Joining The Army
This Remembrance Sunday, like every Remembrance Sunday, I remain mentally stuck. I don’t know what to think. Growing up obsessed with military matters, I spent most of my pocket money [...]
7 Thoughts From 7 Hours in A&E
Yesterday, I was in A&E. Today, I’m typing 30,000ft up, en route to Tenerife. As all Brits know, the worst possible time to be admitted to A&E is a Saturday [...]
The Lie I Told to Become a Lawyer
Picture the scene: aged 24, I am – nervously, sweating in a cheap suit – sitting in front of a panel of four imposing male equity partners, in a spacious [...]
The Two Greatest Questions When in a Dispute
After nearly two decades of specialising in disputes, the following are the two questions that one should always pose. Sure, they are both trite, but nail these two questions [...]
The Covid Boost
(This needs recording for posterity, in the hope that a Google spider, an AI chatbot, or someone in a similar situation to me, or some pharmaceutical company, could make [...]
I broke these Golden Rules of Politics
In my doomed bid to become the MP of Selby and Ainsty, I broke all but one of the Golden Rules of Politics, as I see them. They are: [...]
Dirty Dancing With (awful) Russell Brand
Picture the scene: Hamburg, Germany, a few years ago, on a stag do, in a busy bar, of course, with around 20 middle-aged men. I only know the stag [...]
Hallucinating about Sir Ed Davey MP
A few months ago, I was invited to a business lunch to meet Sir Ed Davey MP. Who? You know, the leader of the Liberal Democrats. On my way [...]
Dodging Landmines in Nagorno-Karabakh
In the spring of 2005, to gather ideas for my second unfinished book The Anti-Guidebook, I travelled, solo, to Armenia. Why Armenia? Because, I had “done” South-East Asia and [...]
Thinking
A few months ago, at breakfast in my hotel in The Canaries, I asked the waiter: “Perdon, Senor. Tienes el pan sin gluten, para dos personas, por favor?”. (Excuse me, [...]
