have two newspapers six days a week, a truly valiant effort.

According to an Ofcom survey of news consumption in 2025, newsprint is said now to account for only five per cent of the 61 minutes a day on average that people spend consuming news.

Two observations follow from that. One, if that’s the case why do broadcasters still show all that day’s front pages. Two, perhaps I should stop looking at the BBC papers review to see what rank slop the Mail or Telegraph are serving up for breakfast. Some habits need shaking.

Picture: theotherkev from pixabay.com

What, I wonder, is the ‘establishment’?

The traditional definition is to be found in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable. There it is said to be ‘a term long used to denote in particular the established Church of England, but now a popular designation for the group or class of people who have authority within a society, particularly Britain…’

Those above you, with influence over you, those higher up the ladder, in other words. Or if you are Nigel Farage, more or less anyone but himself.

This is odd by any reasonable measure, as Farage is an extremely wealthy former public schoolboy and ex-commodities trader, who surrounds himself with other men of similar wealth, some of whom appear to like giving him money.

He is part of what he pretends to disparage.

It is tempting to wonder if this might be traced to his teenage years. Perhaps when he was told off for smoking in his bedroom he ranted that his parents were the establishment. Or perhaps after a teacher at Dulwich College suggested he might drop the racism, he chuntered about the ‘establishment’ having it in for him.

These made-up examples are offered as an exercise in postulation.  For whenever Farage bitches on about the establishment,  his old man’s fag-raddled body seems haunted by the ghost of a petulant boy who will not be criticised.

To him the establishment is a handy proxy for everything a poor soul such as himself has to endure.

Like many right-wing politicians, he cannot exist without an enemy, and the establishment is an amalgam of everything he dislikes moulded into a general foe. A usefully malleable term embracing the BBC, other politicians, the civil service – oh, anything or anyone who has ever been mean about him or his various DIY political parties. The cause of his endless, hissy-fitting grievance.

That Farage is allergic to criticism is suggested by a story that has been doing the rounds for a while. Marina Hyde mentions it in her latest Guardian column. While attending the awards last year for the Spectator, he is said to have reacted ‘to a mild joke by turning white and shouting: ‘Why don’t you go fuck yourself’.”

I wasn’t there, thank heavens, but columnists from the Guardian and the Times were, and they went on the record.

After years of mostly being lionised by the press, indulged as a favourite intolerant old uncle, Farage has recently come under much greater scrutiny, particularly after that astonishingly generous personal gift of £5m from cryptocurrency investor Christopher Harborne.

Once questions started to be asked, as was only proper, Farage snapped at journalists, saying it “was not the public’s business” to know why he was given that money.

And then, with the Parliamentary Standards Committee investigating the matter, Farage resigned his seat at Clacton, saying he would stand again and that the people would be his judge. What he didn’t say is that this would allow him to temporarily dodge what the standards committee has to say.

The other main parties have declined to take part in his cunning stunt, leaving Farage to face the comedian Jonathan David Harvey, who terms himself Count Binface.

This gamble has revealed Farage to have thinner skin than a sausage in an over-heated pan. Gone with a spit and a pop is that friendly man of the people propping up the bar with a pint. A man you might like to have a beer with, some used to say (not me, you’ll be glad to hear, as my swallowing throat would contract in a cold instant).

The mask has fallen away, much as it did for Boris Johnson, another touchy posh man who fabricated a public persona, in his case good old bumbling Boris. That mask hid a snarl, as does the one Farage wears.

But back to Brewer’s. Thinking of who Farage pretends to be brought up the expression ‘hail-fellow-well-met’. Brewer’s defines this as ‘friendly and familiar, often in an unwelcome fashion’. Yup, that sounds about right.

ACCORDING to YouGov, 73% of UK voters dislike Donald Trump. And the same proportion consider Nigel Farage to be sleazy, with even 40% of Reform UK votes seeing him as sleazy. Why, then, does Farage think that being a second-rate Brit Trump tribute act will win him power? And why would anyone vote for him?

I have only questions, no answers.

READY for what passes these days as a run, I scan the new releases on my streaming service. One suggestion is Foreign Tongues, the 25^th album by the Rolling Stones. This follows Hackney Diamonds released three years ago, at the time their first album of original material in 18 years.

