Jim Corbridge Official

Let’s begin in Inverness, where a parrot is being blamed for hundreds of pounds of damage to cars. This is exactly the kind of story that tells you civilisation is hanging by a thread. Residents report the bird has been flying around since February, which means this parrot has had months to perfect its technique. It’s not just vandalism  it’s a career. Apparently it pecks at wing mirrors and rubber seals, which suggests it’s either extremely bored or running a protection racket. “Nice car you’ve got there,” the parrot presumably squawks. “Shame if something… happened to it.” Meanwhile, in the world of baked goods, it turns out cake sheds are making bakers £1,000 a week. A cake shed, for the uninitiated, is essentially a shed full of cake  a concept so powerful it could unite the nation. People are apparently driving miles to buy sponge from a wooden hut, which proves that Britain’s true religion is baked goods. Economists are baffled. Bakers are delighted. Sheds ev...

Let’s begin with the moment Steven Spielberg made a surprise appearance at a London pub quiz, which is the sort of event that sounds like a fever dream until you realise Britain is exactly the kind of place where this could happen. One minute you’re arguing over whether Madagascar is technically an island or a vibe, and the next minute the man who invented the emotional arc of your childhood is standing by the crisps. Spielberg reportedly joined a team, which raises the horrifying possibility that someone corrected him on a film question. Imagine telling Steven Spielberg, “Actually, mate, I think you’ll find…” and then waking up in a parallel universe where you’re a lamppost. Meanwhile, John Lennon’s drawings for what some believe was the world’s first rock music video have gone on display, proving once again that the Beatles were incapable of doing anything normally. Most bands struggle to produce a coherent album cover; Lennon was out here inventing entire visual mediums ...

We begin with Andoni Iraola, who has taken over as Liverpool’s new head coach and immediately announced that he “understands what is expected.” This is a bold statement, because what is expected at Liverpool is: win everything, win it beautifully, win it while playing a brand of football that makes small children weep with joy, and also do it all while smiling politely at journalists who ask questions like, “Why haven’t you won the league yet, it’s been four hours?” Iraola says he’s ready for the challenge, which is exactly what every Liverpool manager says right before discovering that the challenge includes 47 matches in 19 days and a fanbase that can detect tactical flaws using only telepathy. Meanwhile at Lord’s, Michael Vaughan has expressed sympathy for batsmen after 33 wickets fell in two days, which is the cricketing equivalent of a haunted house. The pitch behaved less like a sporting surface and more like a trapdoor operated by a bored Victorian ghost. Batsme...

Friday 12 June. Mostly cloudy, highs around 22°C. Britain will spend the day saying “It’s warm, but not nice warm,” while pretending not to notice the 16% chance of rain creeping about like a petty thief.  Saturday 13 June. Mostly sunny, highs of 22°C. The nation will immediately overreact by buying disposable barbecues and burning 40% of them. Zero chance of rain, which will confuse everyone so much they’ll carry umbrellas anyway.   Sunday 14 June. Partly sunny, highs of 20°C. A classic British day: bright enough to guilt you into going outside, but not bright enough to enjoy it. Rain chance: 1%, which is basically the weather saying, “I could ruin your plans, but I won’t. Yet.”  Monday 15 June. Mostly cloudy, highs of 21°C. The sky will look like it’s buffering. A 15% chance of rain means commuters will spend the morning debating whether to bring a coat, a jacket, or simply give up on life.  Tuesday 16 June. Partly sunny, highs ...

If you’ve somehow missed the news because you’ve been trapped under a collapsed pile of flat‑pack furniture, the 2026 World Cup is upon us.  The first tournament in history to be hosted by three nations simultaneously, which is football’s way of saying: “We’ve run out of stadiums, so now we’re borrowing the neighbours’.” This means fans will spend the next month trying to work out which country they’re in, what time zone they’re supposed to be awake for, and why their phone keeps auto‑correcting “Mexico City” to “Middlesbrough.”The organisers insist this is all perfectly manageable, which is exactly what organisers always say right before something bursts into flames. They’ve produced a handy guide explaining that matches will take place across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and that supporters should “plan travel accordingly,” which is a polite way of saying: “Good luck, you’re on your own.” The distances involved are so vast that some fans will leave for ...

