Relaxing the First World War curfew on alcohol in public places after 11pm in England and Wales – misleadingly described as “24-hour drinking” – would have two clear benefits.

One, it would allow responsible adults more choice over when and where to drink. Two, it would make it easier for the police to manage the fight’n'puke rush hour that hits so many city, town and village centres at 11pm. That may not solve the problem of why so many young people are so eager to seek temporary and repeated oblivion, but that may be largely beyond the reach of liberal democratic governments. She makes several points that deserve wider currency: the English have had a disordered relationship with alcohol since at least Chaucer’s time; the present licensing regime has not been notably successful in curbing binge drinking; the press campaign against the law (which comes into effect at the end of November) began after it was passed with cross-party support two years ago; and the belated Conservative opposition to it is opportunist and hypocritical. Her central argument is this: the culture among young people of drinking to get drunk has deep and complex causes – and flexible licensing hours are unlikely to have any effect on it The evidence supports her. Level-headedness has, we like to think, always been the hallmark of these columns.

While the eyes of the emotionally volatile bulge at some small incident, and their vocal chords squeeze out notes of strangulated hysteria, we pick our placid way through the nation’s trials and triumphs. Thus we urge that the correct, sensible and intellectually sound reaction to the England cricket team’s performance against Australia to be: a moment of thoughtful reflection – followed by loud, prolonged and, if you feel so inclined (and we think you should), hysterically self-satisfied laughter.. Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, is right in her lively defence of the new law to allow flexible drinking hours. Fewer people are now watching traditional terrestrial broadcasters.

The new service will offer the past seven days of programmes, plus some extra material.Mr Thompson signalled that the corporation would also provide facilities such as music downloading, a move which will cause controversy among rival broadcasters. They accuse the BBC of going beyond its “public service remit” by providing commercial services.. However, that is not our plan,” he said.The launch of MyBBCPlayer will be seen as an attempt to support the renewal of the BBC’s £2bn-a-year licence fee. The new service, named MyBBCPlayer, is expected to transform the corporation and the way we watch its output.
In a speech at the Edinburgh Television Festival, Mr Thompson said that the BBC, which is negotiating with the Government to renew its licence for the next decade, must respond to advances in technology that allow viewers to watch television programmes “on demand” through broadband or mobile phone links.”I accept the premise that if the BBC remains nothing more than a traditional TV and radio broadcaster then we probably won’t deserve or get licence-fee funding beyond 2016 … We need quality journalists, and these will only be produced from quality courses, not contrived courses offered only to meet recruitment and revenue targets.Peter Cole is professor of journalism at the University of Sheffield. The BBC is to launch an internet channel allowing viewers to catch up on the past seven days of BBC television and radio programming, its director general, Mark Thompson, said last night. They have had access to the work experience opportunities gained by mum or dad having a word with so-and-so.

They have been able to write while still at school the piece in the national paper about bullying/drugs/under-age sex/binge-drinking/anorexia/intimate jewellery. Such experience is influential in getting a place on the best courses, then a job.I worry about journalism becoming the preserve of the affluent middle classes, because they have the connections, they have the confidence and they are less intimidated by student debt. Top-up fees, despite the bursaries, will frighten those from poorer backgrounds. Those who take on the debt will be less willing to take on unpaid work (or internship) after graduation in the hope it might lead to a job. Those who accept or prefer life in regional journalism must come to terms with much lower pay than the starter teacher, police officer or nurse, despite student debt of more than £20,000.As well as being enjoyable, journalism is tremendously demanding, requires great intelligence as well as tenacity, scepticism and originality, and is important, as those who exercise power over us get better and better at media manipulation. These people have grown up immersed in the trade and meeting the people. How frequently I see familiar national names on application forms.

So in 2000, the Home Office began a study and public consultation to look at how our licensing laws could be made more sensible.