First song up as I begin my warm-up walk is Rough And Twisted, a raucous introductory stomp that puts a spring in my leaden step. It’s quite a long album, I’m back before it’s done, but what a surprise. It’s lively, fun, amusing and straightforward – just the usual grizzled old geezers enjoying themselves. Mick Jagger at 82 is in fine voice and sounds genuinely energised.

Keith Richards bashes out those open-G chords that have always powered the Stones, while in a more vulnerable moment lends his gravel tones to Some of Us (“are on our knees”).

All very admirable, but some of us are creaky at the knees and need to sit down and have a cup of tea.

Watching sport on television is a minority interest for me. A game or two of tennis during Wimbledon and a spot of snooker is the most of it; and dipping into football, although as a man without a team, I take no partisan interest in the game.

Cricket I know little about, except that when you attend a match the players are surprisingly far away and easy to mistake (the distant Yorkshire players at Scarborough last summer can be called in evidence).

Something strange has happened to me, though. I’ve watched all the England games in this World Cup, even though I pledged not to thanks to the polluting effects of Donald Trump.

Would you look at that gold-puke stain over there. Trump has just asked Fifa to review the one-match suspension of US striker Folarin Balogun. And Fifa did Trump’s bidding and instead suspended the red card for 12 months.

Then again, Trump cheats at everything – golf, life, politics, marriages – so what do you expect. He also hands out pardons to his favourites like a dodgy old man passing round a sticky tin of sweets.

But the thing is, the USA are playing better than expected, or so those in the know are saying. Now Trump has besmirched that success with his nudge-nudge fix, illustrating once again that everything Trump touches eventually falls apart. As he himself is doing as suggested in the unguarded, makeup-free moment captured above by a Getty photographer.

Uefa called Fifa’s decision on Balogun “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable”. Pretty much what the rest of us said when Fifa gave Trump that pretend peace price.

Anyway, football.

The Mexico game was considered to be a tough challenge, again according to those in the know (not me, please excuse any sporting howlers hidden within this blog). The Azteca Stadium was considered to be tough, as was the altitude of Mexico City, as any idling purveyor of punditry with tell you.

The match was scheduled for 1am our time. Sitting in our local bar until dawn didn’t appeal. And neither did staying up at home. Instead, I went to bed at my usual latish hour, got up at 5.45am, made tea, and then watched the match on the BBC iPlayer, having managed to avoid hearing the score.

It was almost like watching in real time. Better, really, as you could whizz through the endless build-up (extended by an hour as kick-off was delayed). You could also speed past whatever it was that Wayne Rooney was trying to say while gargling his vowels.

And you could just watch the game. It was exciting, too. England were on top form and won 3-2. And unlike their other appearances in this World Cup, despair and boredom were kept to a minimum.

What with Wimbledon being on too, I am watching so much sport I’ll have to be careful not to become one of those people who go on about sport all the time. Mind you, I do know a few of those.

FEW of my friends have a kind word for Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK. Sadly, his friends in the media have more than made up for that, bigging up Farage at every possibility.

That seems at last to be changing. Assorted newspapers are actually reporting properly on Farage, examining his opaque sources of funding, and asking how come he managed to buy four or five houses.

The Guardian lit the fuse with its story that Farage had been given an undisclosed gift of £5m by the Thai-based crypto tycoon Christopher Harborne. And then lobbied the Bank of England to drop its plans for a crypto Brit coin seemingly in order to help his generous pal.

The latest of these mounting scandals concerns “Posh George” Cottrell, a convicted criminal who has been secretly funding Farage, according to the Sunday Times.

Farage is doing his Trumpian big baby sulk act about all this, chuntering on again that the ‘establishment’ has it in for him.

More, please. Funny, though, that craven Labour MPs wanted to depose Starmer partly because they feared he wasn’t up to fighting Farage and Reform. And now Farage is seemingly imploding even before Starmer has officially departed.

Anyway, I’m off. There’s bound to be some tennis on the television. Oh, look, Britain’s Arthur Fery has just won in a thrilling five-set comeback, if you’ll pardon the sporting lingo.

