Nick Clegg
Published in The Financial Times, 2005
We know that Gordon Brown is being lined up to be the next leader of the Labour party. We know that Ken Clarke, David Davis and several others are lining up to lead the Conservatives. But what of the Liberal Democrats? Is there anybody in line to take over from Charles Kennedy?
Column: Hedge fund managers
Published in The Financial Times, 2005
After the butternut squash soup, followed by the rump of lamb with chateaux potato and ribbons of carrot, one of the two hedge fund managers looked me straight in the eye and asked: “So then, would you fancy my job?”
Jonathan Coe
Published in The Financial Times, 2004
Martin Amis once observed that interviewing literary heroes was an excruciating business. “As a fan and a reader, you want your hero to be genuinely inspirational. As a journalist, you hope for a full-scale nervous breakdown in mid-interview. And, as a human, you yearn for the birth of a flattering friendship. All very shaming.”
West Midlands Wine Country
Published in The Financial Times, 2004
If you drive down the B4176 from Wolverhampton to Dudley you’ll eventually pass a small brown sign – a small brown sign you’d be forgiven for dismissing as some kind of prank, for it is labelled “Halfpenny Green Vineyard” and the Black Country, as this part of the West Midlands is known, is hardly famous for its fine wine production.
Column: The Company Song
Published in The Financial Times, 2004
Business fads, I am beginning to discover, are a bit like Bobby Ewing in Dallas: they never die. They may disappear for a while but, when you’re least expecting it, they reappear in your shower cubicle, wearing nothing more than a thin lather of soap.
Bill Drummond
Published in The Financial Times, 2004
In the English countryside somewhere to the west of London, a middle-aged former pop star is jumping up and down on a children’s trampoline for the benefit of the FT photographer. Scattered around the field there are the following items: two armoured personnel carriers, an old cooker, a flock of Soay sheep (a primitive breed that apparently dates back to the Bronze Age), two dogs and a road sign inscribed with the words “Twinned with Your Wildest Dreams”.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes
Published in The Financial Times, 2004
I’m halfway through telling Sir Ranulph Fiennes about my nightmarish journey from London to Exeter when it strikes me that the man who has, among other things, walked across the Antarctic continent unsupported, parachuted on to Norwegian ice caps, circumnavigated the globe via its polar axis, and run seven marathons over seven days on seven different continents (just months after heart surgery), probably doesn’t care that I had to haul my fat bum out of bed at 5am (five in the morning!) and drive through wintry showers (wintry showers!) in order to meet him on time. But being the charming English gentleman that he is, Fiennes nods along sympathetically.
David Blaine
Published in The Financial Times, 2003
“Hello, I just woke . . . up,” says David Blaine in his trademark drawl, dressed in a black T-shirt and what appear to be black silk pyjamas, standing in the entrance of his pal’s penthouse flat in west London. “It’ll take me…. A little while…. To get with…. It…. I still have…. Jet…. Lag….”
Bill Bryson
Published in The Financial Times, 2003
Bill Bryson is on the phone, saying he doesn’t mind where we meet – whatever’s convenient with me is convenient with him. I say I don’t mind either, whatever’s convenient with him is convenient with me. No, no, he insists, he really doesn’t mind, whatever’s convenient with me is convenient with him.
Sir Jack Hayward
Published in The Financial Times, 2003
Sir Jack Hayward, multimillionaire owner of Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club, is prone to the occasional gaffe, so few people were shocked when, this summer, at the start of his club’s first season in top-flight football in decades, he was quoted in The Guardian saying: “Our team was the worst in the First Division and I’m sure it’ll be the worst in the Premier League.”
Lucian Grainge
Published in The Financial Times, 2003
A 43-year-old man approaches a CD player at 9 o’clock in the morning, presses the OPEN button and slots in a silver disc inscribed with four of the most terrifying words in the English language: “Enrique Iglesias – New Album”. He turns the volume up and braces himself.
Norman Tebbit
Published in The Financial Times, 2003
“Indian or Chinese?” barks Lord Tebbit, flashing his sharp teeth and offering me a seat in the House of Lords tea room. Horrified, I freeze in my tracks. I had suspected that Tebbit, once described by Tory mayoral candidate Steve Norris as “a racist and a homophobe”, occupied a backward, politically incorrect world that dismissed the majority of the human race who don’t have the good fortune to be born white, British and heterosexual.