So David Beckham, the uber-metrosexual, the photogenic English athlete who transfigured himself from mere professional soccer player into global me-dia, is leaving Real Madrid Football Club, his home for the past three years, and is now heading for the City of Signs. Beckham became a Hollywood footballer years ago (around about the time of… Read More »Beckham the Virus (Goes To Hollywood)
(Originally appeared here 10/1/07) First the Tory party, now the BBC. Is there any daggy British institution that isn’t scrabbling for a sweaty piece of Mozza’s gold lamé shirt, like an especially wild-eyed fan at the end of a gig? You can hardly have escaped the news that, after last year’s grinding nadir… Read More »A man of great Euro-vision
The EditorSunday TelegraphSir, As the ‘father’ of the metrosexual, I was fascinated to read (‘Oracle worker’; Jan 7, 2007) that an American ad-exec called Marian Salzman is ‘a step ahead of the rest of us’ and a leading ‘futurologist’ because she ‘predicted the rise of metrosexuals’, a species she ‘dreamt… Read More »Hack to the future: letter to the ‘Sunday Telegraph’
According to the Daily Telegraph’s front page, it’s ‘Sunset’ for the Senior Service: ‘Navy to cut its fleet by half’. The Navy that once ruled the waves, the global maritime force on which the sun never set, and gave the world some of the most romantic not to mention fetishistically ingenious uniforms ever… Read More »Union Street Blues: Plymouth’s Last ‘Run Ashore’?
If Viagra has turned the penis into a ‘puncture-proof balloon’, does that mean it’s not funny anymore? (First appeared in the Independent on Sunday, 2002) Investigating the penis can be an eye-watering business. Examining the urethra of an impotent young man, using a long nickel-plated probe called a ‘No 25 Explorer’, a… Read More »Gagging For It: A Ticklish History of The Penis