Incidentally, I expect any moment to hear from Walter Presents on Channel 4. Walter will be wondering where I’ve gone, as normally I am to be found hanging around the bloody touchlines of his foreign crime dramas.

HERE are a few notes posted on the fridge door of my mind. These do not refer to Sir Keir Starmer or his presumed replacement, Andy Burnham, as they were plastered all over here last week.

We can skip the first one as all it says is “Buy beer, bake bread.” Another cautions against drinking wine this early in the week, but that’s been covered with one saying: “My, the Mail is horrid, isn’t it…”

That was occasioned by The Mail on Sunday’s front-page attack on education secretary Bridget Phillipson. Her presumed sin was having grown up in a former council home that years later generated a supposed profit of £90,000 (lower estimates are available).

This allowed a sub-editor to compose the honestly ridiculous headline seen above.

Phillipson was six at the time, but the Mail doesn’t record whether some of her pocket money helped to buy the two-bedroom council house.

Kevin Hollinrake, the Tory chair, blabbers in the report: “Labour have once again been caught red-handed displaying their spiteful class-war hypocrisy.”

Hollinrake’s own wealth comes from selling houses, in case you’ve forgotten. As for that class-war jibe, he is clutching straws of nowt.

Many people benefitted from Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy policy/bribe. The hope was that the new owners would gratefully vote Tory for ever more.

A more telling consequence had been the madly overheated housing market we have all these decades later. Oh, and a shortage of council houses spawned by the Tory refusal to reinvest the money in building replacement council houses.

Same thing with privatising water. Only the unforeseen bit here was the creating of massive profits for foreign companies. And lovely flotillas of shit in our rivers and sea. But, hey, free markets rule.

Looking at the next note makes me squirm. It reads, “Piers Morgan is right.” What’s more, he’s right two times over. Firstly for going on the BBC and saying what a disaster Brexit has been, blaming Nigel Farage and David Cameron. And then for saying that the Reform UK leader is doomed as he keeps changing his story on why he accepted a personal gift of five million pounds from that Thai-based crypto king who seems more or less to keep Reform UK afloat.

An illustration on Threads showing the Reflecting Pool under Biden and Trump

Next are a few overlapping notes about Donald Trump. These read – Thinks he’s Atlas. That pool reflects more than he realises. His state fair stinks more than that pool.

Greater sins have been committed by Trump than his hugely expensive renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, but it does stand as a perfect metaphor. It no longer has a reflection as it’s full of algae and the newly applied rubbery blue paint or whatever is coming away beneath – and this bit is priceless – dead ducklings said to have been discovered floating in the non-reflecting water.

Trump, who gave the job to a swimming pool contractor buddy, blames everybody but himself. And he’s had people arrested for reaching into the water to see what’s going on. A fence has now been erected around the non-reflecting pool to deter all those imaginary vandals Trump says have sabotaged the pool.

That state fair was intended to celebrate America’s 250^th anniversary, but assorted announced guests withdrew, and Trump rallied to the cause by, er, making it all in support of himself. And no-one much seems to be attending.

In case you’ve not noticed, the whole world is basically having to be rewired to power AI. And one of the uses of AI is that Donald Trump can put up dodgy images of his America 250 state fair featuring thronging crowds. This is only achievable with AI, as untampered images show an event emptier than a village fair the local vicar forgot to publicise. The AI ones contain endless duplications of what appear to be digitally generated people.

Ten years ago Trump was always whingeing on about “fake news”, in other words news that was insufficiently flattering. Now, thanks to his tech bro brothers in the billionaires’ club, he can broadcast his own fake news, sharing, as we’ve seen, pictures of himself as Jesus. And now as Altas supporting the world on his shoulder pads.

As Trump sits in a pool of his own dissipating flesh and other unmentionables, the images he shares on social media always show a man of strength and undying power. His lights may be dimming, but online he is lit up as if a nuclear reactor has been shoved up his saggy old bottom.

And as people have gleefully been pointing out, in the Greek myth Atlas had to carry the heavens on his shoulders as an eternal punishment for losing a war. Another accidental truth there.

What a time to be alive. Farage appears to be wobbling; his on-off pal Trump is coming apart at the seams.