During the First World War, Lloyd George was determined to stop munitions workers turning up for their important and delicate jobs drunk from the night before So he hurriedly introduced a national curfew And that’s the law we live with today. What Government has said to its adult citizens for nearly a century is: “You cannot be trusted to drink alcohol in public after 11pm.” And decisions on what alcohol licences were granted were made without involvement from the local community. To show how scientific knowledge grows through a never-ending quest for a better understanding, providing us with more certainties in some areas, and more uncertainties in others.It is therefore reassuring that the slimmed-down GCSE curriculum from next year will focus more sharply on the learning of the scientific method. This will hopefully better equip future generations to grapple more effectively with the scientific controversies that they face, and allow them to be better placed to recognise whether the purported benefits and risks of new medicines or technologies are supported by hard evidence or just empty claims.Lord May of Oxford is president of the Royal Society, the UK national academy of science. The history of the British people’s relationship with alcohol is hardly a happy one. From Chaucer, through Shakespeare, right up to the CCTV footage of staggering, spewing teenagers in our city streets, the message is the same: treating alcohol with respect is not something that some of us do well.

This is not how science proceeds, particularly at its frontiers where new knowledge is being acquired.It would be much better if school science lessons offered a better reflection of how science actually advances, and gave a sense of the scientific method. To make pupils aware of what we do not know as well as what we do know. At school, most science lessons concentrate on the learning of facts and figures, a set of certain answers to clearly defined questions. But if he is to be seen as having achieved anything beyond exchanging a despot, Saddam Hussein, for nameless chaos, his administration will have to stop pretending that things are going to plan.We can hardly expect an admission of the ignorance and arrogance behind most of America’s errors in Iraq, though an honest admission of the mistakes themselves, beginning with the disbandment of the Iraqi army and continuing with the botched proconsulship of Paul Bremer, would be a start. But when I asked Mr Zagorov if he’s being checked, he laughs. “What do you mean they’re checking me? I took my own temperature.” Alexander Yurlov is an ornithologist with the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The company should involve its workers in discussions to help find a mutually acceptable solution.”Pamela Lindsay-Dunn, regional manager, Hays Construction & Property (recruitment consultancy)”Companies must consider all recruitment options in today’s competitive market. Skilled people are at a premium, and by limiting yourself to a particular employment strategy, you could be excluding a viable workforce.”Bowey’s desire to employ local candidates is praiseworthy, but it should also look outside the region. Companies are not going to have much recruitment success if they exclusively market themselves in a severely limited pool of candidates.”Bowey should also look at temporary as well as permanent solutions. Not too long ago, there was a stigma attached to temporary recruitment. However, because of the influx into the industry of many qualified and skilled candidates, sub-contract work has taken on an entirely different connotation.”There is a new-found sense of confidence in the services that temporary professionals provide, and companies are starting to realise that utilising this option can offer them an economic advantage over their competitors.”. When Google came to market a little over a year ago, it was everyone’s favourite underdog made good All its hippie sentiments were embraced and celebrated. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the two intellectuals who famously joined forces at Stanford University, refused to allow the float to be over-hyped.

Opting for the Nasdaq over the New York Stock Exchange, there was no preferred stock allocation and the prospectus clearly spelt out the risks. The founders also ran into trouble with an interview in Playboy, of all publications. Google may have raised $1.6bn (£886m), but it remained everything the domineering bogeyman Microsoft wasn’t. Yet in the intervening time, there has been a subtle shift. While Microsoft got on with settling anti-trust suits and Bill Gates popped up at Live 8, in between donating billions to good causes, Messrs Page and Brin have been carrying on – whisper it – like capitalists.
They have made acquisitions and sought to bolster revenues by building an arsenal of products and services to sit beside the core search engine. These range from a project to put libraries online and a price-comparison site called Froogle, to an email service, a search tool for your PC and Google Talk, the latest addition.

His condemnation of “irrational exuberance” was a words-only broadside at the technology bubble, delivered way too early, in 1996.Republicanism is one element of his successor’s CV we can be sure of. The search to fill those big shoes is being led by that cross-party liberal, Dick Cheney. I braved a tropical Washington a few weeks ago to catch up on the gossip. Three names crop up.The most distinguished shortlister is “Marty” Feldstein, a Harvard professor known as “the father of supply-side economics”. He was once close to Reagan but hasn’t held a public post since.

