Strike a light, this is strange. Dot Cotton is in her kitchen, sucking on a fag and talking into a tape machine, recording a message for her husband, Jim, who is paralysed and unable to speak after a stroke. The hardest thing, she says in a trembling voice, “is the thought of you being there… but not being there”. And suddenly soap life and real life collide in a terrible and truly moving way.Continue reading “June Brown, all alone in Dot Cotton’s kitchen”
‘I’d prefer my mother still to be alive’ Peter Mandelson
He’s very cool, Lord Mandelson of Hartlepool and Foy. In the sense of never getting over-heated. Except this time. ‘You may think it’s funny and cheap to make snidey remarks about how I could afford to live where I do. If my mother had not got Alzheimer’s and hadn’t died, I wouldn’t be able to live there. And I’d prefer my mother still to be alive.’
‘Are you saying God is a myth?’ The Archbishop of Westminster
I find it hard to be lectured on sex by a celibate, but then I’m not a Catholic. Isn’t it just possible that everything he does is based on self-deception? That there was no God nagging him on the terraces and his calling was just the fretting of a teenage boy overwhelmed by hormones and powerful priests? Not even this agitates the archbishop. He leans closer. “Then it is a very remarkable pattern in life, repeated millions of times over, that people give themselves to following a call in God, and live fulfilled and happy lives. Are you saying it’s all a myth?” I might be, I say. Nichols smiles again, the gameshow smile, as if indulging a child. “I don’t think so.” Read the rest here
‘I grew up in a war zone. I know how lucky I am’ Nemanja Vidic
You expect arrogance from the captain of Manchester United, Nemanja Vidic, a lavishly paid football star and one of the best defenders in the world. But you don’t get it. ‘Am I late? Five minutes. I’m very sorry. Here I am.’ Vidic arrives in a massive Mercedes SUV with tinted windows, of the sort that usually has secret service agents in the front, but he’s on his own. ‘Call me Vida, as they do at the club. It’s better than Nemanja.’ He grimaces, having deliberately pronounced his own name the wrong way, to rhyme with ganja. ‘It should be Neh-man-ya. So I say, Vida!’
It’s quickly obvious that he’s no Premier League prima donna – despite recently being named Premier League Player of the Year for the second time – but then Vidic was not raised in a rarefied atmosphere. He grew up in a war zone, back home in Serbia. His home town was bombarded and he only managed to escape being drafted into the army because he played for Red Star Belgrade, a source of national pride. ‘It was hard,’ he says. ‘Maybe it is because life was hard that I am here. I have fought to be in this position, to play for such a big club and be recognised. If everything had gone easily, maybe it would not have worked out like this.’ Read the rest of it here.
'Thatcher, the miners, Hillsborough, the rise and fall of Lady Di and New Labour … Moreton writes about these brilliantly,' says Richard Coles
Richard Coles used to be the piano player in the Communards, now he’s a broadcaster and a priest. Here’s an extract from his new review of Is God Still An Englishman? “We grew up through the same dramas: Thatcherism, the miners’ strike, the rise and fall of Lady Di and New Labour. Moreton writes about these brilliantly, with a journalist’s sense for the telling detail and for seeing which were important and why.”