Never mind the granny image – there really is nothing like a good game of buzzword bingo. Staying up late into the night to watch the 2010 general election on telly, I remember printing off bingo cards for my housemates and knocking back a slurp of beer every time the presenters said, “It’s an historic […]

She could see me coming a mile off. The reporter with a cameraman in tow was in her sights. As I looked out over the tents, protestors and policemen outside Cuadrilla’s drilling site in Balcombe, the floaty dress-wearing, grey-haired woman took my arm. “I’ve got a GREAT story for you. See that boy over there? […]

When your best mate at school got a new flashing yoyo, you wanted one. When your friends all started getting smartphones while you hung onto a trusty Nokia 3210, you wanted one. And in the same way, unwittingly the modest and unassuming boss of Russian energy giant Gazprom has unleashed upon us a new form […]

It’s good to talk, as BT’s famous advertising slogan goes, and usually when big British brands talk, people listen. If you’d been listening to the outgoing telecoms giant’s chief exec earlier this week, as I was, you’d have got the message loud and clear that things need to change. Scotsman Ian Livingston (who announced he’s […]

An Englishman’s home is his castle, so they say. And when they say that, I presume they mean he’ll up the drawbridge as soon as there’s a whiff of invasion. A siege is better than enslavement and all that. When it comes to our friends across the pond, even more so. You own what’s on […]

Imagine a brave new future in which the world’s motorways are punctuated with stopping off points where cars low on juice can fill up the tank again, allowing intrepid drivers to make journeys hundreds of miles long. Doesn’t sound particularly futuristic, does it? But I’m not talking petrol pumps here. I’m talking electric batteries. Picture […]

You go on holiday to relax, unwind and crucially, forget about work for a few blissful days in the sun. But I should have known better – I can never switch off from energy. Arriving late at night to the small, bustling town of Fethiye on the southern coast of Turkey last week, it was […]

You finally get home after a long day’s slog, gratefully slump in the sofa with a cup of tea and put your feet up for a few blissful moments. The television crackles to life sinisterly: “This is Big Brother calling, are you watching?” You spill your hot tea in shock – oh no, you think, […]

Triple A. No we’re not talking about a dodgy grease-haired boy band, the lesser-known cousin of that butch WWE wrestler or those annoyingly small batteries which you never have enough of to replace the ones in your telly remote. No, triple A or AAA is the top notch credit rating which the UK has, as […]

If I think about prisons of the past, the grim prison-ship squatting in the marshes which opens the start of Great Expectations will always grip my imagination. In Charles Dickens’ novel, the escaped prisoner Magwitch has a pair of shackles soldered back onto the welts on his leg when he’s finally captured again to go […]