For all that it’s still the most popular supermarket in Britain, Tesco seems a bit nonplussed at Christmas time. Its adverts have long been upstaged by the posh end of the market – and this year it got the unwelcome attention of racist id[…]

Over in an unsatisfactory place, my esteemed FT colleague The Barnet Ape — who claims he does not eat xmas sandwiches and has therefore declined to contribute to this calendar — opines as follows:
“Advent Calendar Of Christmas Horror D[…]

La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman
Philip Pullman has an enviable knack of getting critics to dwell on the high-flown literary allusions in his books – Paradise Lost in the His Dark Materials trilogy; The Faerie Queene here. But he’s also[…]

“Hi, I’m Barry Scott! Despite my reappearance in the nation’s ad breaks this year, the amount of grime in general circulation has actually *increased* somehow! I blame the millennials and their over-reliance on antibiotics made from[…]

At £3.10 this is the most expensive single food item in Greggs. Unless the Christmas Toastie beats it, but certainly none of the secular options break the three pound barrier. What do you get? Turkey, bacon, cranberry, stuffing, and SPINACH, a conce[…]

Bozhe moi! IT’S BACK! The draw for the Football World Cup was made today, and so, for the fourth time, we’re delighted to host the POP WORLD CUP.
The point of this post is very simple. If you want to be a manager in the Pop World Cup, put[…]

We dispatched our lunch-facing elves far and wide across the face of the wrapped-food (with coffee) sector, to report who does what best on an opening-a-new-little-door-every-day basis. And by the finest of all invented traditions, the xmas season be[…]

Writing about Will Young it was hard not to be reminded of Kelly Clarkson, who likewise showed that the first blush of reality TV idols were the best – in terms, at least, of producing stars you can feel vague but huge affection for. I always w[…]

On first listen I liked Syd’s Fin mainly for its Spartan vibe: low-key, late-night R&B synths. Moody and pleasant. My second listen was like my eyes were adjusting to a dark room – songs emerged as ultraviolet blooms. The one that jumped out[…]

Not the last Finnophone musician I’ll be writing about, Mara Balls is the rock-name of musician and artist Maria Mattila, who’s done stints in a few Finnish hard rock bands and also ran the Yellow House, an underground venue and cultural space in[…]