There is no greater childhood achievement than building a proper outdoor den not the indoor blanket‑and‑chair variety, but the real thing: a structure forged from mud, sticks, optimism, and the absolute certainty that you were now living off the land like a tiny, incompetent Bear Grylls. The woods were your kingdom. A patch of trees behind the park, a scruffy hedgerow at the edge of a field, even the overgrown bit behind your friend’s shed—anywhere that felt just far enough from adult supervision to be thrilling but not far enough to trigger a missing‑child report. This was where true den‑building happened.  Indoors was for amateurs. Outdoors was for pioneers.The first step was always reconnaissance. You’d march into the trees with the swagger of an explorer who had absolutely no idea what they were doing but was determined to do it anyway. You’d identify a promising spot usually a clearing that looked dramatic and mysterious but was, in reality, just a dip in...

You know exactly what it means to make an effort with how you look. It means you have decided, right from the start of the day, that you are going to present yourself to the world as a functioning member of the human race not as something that crawled out from under a sofa and wandered outside by mistake.  Let’s be real though looking neat and tidy is basically fighting a constant war against your natural default setting, which is “comfortable, slightly crumpled, and possibly covered in bits of food you can’t explain.” First off, there are clothes. If you care about your appearance, you can’t just grab whatever is nearest and put it on backwards. You have to make actual decisions. You have to work out what colours go together, what fits properly, and which items don’t have mysterious brown marks that might be gravy, might be coffee, or might be something science hasn’t named yet. This is way harder than it sounds. I once stood in front of my wardrobe for twenty-five mi...

No matter how smart you are, no matter how successful you are, no matter how carefully you plan your day, the universe is constantly working behind your back to put you in a situation so embarrassing that you will still be thinking about it when you are ninety years old.  You’ll be sitting in your rocking chair, and suddenly you will say out loud: “OH MY GOODNESS I CAN’T BELIEVE I DID THAT,” and your carer will look at you and say “What?” and you will say “NOTHING I AM FINE DO NOT ASK.”   And the number one weapon the universe uses against us? The unzipped zipper.   This is the single most common, most humiliating thing that happens to men everywhere. It does not matter who you are you could be the President, you could be a famous movie star, you could be me  sooner or later you will walk out of a bathroom, walk right into a room full of people you need to impress, and realise with the force of a nuclear explosion that your trousers are wide open at the f...

Let me tell you about the single most dangerous phrase in the English language, right up there with “I’ve got a great business idea” and “The doctor wants to discuss your test results.” It is four letters, one little punctuation mark, and it comes at the bottom of every fancy piece of paper or every digital notification you will ever receive: RSVP.   For those of you who skipped Latin class (which is most of us, because who wants to learn a dead language when you could be learning how to program your TV remote), RSVP stands for Répondez s’il vous plaît. This is French, and roughly translated it means: “PLEASE ANSWER, OR WE WILL SPEND THE NEXT THREE MONTHS THINKING YOU HATE US AND ALSO WE WILL BUY TOO MUCH POTATO SALAD.”   Now, on the surface, responding to an invitation sounds easy. Someone asks you to come to their wedding, or their barbecue, or their “casual evening of interpretive dance and tax law discussion,” and all you have to do is say yes or no. How hard ...

Flying on an airplane is, without question, the single most unnatural thing human beings have ever convinced themselves is normal!  Think about it: we climb inside a metal tube the size of a small shopping centre, we strap ourselves into seats so narrow that if you inhale deeply you risk getting legally married to the person sitting next to you, and then we let people we have never met before fire this contraption into the sky at five hundred miles an hour, thirty-five thousand feet above the ground. And then we act surprised when things get weird.   The whole experience starts long before you get anywhere near the actual plane. First there is the airport check-in process, which has been designed specifically to test exactly how much frustration a human being can endure before they start screaming in public. You stand in a line that seems to move backwards, you hand over your documents, and the person behind the counter looks at them with an expression usually rese...

Why take a power nap? This is the single best question any human being has ever asked, right up there with “Is cake acceptable for dinner?” and “Can I stay in bed until next Tuesday?”   Let me start by saying that sleep is not just something you do at night when you have nothing better to do. Sleep is a superpower. And the power nap is the tiny, portable version of that superpower that you can use during the day to turn yourself from a slow-moving, confused creature into something that vaguely resembles a functioning adult. Here is the situation: you are halfway through your day. You have already done so many difficult things like getting out of bed, putting clothes on, and saying words to other people. Now it is about two o’clock in the afternoon. Your brain, which was working perfectly fine at nine in the morning, has suddenly decided it has finished all its work for the year and would very much like to shut down. Your eyes feel like someone has put tiny bags of ...