One of his ex-pupils, Glenn Hubbard, a manic tax-cutter, is said to be much closer to George Bush, though, at 47, he could almost be Greenspan’s grandson. The third candidate, and front-runner, is Ben Bernanke, once called a “talented and visionary thinker” by Bush.No one candidate is certain, but one thing is clear: as far as the markets are concerned, the watchword is continuity. This is perhaps why Bernanke is favoured as most closely associated with the policy of “goldilocks economics”.Changes are likely to be ones of emphasis Tax cuts will probably be more warmly embraced. There may be a movement towards the Bank of England’s more collective approach. US economists were amazed to hear that King had recently allowed an interest change against his own views.But whatever the criticisms, Greenspan has achieved much. His assessment of his legacy is characteristically understated: “The US economy has remained on a firm footing, and inflation continues to be well contained …

the prospects are favourable for a continuation of those trends.” We’ll miss you, Al.christopher.walker tiscali.co.uk. Gordon Brown has staked his credibility as steward of the public finances on meeting a self-imposed “golden rule”, which limits how much he can borrow. But, once again this month, the Chancellor has been accused of moving his own goalposts to make it easier to achieve his target.
Does it really matter if this mysterious rule is met or missed? Has the Chancellor been moving the goalposts? And is this the best way to convince people that the nation’s finances are in safe hands?The golden rule says the Government can only borrow to pay for investment and that tax revenues should cover other spending. Fair enough – most families would happily take on debt to buy a house, but would worry if they borrowed routinely to meet the weekly food bill.It might be sensible to borrow even for day-to-day spending during a rough financial patch, such as a spell out of work.

Similarly, the golden rule does not have to be met every year, only on average over the ups and downs of the economic cycle. The Government can borrow for current spending in bad times, as long as it runs a surplus in the good.In adopting the rule in 1997, Mr Brown was, in effect, promising not to saddle future taxpayers with a bill for public spending from which they would not benefit. In addition, he wanted to give the Government greater freedom to increase investment from the low level he inherited.But the golden rule is a blunt instrument to achieve fairness between generations of taxpayers. For one thing, investment does not always benefit tomorrow’s taxpayers, while current spending does not only benefit today’s. For example, spending on teacher training may benefit future taxpayers more than building fancy venues for the Olympics.In addition, there is no guarantee that the benefits from a capital project would coincide with the debt repayments that finance it, so the same generation that pays can reap the advantages.

I remember him going on and on about how the Rolling Stones died the day Mick Jagger accepted a knighthood, and how Bob Dylan would never sell out in that way. He’s married with teenage kids, but there’s a big part of him that doesn’t want to be a grown-up.”Arad is certainly child-like, if not occasionally childish. He’s a big, soft-spoken bear of a man, dressed in the modern designer’s utilitarian uniform of nondescript but obviously well-made black T-shirt, jeans and trainers. Interviewing him is a frustrating business; he changes subjects capriciously or hops out of his chair and disappears mid-sentence like someone in the throes of terminal Ritalin deficiency.”Boredom is the mother of creativity,” he declares. He’s expounding on his design philosophy when he suddenly asks if I’ve seen Google Earth, and spends the next 15 minutes demonstrating its wonders; he occasionally ignores questions altogether, or will opine that “the general standard of writing on design in this country is tragically low”, whilst giving you a pitying look He runs the gamut from charming to exasperating.

