I decided to give myself a vacation from all the cold sales calls I’ve been receiving. The way I did it was simple, I forwarded all my calls to voicemail: the people I really want to hear from have my mobile number anyway. Unintentionally, this has become a fascinating experiment in how far people will [...]

The Games of the Paranoid Olympiad continue; however the air of unrelenting terror is only getting worse. By now, the story of how Liu Xiang, the hurdler, pulled out of the 110m race is well known; what has been less well described is how far he pushed himself before he realised he couldn’t do it. [...]

Finally, after winning silver medals in the 400m Individual Medley, the 100m Backstroke, and the 200m Individual Medley, Zimbabwe’s Kirsty Coventry has secured gold in the 200m Backstroke, her final event. Not only did she do it in world record time, she has successfully defended the title she first won in Athens. Phew! Her success [...]

For those who are not in the United Kingdom or don’t watch television, the BBC has replaced its normal “Breakfast News” show with “Olympic Breakfast”. This week, it’s been the first thing I see after I stumble bleary eyed from my seductively comfortable bed. This morning, the programme featured the tail end of the women’s [...]

While it’s not generally possible in a business context to do too many nasty things to cold call sales people, the same rules do not apply when one is out of the office. Fortunately, in Britain, there is a Telephone Preference Service which is supposed to act as a barrier to unwanted marketing calls; this [...]

One of the most irritating aspects of my job is that I receive many speculative sales calls. I’m more unfortunate than most in this regard: a director who has since left the company gave away my name and direct phone number, and this information has been seized upon by unscrupulous firms like a school of [...]

In a previous piece, I wrote that the Beijing Olympics were typified by an air of paranoia, due to the desire to ensure everything was pristine. I must admit to having been surprised by the lengths that they are willing to go. First, we have an item from the BBC’s Jake Humphrey: I thought about [...]

The Olympics are not supposed to be political; or rather, politics should be a minor consideration, given the spirit of openness and generosity that ideally will prevail through the expression of the Olympic ideal. Sport, it is believed, can unite nations that otherwise are suspicious of each other, if not at each other’s throats. After [...]

My first introduction to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia took place in a Moscow restaurant in 1994. I, along with a group of students, were taken there by our hosts to experience the delights of Georgian cuisine and wine. The alcohol flowed freely, course after course was brought to the table. Georgian music played [...]

Some movies are not intended to be high art. Before the invention of television, this was often the case: the thirties, forties and fifties were littered with throwaway films with forgettable characters and laughable story lines. The most extreme examples were the movies that were made to work with the traditional red lens / blue [...]