There are many childhood experiences designed specifically to test the limits of the human nervous system: school plays, swimming galas, being picked last for football, and the moment you realise your packed lunch contains eggs.  But none of these compare to the sheer, pants‑tightening dread of school reports.School reports were the original performance review, except instead of a salary you got a sticker, and instead of constructive feedback you got sentences like: “Jim shows enthusiasm, though not always in the correct direction.” Or Jim is very creative especially with spellings" Teachers were masters of this coded language. They could compress an entire term of chaos into one polite paragraph that somehow managed to sound both encouraging and deeply ominous. The build‑up was always the same. You’d be sitting in class, minding your own business, possibly eating a Pritt Stick, when the teacher would announce: “Reports go home today.” The room would fall silent. E...

We begin  this week with the US Freedom 250 festival, which has experienced the kind of mass performer evacuation normally reserved for cruise ships with norovirus. Artists including Martina McBride and The Commodores have dropped out, leaving organisers frantically rearranging the running order like parents trying to salvage a school talent show after all the children suddenly develop stage fright. At this rate, the headline act will be a man called Barry who owns a leaf blower and insists it “counts as music if you stand far enough away.” Meanwhile, in the land of celebrity romance, Dua Lipa has married actor Callum Turner in what’s being described as a “surprise low‑key wedding,” which is showbiz shorthand for “nobody managed to leak it in time.” Apparently the ceremony was so understated that even the flowers didn’t realise they were part of it. I imagine the vows were whispered, the rings were handed over in a napkin, and the entire event lasted roughly the same a...

On this week New' review We begin with the aviation industry, where an airline boss has advised UK holidaymakers to arrive three hours before their flight home, which is adorable because most British travellers already arrive at airports so early they could apply for staff parking . According to airport guidance, this is meant to “reduce stress,” although nothing reduces stress less than sitting in Departures for so long that you begin to question whether you actually live there now!? By the time your gate opens, you’ve had three breakfasts, adopted a charging socket as your child, and forgotten what sunlight looks like. Meanwhile, in Australia, farmers are battling a mouse plague, which sounds like the plot of a horror film but is apparently just Tuesday down under. Millions of mice have descended on farms, homes, and probably at least one unfortunate barbecue. Experts say the rodents are breeding at extraordinary speed, which is what happens when you give mice unlimit...

This week we begin with the Premier League Darts, where 19‑year‑old phenomenon Luke Littler has finished top of the standings for the third year in a row. At this point, it’s less a competition and more a long‑running documentary titled Luke Littler: Please Leave Some Trophies for the Others. The lad is so consistently brilliant that the rest of the field must feel like they’re competing against a malfunctioning robot programmed exclusively for bullseyes. If he keeps this up, the PDC may have to introduce a new rule: “Luke must throw with his non‑dominant hand while riding a unicycle.” Meanwhile, on the track, Keely Hodgkinson has declared that this year’s London Diamond League could be a “battle of the world records,” which is the athletics equivalent of saying, “Bring snacks, this is going to get spicy.” Hodgkinson is chasing one of the sport’s longest‑standing records,The women’s 800m world record was set by Czech ,Jarmila Kratochvílová on 26 July 1983 in Munich, German...

Friday 5 June. A dry day, allegedly, with temperatures around 18°C (64°F). Britain will respond by immediately putting washing out, thereby guaranteeing that a rogue drizzle cloud will appear from nowhere.  Saturday 6 June. Light rain returns, because the weather has remembered it’s legally required to ruin at least one weekend day. Highs around 17°C (62°F). Perfect for standing in a garden saying, “It’s trying to brighten up,” while it absolutely is not.  Sunday 7 June. A suspiciously dry day with temperatures climbing to 20°C (69°F). This will cause millions to declare, “Summer’s here!” before immediately getting sunburnt in 14 minutes.  Monday 8 June. Showers return, lightly, like the weather is apologising but still wants to make a point. Highs around 18°C (64°F). Expect commuters to say things like, “It’s that fine rain that soaks you,” as if this is new information.  Tuesday 9 June. Cooler, with highs around 16°C (60°F) and a bit of rain. (Theirby s...

