For years, the great and the good have suggested that if we wanted to make politics of interest to the masses, Simon Cowell should be put in charge, and our leaders voted into power during an X-Factor-style, Saturday evening showdown.

However, now Cowell's star is on the wane, and safe...

When Lena Dunham's ground-breaking hit show, Girls, was first broadcast in the US, the chorus of complaints was almost as loud as that of praise. The twenty-something's big mistake: crowding her cast with white, middle-class females. That decision, the critics clamoured, wasn't in the least bit representative of New York's...

No, not Farage. I think the Ukip party leader has had his fair share of headlines this past week.

That other F word: feminism.

For a word that's been around a good long time, it's gotten a whole lot of airtime over the past seven days.

I can...

Two weeks ago, I joined hundreds of theatregoers in giving Helen Mirren a standing ovation at the end of another The Audience performance; the brilliant West End show in which she plays the Queen (again) in the weekly, fire-side conversations with her prime ministers.

On the night I went, the...

Some people listen to music when they run; others prefer silence. When I was younger, the soundtrack to my after-school jogs around the streets of Gloucester was my Dad testing me on capital cities and river formations. I never won any of the county cross-country runs I entered, but I...

Is there anything left to say about Margaret Thatcher? In a week when one woman, and one face, dominated not only the headlines, but the streets and parliament, too, it seemed everyone had an opinion on the Iron Lady (even those who weren't entirely sure who she was).

The hyperbolic headlines hardly did the story justice: '17-year-old Brit sells app to internet giant, makes millions'. The reactions, however, were pretty uniform, at least in my circles. Something along the lines of, "Wahhhh, what have I been doing with my life? Why isn't someone paying me £19million for my...

What do you reckon George Osborne is regretting most about the past week? The loopholes in the latest Budget, or his decision to join Twitter a few hours before he presented it?

Twitter isn't exactly the most welcoming of destinations for public figures - it's not exactly the friendliest of...

It's nothing new for the British media to pass judgement on something it knows little to nothing about, and once the media commentators have had their say, for the British public to wade in in its opinionated droves. As a population, we're not exactly backward about coming forwards.

Still, Sheryl...

It seems appropriate on Mother's Day to be writing about a week when women dominated the headlines.

True, it wasn't always for the right reasons (Vicky Pryce doesn't need her many years as an economist to understand the true price of revenge after her time in court this week), but...

February drew its chilly days to a close this week, but not before delivering another few ice-coated upsets for the prime minister.

Adele might have been flying the flag for the Brits over in Hollywood, thanks to an Oscar win for her omnipresent Skyfall theme song, but there wasn't...

"We are disappointed that photographs of the Duke and Duchess on a private holiday look likely to be published overseas. This is a clear breach of the couple's right to privacy."

And so it came, the inevitable comment from St James' Palace, muted in its disapproval, but as close...

There are many topics guaranteed to inflame debate, spark comment and flare tempers, but for this generation, the Iraq war remains one of the most contentious.

As we make tentative steps towards the 10-year anniversary of the invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq by US and UK forces, the subject has...

Headline news this week: in relationships where men do more housework, couples tend to have less sex.

That was the groundbreaking insight from experts at the University of Washington, and later published in the American Sociological Review.

Having spent three years nursing large volumes of Shakespeare (and...

The Algerian hostage crisis, which has unsurprisingly dominated the news agenda this week, might now be over, but there will be very few able to extract anything positive from the four-day standoff and its eventual messy, bloody and violent end.

As I write, British officials are still desperately trying to...

As the nation's weather men and women garner larger audiences than usual this weekend with the population gripped by forecasts of snow and ice, this week saw a harsh reminder of the impact of cold weather for those targeted by civil war.

Give it a few days, and no doubt...

While the debate continues over whether 2012 really was the so-called 'year of the woman' (or "year of the year of the woman" as the New York Times dubbed it), 2013 has so far been something of a mixed bag for the fairer sex.

The news,

When I wrote my end of year blog last December, in my infinite wisdom, I'm fairly sure I declared it the Year of News, impossible to surpass. From the London riots to the Oslo shootings, via Amy Winehouse's death and the News of the World closing, it felt very much...

We've seen an awful lot of the Royal family this past year. From their rain-drenched smiles on the Jubilee barge back in July, to the Queen's scene-stealing performance during the Olympic opening ceremony, not to mention Harry's shenanigans in Vegas, the Windsors have been hard to ignore.

With a Royal...

No matter how many times it happens, it is no less shocking when a gunman opens fire on innocent children, ending lives in their tracks.

This weekend, as the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School victims attempt to come to terms with their painful losses, the rest of the...