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Thomas Patterson
SWISS, the world’s most refined and assiduous airline have put a Michelin chef to work on their catering. Thomas Patterson has the tedious task of sampling (and a light and a whistle for attracting attention). Ah, the inflight meal – is there anything more unappetising than the tinfoil-topped airline dinner, with its mystery meat served…
Johannesburg was a gold rush city. Established in 1886, following the discovery of gold on a small farmstead in the area, Johannesburg rapidly swelled in size as prospectors swarmed through chasing their gilded dreams, eventually expanding to become the largest city in South Africa. Yet today, the overwhelming picture most outsiders have of Johannesburg couldn’t…
My grandfather was very good with his hands. He could build anything, from impressive dolls’ houses with tiny lifelike furniture, to full-sized rocking horses, sanded and varnished to a quality that would make professional woodworkers weep, and small children weep even more because they weren’t allowed anywhere near these beautiful toys, lest they got their…
Thomas Patterson throws away his harpoon (and nautical literary references) to chill out on the deck of the world’s biggest five-mast ship. Keats and Byron, Coogan and Brydon – all have romanticised in verse or sitcom the Amalfi Coast, that gorgeous scoop of coastline that sweeps down Italy’s Sorrentine Peninsula. Byron toured Amalfi in a…
Cannes 2014 was notable for many things – Nicole Kidman’s turn as Princess Grace in the risible ‘Grace of Monaco’; Timothy Spall’s Best Actor win for his role in Mike Leigh’s triumphant biopic ‘Mr Turner’; Abel Ferrara’s upstaging of the whole shebang with ‘Welcome to New York’, his thinly veiled satire about Dominique Strauss-Kahn, which…
There are many things that are better in America than in Britain: burritos, cheerleaders, Austrian movie stars, Real Housewives. But one of the most overlooked areas in which our cousins across the Atlantic excel at is drinking. No, hear me out. We may think we have the market licked with our real ales and WKD…
Hi, my name is Tom and I am an addict. I’m not addicted to pills or booze or porn, mind you – no, my addiction goes much deeper and has cost me far more money than any of those workaday vices. You see, I’m addicted to vinyl. Not the garment-based type. I’m not a perv. Just…
It’s obviously a thorny question, made ever more unanswerable by the constantly changing station of men in 21st century life, where brawn is no longer as important as a Twitter account and where having to wait an extraordinarily long time for an Ocado delivery is the closest many of us will come to hunting/gathering our…
We limeys have a peculiar position to keep up, you know, Barlow. They may laugh at us a bit – the way we talk and the way we dress; our monocles – they may think us cliquey and stand-offish but, by God, they respect us. Your five-to-two is a judge of quality. He knows what…