Oh, and just in case you have forgotten about Tory sleaze, along comes the former Conservative MP Craig Williams. He has just pleaded guilty in court to cheating at gambling. This followed bets he placed on the date of the general election in 2024 (and what a long time ago that now seems).

He admitted  to having used confidential information to bet on the timing of the election. Insider information from a man who is now an outsider, and who, it must be said, looked a sorry sagging sight as he shambled up to court.

I HAVE seen the departure of a few prime ministers, starting in 1990 with Margaret Thatcher, aka Mrs Hacksaw in my old newspaper column.

Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak followed. Now Sir Keir Starmer is going too. His fall resembles one of those speeded-up films of decay, the solid flesh of majority rotting before your eyes.

That win nearly two years ago turned round Labour’s worst defeat since 1935 – an impressive achievement that soon enough impressed no-one much.

History will wonder where it all went wrong for Sir Keir, and so will I over the next few paragraphs.

Let’s start at the end. Starmer’s farewell speech, delivered with staccato grace, was heartfelt, brief, and a little odd. Then again, Starmer’s decline is itself a little odd.

Exactly why he ended up facing such hostility remains a mystery. He has done nothing wrong and leaves untouched by scandal or corruption; he didn’t crash the economy overnight, like Truss. He was diligent and hard-working, unlike Johnson. He threw himself into the job, at great cost to his family.

In the end, and in simple language, people didn’t seem to like him. Or that was the message put out so often it became its own truth. Unpopular opinion: he deserved better, but it’s too late to worry about that now.

Many on the left and the right wanted Starmer to fail from the off. As did the usual suspect newspapers, determined to swing a wrecking ball at whatever Starmer did, hoping to crack the foundations. Then the broadcasters gave that ball another push, led by the BBC’s frightful political editor, Chris Mason. And a right-wing media agenda was established as fact.

If Andy Burnham does grab the battered crown, he will face the same media hostility. He will also endure huge pressure on social media, where fake news bots zip about like malevolent ping-pong balls. He will also suffer outrageous interference from the American far right, who seem so keen on mucking up our politics.

And he will soon enough be reminded that everybody hates politicians nowadays, a troubling virus for which there is no known vaccination.

Naturally enough, the causes of Starmer’s decline also lie in the man himself. Yes, he made mistakes, from a hasty decision to axe winter fuel payments, to pushing for the poisonous Peter Mandelson to be Britain’s US ambassador.

But it was more than that, different than that. He seemed unwilling or unable to tell a story, to give his politics plot and meaning, to communicate what he stood for. Politics may be a duplicitous art, but you need a good story, a clear narrative to weave.

Once in government, Starmer opted for a steady-as-she goes style, quietly undoing the mess made by his Tory predecessors. He saw himself as a manager politician who had time, two terms were mentioned, to reshape the country.

Sadly, he never truly found a way to connect with voters, to speak in his own voice. He did not wish to play the game, but politics is a sort of game. And politicians, if you’ll permit a generalisation, are sometimes a bunch of divas and drama queens, running about in an egotistical flap, headless chickens to a man and woman.

That applies to all parties, but it certainly applies to Labour MPs at present, so easily led into a chaos that suits their opponents.

Starmer should have taken proper control. Instead he kept his head down. By the time he looked up, the scree beneath his feet was moving, and there was only one way to go.

Will Andy Burnham and his king of the north act really pep up Labour’s chances? There’s an alarming degree of faith being put in what people are calling his Manchesterism, named after his spell as Mayor of Manchester.

Some say Burnham will be better placed to see off Nigel Farage. Maybe, but don’t rest too much faith on that altar. Farage, as any fool could have predicted, is now banging on about having a general election. Risky from a man leading a party that struggles to win byelections.

Yes, Farage needs to be contained. But sometimes the best person to do that is Nigel Farage. For Nigel nearly always undoes whatever it is Nigel is trying to do. He just can’t help hitting that self-destruct button.

REFORM MP Lee Anderson likes to share pictures of his breakfast on social media. Often a full English awash with proper English fat. Fitting for a man who resembles a sausage squeezed into a suit.

Anderson usually goes for the Culture War Full English special to bolster his fatty patriotism.

