This Is Local London

Huge spend on HS2 cannot be justified

10:50am Sunday 29th January 2012

I have no personal axe to grind as far as the impact of HS2 on my life is concerned. It will be miles away from my home and therefore I cannot be accused of being a nimby if I say, ‘Why?’ Why do we all need to get to places more and more quickly? Why, when those business men who want to go from London to Birmingham a bit faster can now use their laptops and phones (and they do, curse them!) on the trains, do those phones and laptops have to go to Birmingham in the first place, let alone more quickly? Weren’t the myriad of communication and conferencing opportunities offered by modern technology supposed to reduce the need for so much careering around the country?

Speed course could save someone's life

11:31am Friday 20th January 2012

I ATTENDED a Speed Awareness Course in Burnham this week. Anyone who knows that I endured a six month ban under the totting up procedure two years ago may be appalled to learn that I was recently caught doing 36 mph in Wycombe. But with all the best intentions I had after that experience, I still erred.

I was so scared to have to cook on TV

11:30am Sunday 15th January 2012

NOW that I have shaken the dust of pantomime from my weary feet, I am able to look back at the week that immediately preceded it, when I took part in my first ‘reality’ TV show - ‘Come Dine With Me’.

French get it right over breast implants

8:10am Sunday 8th January 2012

I NEVER thought I would be tempted to hold up the French as a model of good behaviour that might be followed by the UK. But their decision to offer their citizens free replacement of all PIP breast implants, whether these have already failed or not, is one that clearly puts public health well ahead of financial and budgetary considerations.

This is fanning the flames of nonsense

6:30pm Saturday 31st December 2011

AS we enter the year of the London Olympics, I am heartened to read of plans being made to ensure that we come out the other side of the international limelight unscathed.

It’s panto time. Oh yes it is!

5:40pm Saturday 24th December 2011

Whenever I tell anyone that I am appearing in panto, the immediate response is usually ‘Oh no you’re not!’ This is not to suggest that people assume that I’m a liar or that no one would employ the likes of me to perform in panto. It is simply a conditioned reflex that confirms the still very strong part that panto plays in the Christmas celebrations in this country.

Let the sun shine in rather than moan

7:10pm Saturday 17th December 2011

I WAS contacted by a radio station this week. They were running a phone in, offering people the opportunity to have a good moan and, for some reason, thought I would be a fertile source of grumpiness. I seized the opportunity, of course, and banged on relentlessly about all the things that regular readers of this column will recognise – people who put on those rear fog lights when there is a mere wisp of mist blinding everyone behind them, compensation-chasing legal firms that induce exaggerated insurance claims, litter, political correctness, the nanny state, the disappearance of the words ‘please’ and ‘thank-you’ and parents who expect schools to take over their role of disciplining their children.

I wouldn’t swear by this kind of justice

7:00pm Saturday 10th December 2011

Over the decades, judges have provided us with a selection of statements that have served to underline the popular preconception that they inhabit a world slightly more rarefied than the rest of us live in.

Stars also deserve protection from this

7:10pm Friday 2nd December 2011

IWROTE here a few months ago about the time I was conned by the News of the World, as a naïve young actor, so I won’t go over the details of that now happily defunct publication’s duplicity.

Eat your heart out I'm on TV at Christmas

10:47am Friday 25th November 2011

And before the fireworks have faded from the sky, here we are at panto time again.

Gazing at your mobile is plain bad manners

9:36am Friday 18th November 2011

I spent most of last week working on a television programme with a group of people I hadn’t met before. Among their number were a young male and a young female in their mid-twenties who spent more time gazing intently down at their mobile phones than they did interacting with the rest of us.

I have sympathy with St Paul's protesters

10:45am Friday 11th November 2011

I DON’T envy the young people entering the world of employment that our generation has created for them.

Gloom or boom – witch way is it?

7:00pm Saturday 5th November 2011

YOU would never believe that we, as a nation, are supposed to be tightening our belts in order to get the economy back on its feet, if you were visiting any of our supermarkets in the last week or two.

Pub makes a meal of Sunday lunch sign

10:15am Friday 28th October 2011

This week, my wife spotted a blackboard outside a pub bearing the words “Sunday Lunches available”.