en-uk Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:37:29 GMT Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd. custserv@timesonline.co.uk http://www.timesonline.co.uk Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:21:46 GMT Newspapers 144 21 http://www.timesonline.co.uk http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,116979,00.gif India Knight Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:07:00 GMT 2009-10-31T11:47:40Z According to a piece of perhaps not entirely academic research from the University of Sussex — it was commissioned by Hardys, the Australian wine brand — the traditional dinner party is dying out. It has been replaced by “more socially inclusive rituals” with no dress code and people helping themselves to things rather than sitting anxiously waiting for the host to notice their wine glass is empty. India Knight Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:01:00 GMT 2009-10-24T08:24:20Z What a time it’s been for fatties. First came the glad tidings last week that the world’s fattest man lives in Ipswich. Paul Mason, 48, who weighs 70 stone, needs NHS surgery if he is to survive (also in Ipswich, a woman of 27 stone had to be rescued by firefighters after she fell in a ditch and got stuck). Then some fat people demonstrated outside the office of Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, calling for discrimination against fat people to be made a hate crime, like racism. India Knight Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:01:00 GMT 2009-10-17T10:32:12Z So that was a waste of an hour of watching television with my heart in my mouth. Or was it? On Thursday evening someone on Twitter posted a link to the American news website Msnbc with the words “Six-year-old in runaway helium balloon”. I clicked and at first assumed I was watching a piece of YouTube-like video footage that would, I thought, have a happy and/or comical ending. But it soon became clear that I was watching live television on my laptop and that the strange, flimsy, flying-saucer like structure blowing across Colorado with — it was alleged — a small child stowed in the “basket” dangling beneath it was travelling in real time. India Knight Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT 2009-10-11T12:24:46Z The names women choose to adopt for themselves often strike me as quite bizarre, especially when they derive from terms men use to denote women’s desirability. Such as “yummy mummy”. What does that mean — that being an ordinary mummy is revolting, but if you bimbify yourself sufficiently — bit of starvation, some highlights, heels — you’re okay? And Milf. I understand Milf used as shorthand by a certain kind of man devoted to certain kinds of websites, but I overheard yet another woman the other day saying she’d like to be one. She didn’t seem remedially stupid, but then you never know.