Lord’s Cricket Ground in London, home of the MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club), with the urn containing The Ashes for which England and Australia compete every two years. Traditionally, the ashes are of a burnt bail, but there’s speculation that they were actually the remains of a stump, ball or even a woman’s veil. And whatever they were…
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Aug
Given that I’m over 40, I’d like to think that 35 isn’t too old to win Wimbledon, so I’m glad Roger Federer recently proved this. He didn’t even lose a set, which makes me hope that they’ll soon have a 37 or 38-year-old champion. Martina Navratilova won the US Open mixed doubles when she was…
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Aug
Like Julie Bindel, a controversial British writer, I don’t think of myself as childless. Rather, I’m child-free. Fathering children has never particularly interested me, which is probably just as well, because despite technology and laws, it’s not exactly the easiest thing for a single over-40 gay man to achieve. If circumstances had forced to raise…
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Jul
Last Saturday, I took an eleven-year-old to the Brickman Wonders of the World exhibition in the Perth Convention Centre. I wasn’t expecting the Statue of David!
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Jul
Me with Mrs Thatcher at Madame Tussaud’s, London. I took my first trip to Europe, including the United Kingdom, from November 1991 – after my final year Law exams – to February 1992 – when I had to start work in a solicitor’s office. Apart from two weeks in Malaysia, this was my first trip…
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Jul
On my first trip overseas, I took an afternoon off from Club Med to visit the Malaysian city of Kuantan. I probably went because a lovely widow I’d befriended was going. In hindsight, looking at myself in a rickshaw, I seem like a relaxed remnant of the British Raj. I don’t think the publicity material…
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Jul
Above is Robert Burns at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, 2014, the month before the Scottish referendum on independence. The description with the picture says: Today, Burns is an icon of Scottish identity. He is shown here as Che Guevara, the heroic Latin American revolutionary. Below is Che Guevara at El Revolucionario Bar, Buenos Aires,…
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Jul
Last year, I performed a show that featured ‘Loving Thatcher’ in the title. It was going to be called My Argentina: Learning Spanish and Loving Mrs Thatcher, but that was 51 characters, including the colon. Fringe World required titles to have no more than 50. I toyed with ‘Loving Ms Thatcher’, but no-one ever called her that,…
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Jul