He refuses to discuss the ostensible reason for our meeting – a decanter he’s designed for the Italian company Guzzini, part of its “Foodesign” initiative in which 100 top designers, including Arad, Tom Dixon and Karim Rashid have come up with “the ultimate kitchen accessories” – altogether: “Oh, that’s so boring,” he harrumphs “I did it such a long time ago. Let’s talk about something else instead.” This is the following, entirely typical, exchange:Independent on Sunday “What would you rather talk about, then?”Ron Arad “Well, you’re the journalist, aren’t you? Why don’t you ask me a question?”IoS “OK. You’ve said design has always been more appreciated in Barcelona or Italy, so why did you stick it out in the UK all these years?”RA [distracted] “Sorry? What?”IoS [repeats the question.]RA “Oh well, I had no role models to follow here, and that was kind of good in a way. I mean, I didn’t even know what designers did and I didn’t know how to become one. I studied at the Architectural Association, and that taught me that I didn’t want to become an architect, and I didn’t want to work for other people.”IoS So you were flying by the seat of your pants when you opened One-Off?RA [goes off to answer the phone, comes back] “What about my pants?”IoS [repeats the question.]RA “We did things and thought about them later. We didn’t deliberate or hesitate.”IoS “And you’ve worked the same way since?”RA Absolutely The thing is… [drifts off.]IoS “The difference is, you’re part of the establishment now.”RA [grins, cocks an eyebrow.] “Am I? Part of the establishment? Do I get a certificate?”IoS “Maybe a carriage clock.”RA [distracted by phone.

Goes to answer it.]Arad’s conception of himself as a maverick was undoubtedly shaped by his upbringing; his father was a sculptor and his mother a photographer Both were Communists. His father was born in Russia and ended up in a Palestinian commune while on his way to Spain to fight Franco; Arad himself came to London in 1973 to escape conscription into the Israeli army.”I didn’t want to do anything anyone told me I had to do,” he says flatly. “I’ve always been much more interested in doing things that people told me I couldn’t. I always ask myself about any project: is it subversive enough?”This is the kind of attitude that produces the Nina Rota – a circular, omni-directional, leather-upholstered bed (Arad himself has one: “You don’t want to sleep on a square one ever again”) – but that inevitably raises hackles among the Corinthian columns of what Arad insists on calling “the establishment”. He caused a flurry at the RCA when he merged the departments of furniture design and industrial design, and his plans for a flagship store for Hogan in Sloane Street were met with similar incomprehension – “The head guy told me, ‘Mr Arad, a shop without a window is like a man without a willy,”’ he says, grinning broadly.His scheme for the Upperworld Hotel at Battersea Power Station is the first chance for his adopted country to experience Arad’s imagination in full effect.

But it is clear he feels that what Standard Life had been doing was right for its customers. “Our approach has always been to hold the maximum equities we can, within the requirement of keeping funds solvent,” he says. “We have always held it through the bad times rather than move in or out.”The equity sell-off was also forced on the group by the FSA, which felt it did not have enough capital to support the amount of “risky” assets it was holding. It has always been Standard Life’s view that over the 20- to 30-year investment horizon for pension funds, a well balanced equity portfolio is no more risky than a bond one.

But it lost the argument.In his desire not to criticise the regulator, Crombie argues that the ultimate reason for the change was a directive from the European Commission, which aimed to protect investors against risk. “It is difficult to argue against the principle of these regulations,” he says. “You could argue about the detail and the implementation.”He admits that Standard Life’s position was “extreme” – it held a higher proportion of shares than its main rivals “We didn’t have enough capital to hold that much equity. And, as a mutual, we cannot conjure up the amount of capital we needed.”So out went the equities along with Standard Life’s mutual status. Also out went Iain Lumsden, the old chief executive who was blamed for the run-in with the FSA. The finance director, John Hylands, ended up stepping aside too, being replaced by Alison Reed from Marks & Spencer.The good news, according to half- year figures released last week, is that Standard Life is in good shape as it heads toward flotation. The stronger profit motive has led to a 4 per cent increase in business overall, and a 10 per cent rise in the UK life and pensions sector.

Even stern critics, such as life assurance analyst Ned Cazalet, are now singing Standard Life’s praises.For once, regulatory changes are helping the group. “Depolarisation” may be an ugly word to describe the changes in selling life and pension products, but it sounds pretty to Crombie. It means that big financial retailers, such as Barclays, have cut their ties with in-house or friendly insurers and now sell products from a panel of companies. And Standard Life is on almost everybody’s panel as it is a well respected brand that goes down well with customers.At the same time, independent financial advisers (IFAs) have largely been big fans of Standard Life and, as they gain importance, so the group’s products are pushed more and more.Another reform pleasing Crombie is the loosening of the rules on self-invested personal pensions (Sipps) – a change that comes into force next April but is already promoting a boom in this sector.

