Q My sister and I have had a week in a time-share in Spain for many years. We have children of similar ages and our two families have always gone there together every October half-term. However, this year, our eldest daughter, who is 14, says she doesn’t want to go. The problem is my sister’s … Read more
For me, part of the attraction of studying history was that it was all over. It could be something very good or something very bad, but at least it had happened and would never happen again. When, in May this year, I lost my wife Helen, after over 60 years together, history was no longer … Read more
The game show host, 52, tells Tom Parker Bowles about the Nando’s takeaways that fuelled the filming of Pointless and why he’s still a 70s boy at heart. My first food memory was fish fingers, along with spaghetti hoops on toast, and baked beans on toast. I was a child of the 70s, and the … Read more
EATING OUT Tom lives the Thai life at a little West London restaurant to match Bangkok’s finest Phet mak mak. Three words to use with immense caution. Unless, that is, you’re after thrills of a decidedly incendiary hue. Because this seemingly innocuous Thai phrase, meaning ‘very, very spicy’, can get one involved in a whole … Read more
It was the battle of the high-end rooms. I was in my hotel, Thyme in the Cotswolds, after my awful day at a wedding. He was at Soho Farmhouse doing god only knows. The Rock Star – lazy as always; my overriding memory of our dalliance is that I always had to be on top … Read more
Back in 1994, Calvin Klein launched CK One, the first scent to be marketed as unisex. Fresh, citrussy and universally appealing, it was an instant hit, making more than five million dollars in its first ten days. By the time the noughties came along, however, the perfume industry had gone back to traditional gender norms: … Read more
It’s a quiet Thursday lunchtime at a cigar lounge in suburban Atlanta, just a few hundred feet from Truist Park, home of the Atlanta Braves baseball team. Usher, one of the biggest R&B stars in the world, is telling me about his bromance with David Beckham. ‘David’s been to many shows of mine, he’s always … Read more
By the time I was in my mid-40s I had lost every one of my close male friends. And I had done it without noticing. I was coupled up, kidded in and careered out. I had no time for the other boys and they had no time for me. My best friend from school had … Read more
It’s a sunny late-summer afternoon and I’m being entertained by a nonagenarian (Sir Michael Caine, 90) and an octogenarian (John Standing, 89). Full disclosure: I’ve been married to the latter for 40 years. I have a ringside seat – ostensibly interviewing them both about The Great Escaper, a new film they are starring in alongside the … Read more
GARY MILLIGAN, 65 Newly retired Just 24 hours before his makeover, Gary retired. He’d spent ten years in the military, then did a stint in banking before working for 30 years in HR. After decades of wearing suits Gary was baffled by how to do casual wear: ‘I think I’d become institutionalised and formal. I’d … Read more