Modern manners
Dear Mary: Is there a tactful way to shorten the guest list for my 21st?
Q. I am organising my 21st birthday party at our family house in Italy. It is a fantastic location, but…
It’s time to shave that beard: the decade of the hipster is over
Take heart: the age of the stupid beard is coming to an end
Dear Mary: Learning to love a man who whistles through his nose
Q. What can you do when disorganised friends say they would love to come to a concert with you but…
Why everywhere should be more like Essex
Apart from the Wye Valley, where I grew up, there are only two places in Britain I’d consider living: Kent…
Dear Mary: Can I run out on an apprenticeship for my dream interview?
Q. I have been trying to get an apprenticeship in fashion for over a year without success. I just had…
Jeremy Vine’s diary: Zipcars, hipster milk and the word that means I’m losing an argument
Last Tuesday I tried to sign up to a new life. My wife and I argued, slightly. ‘I don’t think…
Don’t worry Brooks Newmark: paisley was sexy once...
Paisley power Paisley pyjamas were in the news. While associated with the town in Renfrewshire, whose mills produced the patterns from 1805,…
Today’s Disney princesses look like Russian mafia wives. This is their café
The Disney Café is a gaudy hell on the fourth floor of Harrods, Knightsbridge. It is adjacent to the Harrods…
Women on Facebook are too bitchy even for me
My female friends’ social media habits are too bitchy even for me
Switching on to a new generation gap
In the world of YouTube and Netflix, generations no longer share a culture
Dear Mary: Is it an insult to be given anti-ageing cream?
Q. When someone gives you anti-ageing cream as a present, is that an insult or a compliment? — A.O., Provence…
It’s not just left-wingers who think the bosses’ pay boom is unhealthy
The FTSE100 index stands precisely where it did in the first week of December 1999. Whichever way you look at…
Dear Mary: Show me the tactful way to pay for a lift
Q. My neighbour is really lovely and always helps me chainsaw trees. He used to be the herdsman at the…
Dear Mary: What do we do with a teenage guest who hogs the bathroom?
Q. We have taken a flat in Edinburgh for a month and a young girl, temporarily homeless and a friend…
What’s the point in being married if I can’t feel superior to my single friends?
I’m due to speak at an Intelligence Squared debate on Saturday and I’m worried that I might be on the…
Dear Mary: Help me hunt down my priceless missing book
Q. A scholarly book of great importance to me appears to have gone missing from my library. It was heavily…
Porn-agains: meet the middle-aged men - and women - warped by internet porn
It’s not just the young whose expectations of sex are warped by dirty videos online
In our hard-pressed NHS, must sympathy be rationed too?
Nurses might be overworked but they could still be kind
Want to be a neglectful parent? Come to a festival and learn
I spent last weekend at Port Eliot in Cornwall. This is supposed to be a literary and music festival and…
Dear Mary: How to accept wine refills at parties without getting drunk
Q. At a drinks or a dinner party, when very attentive waiters are hovering, I tend to let them keep…
Dear Mary: How can I tame my brother’s savage table manners?
Q. I live far away from my brother and his family, but went to stay with them recently for the…
Dear Mary: How do I train my husband not to shout for me from far-flung rooms?
Q. My former cleaner has now retired and lives nearby. I visit her with clockwork regularity and always enjoy seeing…
Dear Mary: Do men really have worse table manners when they’re on their own?
Q. My 16-year-old son, who has recently had his first experiences of Clubland, has observed to me, his mother, that…
Dear Mary: Is there a polite way to ask for the return of a handbag full of cash?
Q. A friend regularly hires a stall at a general neighbourhood market in order to sell surplus second-hand clothes and…
You’ll mock me, but I have to ask: why don’t any of my friends have holiday homes?
Hugo Rifkind 9 August 2014 9:00 am
This is to be one of those columns that makes the writer faintly wish there wasn’t an internet. It would…