A shared starter of a Mediterranean mezes platter (£5.95) gets lost in the kitchen, and comes 30 minutes later with a smile and a shrug. In between the nuclear, separated and blended families are plenty of good-looking young couples treating the place like a gastropub. In fact the place is full of shiny, happy people, well-served by a menu that’s so flexible it practically bends over backwards to please. I know this by the orange child-indicator balloons that float over each one. Now there’s a public service: look for the balloons and you can tell exactly which tables to avoid. Cuban salsa fills the air, and the place glows with that sunny confidence that comes when a clever formula is intelligently implemented. Although it is only 12.30 on a Sunday afternoon, a queue is forming.Currently, there are children at 13 tables.

There is a large terrace outside, a front chill area with low chairs and tables, and a separate oval “surf skewer bar”, as well as a buzzy central dining area of smart dark wooden booths. This could explain why the restaurant guide Harden’s voted it Best Brunch last year and why Time Out gives it the kind of reviews that many sophisticated, serious restaurants would kill for.Like its 10 London siblings, the just-opened Giraffe at Royal Festival Hall is a bright, modern, upbeat space, decked out in hot orange and hot pink. “I didn’t really get any cramp after I saw the trainer,” he said “I couldn’t move Mentally, I lost it after I got broken I just got really tired, completely drained of everything.”. As someone who thinks the dining table is the true centre of the universe and that eating should be as civilised, enjoyable and life-enhancing as possible, there are several types of restaurants I avoid.

Shanti impulsively enlisted in a British army dental unit and had his right arm blown off at Monte Cassino. Giving just two days’ notice, they finally married in 1951, as Shanti’s dental practice was starting to establish itself.A “trove” trunkful of Henny’s posthumously discovered papers helps to flesh out this skeletal history. Shanti’s affable nature soon drew out her amiability, beginning a relationship that would last more than five decades.Accumulating animosity under Hitler’s growing power encouraged Shanti to leave Berlin. Being Jewish, Henny lost her job and, through the discreet magnanimity of her former boss, was among the last Jews able to leave Germany. “Nimm den Schwarzen nicht” [don't take the black man] had been the younger daughter Hennerle’s first reaction to her mother’s lodger, a prejudice recorded with a tart irony given the imminent rise of the Third Reich.

He took lodgings with a Mrs Caro in the Charlottenburg district and quickly warmed to her Jewish family’s young circle. In 1994, when casting around for a suitable subject to follow A Suitable Boy, Seth’s mother suggested he write about Shanti Uncle. Initially he demurred, feeling too close to a man who had practically adopted Seth as the son he never had, and had provided lodgings throughout Seth’s English residency. At 85, however, Shanti was up for the project, and 11 long interviews gradually unfolded to his nephew the bones of an exciting, impulsive younger life pre-dating his smooth career in suburban dentistry.
A trained physicist, Shanti made his way to Europe in 1931 to study dentistry, ending up a penniless student in Berlin. Shanti Uncle, a dentist with a prosthetic arm, immediately afforded his nephew a vigorous and warm welcome, while his German wife, Aunty Henny, was cordial, her affection taking years to break through a naturally reserved manner. Principally it introduces the couple living in Hendon whose hospitality offered a safe haven of affection and encouragement to a 17-year-old leaving his Indian home for England and an A-level scholarship.

The first 50 pages gazettes with by-the-way modesty some of the author’s publications, his hitch-hiking around Europe and postgraduate efforts at Stanford. The book is also a timely reminder of the fragility of the little green spacecraft on which we are all passengers.. Vikram Seth is boldly unafraid of genre-hopping. He has several volumes of verse under his pen, a libretto, a Far Eastern travelogue from his student years, a novel in verse, translations and, of course, the garrulous brick that is A Suitable Boy, his dynastic saga that probably outweighs a brace of Dickenses Now Two Lives turns to biographic memoir. It is hard to imagine a better picture of the dangerous and inhospitable nature of our solar system, where the existence of any form of life, let alone one capable of travelling to other worlds, is nothing less than a miracle.

