The woman at the other end of the ESPN upgrade line sounded genuinely pleased to get the call. The muzak- and promotions-suffused wait suggested that I wasn't alone among football addicts paying for an eve-of-season fix and, therefore, that the voice that would finally greet me would be weary. Yet it was eager, perhaps a little too eager.“The first three months are free . . . there's no contract . . . You can cancel before the promotional period is up." I was even given the specific date on…

She isn’t your usual Tory MP: she confessed to having taken drugs, she’s married to the manager of Metallica and she’s in the middle of writing her 15th chick-lit saga. Is she the spirit of the new Tory party? I'm just stepping out of the half-gloom of the London Underground when she emails. "Call me when you get to Earls Court, cross the road outside the tube and head left towards the Cromwell road & I'll give you the name of the café." I do as instructed, except I don't have her number…

In 2009, you published a book called Future Tense: a Vision for Jews and Judaism in the Global Culture. Why "tense"?Because there are tensions in the Jewish community. People are feeling and sensing a return of anti-Semitism - even in Europe, which, seventy years after the Holocaust, is a very scary thing. I think they are feeling that Israel is very isolated and doesn't always get what they see as fair treatment in the European media.Do you think Israel gets a fair treatment in the media?I…

"Toes, Daz, toes!" the burly centre back with blond highlights and semi-mullet barks at his wayward full-back, whose dedication to the art of defending is not, at that moment, what it might be. Daz (Darryl to his mum and dad) does what he's told - he's now on his toes, goal side and just about willing to get his shorts dirty if forced. Another player, another barked order: "Take a touch, son. Take a touch." Sure enough, "son" takes a touch - a heavy one - and loses possession. Despite the…

An interesting nugget from Sarah Marshall over at journalism.co.uk who reports that, for the first time, more people visited the BBC website via mobile phones than desktop and laptop PCs. It happened earlier this month (on Sunday 14 and then again on Saturday 20 July), the first of these occasions largely driven by news of … Continue reading "The BBC passes mobile landmark. And that matters why?"

You can learn a lot about modern-day football from those comic strips of the 1970s and 1980s. No, really. Not from the idealism of Roy Race (of Roy of the Rovers) but from the pragmatism of the lesser known Jon Stark. Nomadic and mercenary, Stark appeared in the short-lived Scoop comic and was dubbed a “footballer of the future”. He’d pick up £250 per goal and a £1,000 match fee if his team won. He was a no win, no fee footballer. OK, so those numbers require a few more noughts at the end…

On a Wednesday morning just over four years ago news of a Turkish Airlines plane crash at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport dropped on to the wires. Given the seriousness of the incident, the news would go on to lead the bulletins for the rest of the day and feature on many of the following morning’s front … Continue reading "What use is Twitter?"

Six years from now, the Berlin Wall will have been down for as long as it was up. This will seem remarkable to those who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s and for whom Walter Ulbricht's "anti-fascist protection barrier" was a fixed presence. It became the manifestation of the Iron Curtain that Winston Churchill foresaw in 1946 and there was no reason to suppose that it wouldn't last a lifetime, or longer.I was last in Berlin 20 years ago, just after reunification, two years after the wall had…

Well known students of the Tony Blair playbook, David Cameron and his inner circle doubtless have committed the following passages to memory. Taken from the former prime minister's autobiography, A Journey, it recalls an earlier battle with domestic legislation, this time the introduction of university top-up fees in 2003-04.Blair wrote of those difficulties:It is an object lesson in the progress of reform; the change is proposed; it is denounced as a disaster; it proceeds with vast chipping…

Across an untidy courtyard where weeds are winning their own battle with cracked concrete and cats pick their way through uncollected bags of rubbish, a narrow passage leads to the houses of Jerusalem's Beit Wittenberg neighbourhood. These are modest, single-storey homes that date from the 1870s. Each features arches in the Arab style, forming a central, covered dome, and - in line with Old Testament tradition - no two "look upon each other".I am on my way to meet Jakob and Homi Meshi-Zahav…

Jimmy Wales on neutrality, Tea Party “lunatics” and his plans for the next decade. Jimmy Wales looks tired and mildly distracted, his eyes red and raw as he holds court before a small group of Wikipedians - those volunteer editors, writers and administrators who have helped turn a collaborative, not-for-profit, online encyclopaedia into a global phenomenon. We are backstage at the Victoria Rooms in Bristol, where Wales has just wowed an audience of 650 with a well-rehearsed speech on…

"Six per cent, you're having a laugh/Six per cent, you're having a laugh."He'd been singing it for a couple of minutes when he turned to me and said: "What does that song mean, Daddy?"I put my hand on his shoulder and, adopting what I imagine will be my facts of life voice, explained how the eye-watering cost of an Arsenal season ticket would be even more reassuringly expensive next year. But I told him not to worry about that now - he should just enjoy the limp, title-capitulating…

In Why India Can Never Do Without Cricket, a love letter to both the game and his national team, Soumya Bhattacharya writes: "We have invested our emotions, our passions, our frenzy, our whole lives in following this side." It is, he says, like a giant corporation: "How its stocks rise and fall has a bearing on our lives."Bhattacharya, the fortysomething editor of the Hindustan Times, is speaking not just for fans of the Indian cricket team, nor simply fans of cricket, but for the fan. Full…

To step on to one of the 11 Infosys campuses across India, through the X-ray machines and past the security guards brandishing forms in triplicate, is to enter another world. Gilded and gated, these vast monuments to modernity don't look like India, sound like India or smell like India. This is not the India that most of the nation's 1.2 billion people inhabit. Part mid-1990s Silicon Valley, part Las Vegas and part Dubai, the campus in Electronics City, Bangalore - one of India's main…

When the new commissioner of the Metropolitan Police is announced in September, the name that many, if not most, of the Met's 50,000 rank-and-file officers will want to hear is that of Sir Hugh Orde. Orde is one of four candidates in the running for the biggest job in British policing, a vacancy opened by the resignation of Sir Paul Stephenson in July. He is competing against Strathclyde's chief constable, Stephen House, the former Merseyside chief constable Bernard Hogan-Howe and the acting…

Gordon Brown is not alone in regretting his failure to call an election in October 2007. When, as a new prime minister, he showed characteristic caution - despite double-digit leads in the opinion polls - and backed away from a snap election, it destroyed not just his long-term prospects but the short-term chances of Menzies Campbell's survival.Elected leader of the Liberal Democrats in March 2006, Campbell hadn't enjoyed a Brown-style honeymoon, and questions about his leadership abilities…