The Oldie

Mary Killen (p18) is The Oldie’s new fashion correspondent. She writes the Dear Mary problem page in the Spectator and appears on Gogglebox with our Country Mouse, Giles Wood, who is on page 39. Robert Bathurst (p27) was in Cold Feet and Downton Abbey. He played Ed Howzer-Black in Toast of London. A National Hunt devotee, he wrote, directed and starred in The Fall, a film about racing. Claire Cohen (p28) writes for the Telegraph, Grazia and the Evening Standard. She presents the Imposters podcast. Her book BFF?: The Truth About Female Friendship is out this summer. Elinor Goodman (p31) was political editor of Channel 4 News. She has worked on the Financial Times and often presents The Week in Westminster on Radio 4. She was on the panel of the Leveson Inquiry.…

* The late, great Lester Piggott was more sociable than some of his obituaries suggested. The historian Lady Antonia Fraser remembers bumping into him with her late husband Harold Pinter. Lady Antonia says, ‘On our way to holiday in Mauritius – a long flight – Harold and I found ourselves on the same plane as Lester Piggott. We made cautious friends (I was a fan). ‘Then, bliss, we were at the same hotel! Several dinners were had together over the next few weeks – all merry and interesting. He was perfectly polite, if not wildly chatty – pleasant company.’ When they left, Lady Antonia asked Harold, ‘Well, what did you think of Lester Piggott?’ ‘Great man. If only he played cricket, ’ Pinter told her, referring to his (other) passion in life. One rumour about…

Man ‘nearly shot’ in gun drama Sidmouth Herald British success at paper plane throwing contest East Anglian Daily Times Man hid keys to stolen car up his bottom Press and Journal £15 for published contributions NEXT ISSUE The August issue is on sale on 27th July 2021. FREE SAMPLE COPY If you have a friend who would like a free sample of The Oldie, tell them to call 0800 8565867. GET THE OLDIE APP Go to App Store or Google Play Store. Search for Oldie Magazine and then pay for app. OLDIE BOOKS The Very Best of The Oldie Cartoons, The Oldie Annual 2022 and other Oldie books are available at: www.theoldie.co.uk/readers-corner/shop Free p&p. OLDIE NEWSLETTER Go to the Oldie website; put your email address in the red SIGN UP box.…

I have known Tony Blackburn for more than half a century. I first met him in the 1960s when he was a disc jockey on Radio Caroline. In the 1970s, we both fancied his wife, the beautiful actress Tessa Wyatt. Just recently, we were teamed up together on my favourite BBC antiques show, Bargain Hunt – and we didn’t do badly. Tony has a keen eye for quality silver. I enjoy his company. He makes me laugh – and not only when he sings. (He got in to the Top 40 with Chop-Chop in 1972.) Tony is fun and he’s funny, but I am sorry to report that our long-standing friendship is at breaking point. The cause? The Platinum Jubilee Pageant. If you stayed the course of the four days of celebration marking our…

For those d’un certain âge who live alone, a time comes when the fear that has been murmuring for a while becomes a deafening holler. It concerns mortality, of course, although not the plain fact of it. It’s a little late for that because, while – in the absence of serious disease – the goyim can postpone fretting about death until middle age, the Jew tends to be more precocious. This Jew first became convinced that the end was imminent at 18, on the discovery of a water swelling on the left ankle. As all decent hypochondriacs and some GPs will know, such an oedema could be symptomatic of many things (or nothing). Among these is the congestive heart failure, which I duly self-diagnosed. Eventually, after 12 months of sheer panic, a consultation…

I always had this sneaky feeling that my mother had a secret. Something was not quite right, like that annoying piece of the jigsaw you find is missing only when the puzzle is complete. My parents had lived through the Second World War, and their families were affected by both wars – loved ones lost, relationships fractured. My mother was a Londoner and had lived through the Blitz as a teenager with her mother. She had two older brothers who were away in the Navy. Her father, who had fought in the First World War, was a steward on British Rail. My parents met and married soon after the end of the war, and my sister and I were born in 1947 and 1949 respectively. I never met any of my grandparents. Three…