Let me begin by saying that I love the Welsh language. I admire it. I respect it. I fear it. This is because Welsh is the only language on Earth that looks like it was invented when a perfectly normal alphabet fell down a flight of stairs and everyone just decided to roll with it.  If you’ve ever driven through Wales, you’ll know what I mean. You’ll be cruising along, minding your own business, when suddenly you pass a sign that says something like: LLANFAIRPWLLGWYNGYLLGOGERYCHWYRNDROBWLLLLANTYSILIOGOGOGOCH This is not a place name. This is what happens when a cat walks across your keyboard while you’re trying to type an email. And yet the Welsh pronounce it effortlessly, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world, like “Bob.” The first thing you notice about Welsh is that it contains more Ls than should be legally permitted. I’m convinced the Welsh alphabet has a special rule that says: “If in doubt, add another L.” This is why Welsh words often look like they’...

  You know you have a household clutter problem when you open a drawer looking for a pen and instead discover: three expired passports, a key to a door you no longer own, seventeen rubber bands that have fused into a single rubber entity, and a mysterious metal bracket that almost certainly holds your entire home together but whose purpose you will never identify.  This is the natural ecosystem of clutter: it grows, it multiplies, it forms governments.Clutter is not a thing. Clutter is a lifestyle choice, like yoga, or pretending you understand wine. It begins innocently enough. You think, “I’ll just put this here for now.” For now is the gateway drug of domestic chaos. “For now” becomes “later,” which becomes “never,” which becomes “why is there a wok in the airing cupboard.”The problem is that clutter has evolved. It has become self-aware. It knows when you are vulnerable—like when you’ve just sat down with a cup of tea—and that is when it attacks. You’ll suddenl...

There are many phrases adults like to throw around to make themselves sound wise, such as “measure twice, cut once” and “don’t microwave tinfoil unless you enjoy fireworks.”  But the one that truly defines modern life is “You can never be too careful.” This is the motto of our age a time when everything, including breathing near a houseplant, apparently carries risk. Take crossing the street, for example. When we were kids, the rule was simple: look both ways. Now, according to safety experts, you must look left, right, up, down, diagonally, spiritually, and into the multiverse to ensure no rogue scooter, drone, or time‑travelling cyclist is about to flatten you. You can never be too careful. Or consider food labels. Once upon a time, ingredients lists were short and reassuring, like “milk” or “bread.” Now they read like the chemical inventory of a small laboratory. You pick up a snack and discover it contains “stabiliser E472b,” which sounds like something that should ...

There is no human activity more dangerous, more unpredictable, or more likely to result in long‑term psychological scarring than the introduction.  You can jump out of planes, wrestle crocodiles, or attempt to assemble flat‑pack furniture without crying, but nothing compares to the sheer terror of being told, “Go on introduce yourself.” This is because introductions require you to summarise your entire existence in one sentence while standing upright and pretending to be a functional adult. Most people panic and blurt out something like, “Hello, I’m Jim and I enjoy… chairs?” Then they spend the next decade replaying that moment at 3 a.m. The worst introductions happen at work events, where a stranger with the social grace of a malfunctioning printer grabs your hand and says, “Hi! I’m Martin!” in a tone that suggests he’s trying to startle wildlife. Before you can respond, Martin has already launched into a detailed explanation of his job, which appears to involve spread...

The Stiff British Upper Lip is not, as foreigners often assume, a medical condition caused by exposure to drizzle. It is a national operating system, installed at birth, updated during childhood, and patched sporadically during adulthood whenever a British person is forced to interact with strangers, emotions, or—worst of all—strangers having emotions. To understand the Upper Lip, you must first understand that we British do not fear death, taxes, or even the M25. What we fear is making a scene. A scene is defined as: anything louder than a murmur, anything involving feelings, or anything requiring the phrase “I’m not being funny, but…”.The Upper Lip is what prevents Britain from collapsing into chaos every time someone brings up a topic more emotionally charged than the weather. It is the reason a British person can sit in a freezing house in mid‑January insisting they are “perfectly comfortable” while slowly turning the colour of a lightly poached salmon. It is the re...