This raises questions. Does he like a full English because of the name or because it’s basically his party’s manifesto? In future will we all have to post pictures of our fry-ups just to keep our passports? Will my bowl of porridge see me banished?

Whatever, last week Anderston posted a picture of the bread accompanying his bacon. This set him off on one – “Lad behind the counter tried serving it on some fancy artisan sourdough. Proper British white sliced only, mate. None of that hipster nonsense.”

Of the responses Anderson received, many leavened with language, this was perhaps the most satisfying – “Sourdough is very tasty. Lee Anderson is a f****** moron. Both statements are true.”

According to the Cambridge dictionary, a hipster is “someone who is aware of and influenced by the most recent ideas and fashions”.

Whereas Lee Anderson is influenced by a greasy nostalgia that sits like lard on soggy toast. And why did he cite white-sliced bread? Perhaps, er, simply because of its whiteness. His party does seem to be anxious about everything white.

I like the occasional full English as much as the next heart attack survivor who’s been advised not to eat too many. Not being a patriotic dunderhead, I also like a continental breakfast, especially if a good baguette cuddles up with apricot jam and unsalted butter. And if I had a soul, I might well sell it for an almond croissant.

But as a fully indentured bread bore and home baker, I also know that white sliced bread is made with low-quality wheat, assorted additives, too much yeast, all mixed and baked quickly to produce squidgy slices of nothing.

Proper sourdough contains only water, flour and salt. That said, mine doesn’t always work out, so sometimes I add a pinch of yeast. This saves us from loaves you could use to build your own drystone wall.

Sourdough is just an old way of baking, raising bread without industrial yeast. Other techniques include saving a piece of dough from a yeasted loaf and using this to start the next batch, or getting things going with beer that’s live in the bottle.

Anderston could have pointed to other British bread, from split tin loaves to wholemeal, from the cottage loaf to Scottish baps. But no, he went straight for the lowest common denominator in the bread aisle.

If that last sentence sounds snobby, I’ll put up a floury hand by way of apology. Yes, white sliced bread will feed the family and that’s an important consideration, even if supermarkets sell it at unrealistically low prices.

If you can stretch to anything better, go to a local bakery. York is full of them, from the Haxby Bakehouse to Bluebird Bakery to CS Sourdough to the Black Wheat Club. All will sell you a fine sourdough loaf. Or something else good, and their shelves wobble with pastries and buns and other flaky delights.

Such bakeries can be found around the country, whether run by ‘hipsters’ or just by people who devote themselves to making the best bread possible. Britain today can be proud of its bread. You can even buy decent enough sourdough at the supermarket (alongside some horror story faux-dough loaves).

Good sourdough bread is made slowly and with care; it tastes lovely and is better for your digestive system than those gluey slices of processed bread wrapped in plastic.

If the pushing of white slice bread is mostly down to supermarkets, then Lee Anderson himself is the product a of a three-for-one deal at the politics supermarket. He’s gone from Labour to Conservative to Reform, all without adding anything healthy to his plate.

Footnote: white sliced bread is almost certainly not served at the long posh lunches Lee’s boss Nigel enjoys.

Emily Roots in her bakery (Picture Cornwall Live)

HERE’S another bread story, thankfully free of politics, that caught my eye. It appeared on the Cornwall Live website, complete with obligatory pun in the headline – “Mum knead-deep in homemade bread after Facebook post went bonkers.”

Emily Roots put out a light-hearted social media post in January 2024 when she was seven-months-pregnant. She said she was going to sell homemade loaves from the window of her Cornish cottage, even though she’d never baked a loaf in her life.

Locals in the small village of Tywardreath, near St Austell, were so keen on the idea, that the panic-stricken 31-year-old had to give herself a crash course in breadmaking.

Before long, hordes of locals bought loaves from an unassuming table covered by a gingham cloth. And now Emma runs the Village Bakery, and her loaves are found at the Eden Project.

“I’d never done sourdough and I was kind of intimidated by it, so I started with focaccia and the village went crazy for it. There were queues down the street,” Emma told Cornwall Live.

Just a word of warning, Emma. If you see a sleazy bloke in a bulging suit wanting bread for a fry-up, point him to the nearest supermarket.