One chapter is presented as an imaginary letter from one 19th-century female astronomer to another. And then there’s a chapter narrated by a meteorite from Mars, an exercise familiar to any reader of the venerable “I am John’s testicle” column in Readers’ Digest.While the book is dense with facts, its construction is too discursive and its chapters too disparate to make it any sort of reference work Worse, there’s no index. And for the common reader, the absence of a single narrative makes this book easier to put down than to pick up again.But it is worth making the effort. It was probably worth doing just for that.Other flights of fancy seem less well advised.

But five miles down the road at Sinemorets, it’s a different story There, English is widely understood. Amid a cluster of new guesthouses and gaudy second homes, hip Bulgaria is flexing its monetary muscles.Mercedes and BMWs whisk their passengers from south Sofia’s posh suburbs to this most exclusive of resorts, just 10 miles from the Turkish border. Sinemorets lies exposed on a windy hill, backed by the Strandzha nature reserve, with a panoramic view of the Black Sea. To the north lies one of the region’s loveliest expanses of sand, a spit bordered to the west by the river Veleka, to the east by the sea. Top of the charts in the ornithological stakes, the protected wetlands of Strandzha are on the Via Pontica, one of Europe’s motorways for migrating birds. You can see black storks, vultures, eagles, corncrakes and woodcocks.

And if you take the six-hour trek into the remote mountains, you may see red deer, wild boars, martens, polecats, and even wolves Only the Caucasus has a similar ecological profile. To the south, the green hazy coast with its countless inlets and windswept scrub is reminiscent of Kerry, Ireland, but without the rain. Soon the pinks, limes and lemons of the Bella Vista Beach Club are out of sight and you can walk for miles without seeing a soul. Paths weave their way through thickets of untouched oak and beech forest.Tentcho, a 78-year-old retired neurologist who fills his days cooking for his young wife, Irina, while complaining about the past and present, put me up in his guesthouse overlooking the bay. Over a mid-morning rakiya, the professor reminisced, telling me he’d resisted joining the Communist Party, with the result that he never reached the top of his profession “I know why,” he said. “Afterwards I found out that 60 per cent of my colleagues had been informing on me.”I nicknamed him Great Uncle Bulgaria, and the next day we drove out in his rusty, Womble-like Lada to the Turkish border for lunch. For decades, this was banned territory as the authorities erected a four-metre high electric fence to stop East Europeans escaping to Istanbul.

Now that Bulgaria is a candidate to join the EU, they fear migration in the other direction, so it was no surprise when we were waved through this false border with hardly a glance.”Bulgaria is always at a crossroads,” said Tentcho, tucking into his kavarma (meat stew), as a horse and cart laden with freshly cut hay rolled by. “Geographically, it’s between east and west, and politically it never knows where it is. We are not embracing western systems as fast as our neighbours. We know there’s something wrong with out-and-out development, yet we are still letting it happen The truth is we don’t know what to do We’ve never fitted in. We are the awkward Slavs.”Travel cliches abound about wonderful friendly locals, but here they are true. I lost count of the number of times Bulgarians held out a helping hand, followed by an invitation to join them for a meal. Tentcho had a take on this, too: “Bulgarians love foreigners but hate one another.”The patchwork of development is easy to see on the route north to Varna.

Benidorm-style high-rises are followed by untouched beaches and forests. Because Bulgaria uses no chemicals on the land, the countryside is awash with wild flowers. It is also possible to wander at will: you’d be hard put to find a fence.The Black Sea was a favoured spot for the ancient Greeks, and their colonies can still be seen. At Nessebur, reached by a narrow isthmus, you can pick out the outlines of the 6th century BC fortress on the seabed. Thracians, Romans and Byzantines converged on this spot, too, and the murals and icons in the churches are some of the finest around.But it’s the Bulgarian National Revival architecture that’s worth your time: marvel at the two-storey houses, the ground floor in stone with an outside staircase to the timbered first floor. These 19th-century bourgeois homesteads are named after their original merchant owners: Muskoyanis, Ivan Markov, Captain Pavel, the Pipchenkov. They open their doors for a nominal entrance fee.Before venturing out to the toasting 35C, sun-drenched vistas, linger awhile in one of Varna’s best restaurants, the Paraklissa.

