I love Twitter. I love the sense of community, the open discussions, its fundamental honesty, and its capacity for change. I love the way it brings people together, and keeps old friends in touch. I love its simplicity, and I love the way the 140-character limit irritates everyone except the...

In the past few weeks I've come across several articles in national newspapers highlighting the terrible plight of female models. Striving to maintain their size zero frames to fit the demands of casting directors and designers, who demand ever skinnier models, it seems many are even resorting to tissue paper...

I once bought my dear dad a Father's Day card. He laughed, called me a silly sod, and asked how much money I'd wasted on it. My answer, £4.50, was apparently so hilarious he almost choked on his bacon. Fair to say 'death by bacon' wasn't the present I had...

In recent times it has become fashionable to highlight the issue of online trolls - cowardly geeks, hiding behind anonymous twitter, facebook or blogging accounts - whose hurtful words cause distress to whoever they decide, often at random, to target.

Ranging from random abuse of celebrities to...

One of my favourite subjects is myself. This will come as no surprise to any of my friends. And it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to you, either. If one of your favourite topics isn't yourself, too, then you have never looked in the mirror, never bought a...

Last week the newly-formed Higher Education Commission brought us some rather startling news. It seems that in the European Champions League of Postgraduate Education, Britain's poor conversion of undergraduates into postgraduates puts us alongside Andorra and Kazakhstan - the smallest nation in Europe, and a country made famous by Sacha...

There are only about three paintings on this planet that I am able to say that I 'like', but last week Vladimir Umanets, the Yellowist, decided that one of them wasn't quite good enough. So he decided to improve it, with the addition of some half-legible scribbling in one of...

That 13 year-old girl from Abu Dhabi? Think of her as a Range Rover Evoque.

Bear with me here...

Clearly I'm not an economics expert. I couldn't even pretend to be one, for fear of my bank manager finding out and expressing his mirth in the comments below.

Sixteen years old, pressing snooze for the thousandth time and blocking out the hammering on my door, I dreaded the day ahead.

A day of unrelenting anguish, explaining why I hadn't done my homework, embarrassing music lessons, Organic Chemistry and fitness training. A day of avoiding my girlfriend (I'd...

At Beijing four years ago, half of Team GB's medallists were privately educated. Now, with such an intense focus on the British team in London, it hasn't escaped peoples' notice that many of our proud, brave Olympic medallists are also well spoken and very probably privately educated.

The situation is...