The temerity of those Danes. Here’s a nation whose history has been characterized by men wearing pointy helmets sailing around the Seven Seas and stopping off occasionally for a spot of raping and pillaging that now bans a gloopy spread from Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire because it contains added vitamins. When I was a lad, a Nanny was a woman with big bosoms who told me stories about three little pigs as I drifted off to sleep, safe in the knowledge that all was right with the world.

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Both Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Arnold Schwarzenegger are the latest in a long line of high profile men who have allowed the smaller of their two heads to gain the upper hand when making crucial decisions. Their fall is especially tragic when one considers the elegance of a simple solution. [Click link for more]

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May 18 is coming up, which is a relief given that by that date South Africans will have endured 11 days of unbroken work without a public holiday. When is the ANC going to realize that if they want to keep the 25% unemployed happy, we need more holidays, not fewer. How are these people that have been failed so spectacularly by the government supposed to feel part of society when the rest of us are out working?

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Prince William seems like a decent bloke. Genetically though, he’s been dealt a difficult hand by life, in all her ruthless vagary. His father, Prince Charles – on the occasion of his painful press conference to mark his engagement to the fragrant, dim-witted, but virginal Lady Diana Spencer – so infamously replied to the question [...]

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For reasons that need not detain us, one day last week I found myself in the early hours of the morning watching the Hanna-Barbera cartoon “Stop the Pigeon”.  If you ever feel that your mind is slightly out of synch with the rest of the world’s, and that perhaps you should visit a good nerve [...]

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Two years ago I sought the counsel of a brainy acquaintance of mine on the subject of my flagging and flaccid career as a broadcaster. In his study was a device that was to be the prop that formed the basis of his argument. Here was a gizmo that allowed this pale and interesting fish to tune into digital radio in far flung territories at the flick of a dial. This, he said, is the future of broadcasting. Go forth, he said, as casually as he might buy some more Japanese stocks.

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There’s a restaurant in Pringle Bay, just an hour from Cape Town, called Hook, Line, and Sinker. When you walk in to this effortlessly cool establishment you are guided to a table hewn from American Poplar that is scrubbed daily with Sunlight liquid and once a week rubbed lovingly with Cobra wax.

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Cao ni zu zong shi ba dai. It’s probably about time I learned to speak Mandarin. According to research just published by the Conference Board, a highly respected research institute, the Chinese economy will overtake that of the poor old US by 2012 in terms of output.

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The central bank of the United States of America, the Federal Reserve, in response to the recent Great Recession has acted swiftly, decisively and boldly. Its answer to a catastrophe that was caused by irresponsible lending by greedy banks to Ninjas (no income, no job or assets) has been to cut interest rates to the bone and flood the economy with cheap money in the hope it’ll be used to kick start the economy.

So in other words, as I see it, in order to fix a problem caused by cheap money they’ve made money even cheaper. I often do the same thing after a big night in (I don’t go out anymore) and the inevitable skull bursting hangover.

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The finance minister Pravin Gordhan is not someone you’d want to take to the U2 concert. He might allow a brief period of foot tapping during one of their 80’s classics, but mostly he’d be working out how much the tour had swelled the country’s coffers and observe the discretionary spending habits of the assembled revellers.

That’s why he’s the head bean counter, and long may that last.

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A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I sat in a mid-priced family car outside a pub. Having read the AA Guide to Southern England, and finished my bag of crisps and bottle of Coke, I waited patiently for my parents..

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