If some other opportunity arose, I could even imagine us doing Dark Side of the Moon again – you know, if there was a special occasion It would be good to hear it again.”. His departure was followed by a bitter legal battle.Waters, speaking for the first time since Live8, said he “really loved” playing with the band again.And in an interview for the October edition of Word magazine, out on Thursday, he held out some possibility of the band re-forming again.”I hope we do it again. He asks what they are and who makes them and pronounces them either “cool” (Nissan Murano) or silently dismisses them with a wrinkle of the nose (Golf Plus). All very worrying and hardly helped by last week’s arrival: a malevolent upturned soap dish painted a glassy, bottomless black, with tyres the size of lawn rollers and a sharp-creased carapace like a stealth bomber.

My son was out on his daily excursion with grandma to feed old, bendy carrots to the horses at the top of the road when the Lamborghini Gallardo arrived, so for him it could just as easily have landed from above. Actually, now I think of it, I may have played some part in convincing him it did just that: “Oh you should have seen it!” I said, gesturing behind the house, “It flew over that hill, stopped, and plopped down here!”My son stood stock still, his eyes wide, his mouth opening and closing silently as he whirled through a mental Rolodex of a hundred possible questions.”What’s that for a car?” (he is half Danish so his grammar can go astray during moments of high excitement).”It’s a Lamborghini.”"Lammo-gee-nee?”"Yes, that’s right. It’s from Italy.”"Chitty Bang Bang?”"No, Lamborghini.”"Chitty Bang Bang?”"OK, it’s Chitty Bang Bang.”"Yoo-hoo!”We went for a drive and, truly, when you ride in a Lamborghini you do believe a car can fly My son certainly did. “It tickles in my tummy!” he yelled above the screaming of the engine.. It has been the question on the fans’ lips since the show-stopping reunion at Live8 – would Pink Floyd tour again?

And the answer is a definitive no.

Not even for $250m.
Roger Waters, the one-time leader of Pink Floyd, who quit the line-up two decades ago, has revealed they were offered the cash as pure profit for one last tour. At £136m, it would have been the equivalent of £1 for every album they have sold in the last 38 years.Yet the band, famous for its song “Money” with a line that advised “grab that cash with both hands and make a stash”, turned the offer down.It came shortly after the quartet agreed to their one-off performance in Hyde Park, a show that few fans ever believed was possible as Waters appeared with the band for the first time since 1981. But he drew the line when I begged him to buy an Aston Martin DB5 (when they cost just £6,000), instead deciding to purchase a limited-edition Fiat Panda VIP for my mother – yet another car that we would end up watching oxidise on the driveway.Fast forward a couple of decades, and I have children of my own My father is gone I have a strange yearning to own an orange Talbot Alpine. Despite my best attempts to distract him with the usual geegaws of contemporary boyhood – Playstations, football magazines, Uhu and a brown paper bag – my eldest son, who is four, has begun to take a keen interest in the test vehicles that mysteriously arrive at our house every week. When are the NSPCC going to intervene? I would wonder to myself as I scanned the pages of the Observer Book of Cars, memorising performance figures and technical specifications, and awarding cars marks out of 100 with the dedicated intent of Robert Parker evaluating the latest Vega Sicilia.Still, rather than seeking to suppress what was clearly a wayward obsession that would be of no long term benefit to my development as a rounded human being, my father did all he could to facilitate my love of cars.

He spent his weekends driving me around the country to race tracks, classic-car meets, auto-jumbles and garages. He funded my car magazine habit by paying me for endless, pointless odd jobs around the house. He paid for driving lessons too, of course, and bailed me out when the first car I bought, a lovely sky blue 1970 Peugeot 304 Convertible, lost its brakes and caused all manner of havoc in the high street. Presumably named to appeal to people who thought Ferrero Roche were the height of sophistication, it was slow, badly made, noisy and looked like the lower part of an upright vacuum cleaner.