It's chilling to read Byron's poem, "On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year." It was one of his last. He writes of being already old. He appears to know that he is to die soon.

When the BBC announced Amy Winehouse's death, the sentence it took was...

We're all shocked. We're all justified in being shocked. Out come the words for being shocked: nauseated, disgusted, appalled, disgusted and nauseated.

It took something genuinely horrible to elicit this reaction from all of us, and not only those who bought the News of the World every week. It took...

Dear Lady Gaga,

I wonder if it's at all possible that you've been reading my stuff?

When I last wrote about you, it was to put your meat outfit into a cultural context. In case you didn't see it, I was paying homage to your ability to express...

Dear Prince William,

You must be hugely excited about getting married, and I know there'll be a lot on your mind, so I won't keep you long.

I envy you the whole business of the vows, choosing the hymns, declaring your love. (You've also managed to shave off some costs...

We thought he was the tight-lipped, pap-menacing boffin who wrote The Catcher in the Rye, but it turns out that he was a media popsy who was desperate to make contact with people and write books apart from The Catcher in the Rye.

The news from East Anglia is that...

Piers Warning: a Morgan from History.

I know he's not really called Piers Warning, but I presume you know whom I'm talking about. In the London Times last weekend he whooped about being a one-name celebrity, "like Madonna".

You do know about Piers Morgan, right? I ask because I'm British,...

Ever since the episode with the meat, I've been leafing through the papers, and thinking that if there's not a picture of Lady Gaga immediately to hand, then something's wrong. Perhaps, for a moment, there's been a lull in the debate about whether or not she's a feminist icon, or...