Will Self
24 July 2024
Multicultural Man: On alternative therapies
You can understand why people want to at least take back some semblance of control, when their passport is eventually stamped and they enter the “other country” of serious illness
Read the full article17 July 2024
Multicultural Man: On Desert Island Discs
The programme has become a surpassingly saccharine exercise in shining up the superficialities of celebrity
Read the full article10 July 2024
Multicultural Man: On the YBAs
My decades-long relationship with a fake blue plaque has been rekindled by a new Labour government
Read the full article03 July 2024
Multicultural Man: On the Tate murals
Come on Tate Gallery, if you really feel the need to right a historic injustice, do it by ameliorating a contemporary one
Read the full article03 July 2024
Cruel Britannia
Government and culture do not mix.. just look what happened last time
Read the full article26 June 2024
Multicultural Man: On ideology
The ideologies aren’t working – and neither are the political parties
Read the full article19 June 2024
Multicultural Man: On It’s My Culture
Why shouldn’t hundreds of gay people gather in the woods at night to witness nude oiled wrestling between dykes?
Read the full article12 June 2024
Multicultural Man: On family secrets
My great-great-grandfather’s behaviour transcends the stuffy confines of respectable churchmen in the 1880s
Read the full article05 June 2024
Multicultural Man: On the Zulu Home
The story of my great-great-grandfather and a killer cat
Read the full article29 May 2024
Multicultural Man: On immigrants
A post office queue leads to a disarming encounter
Read the full article22 May 2024
Multicultural Man: On Proust
A little morsel of madeleines, put it in a teaspoon and dipped in tea, summons memories of In Search of Lost Time
Read the full article15 May 2024
Multicultural Man: On Alan Clarke
In the 1970s the three broadcast channels all had regular teleplays and anyone who wanted to write drama seriously was drawn into television
Read the full article08 May 2024
Multicultural Man: On hair
With many ageing males, the locus of anxiety is, of course, an actual locus on the head
Read the full article01 May 2024
Multicultural Man: On the London marathon
The spectacle of this great host of well-meaning folk aroused in me yet more carping and cavilling
Read the full article24 April 2024
Multicultural Man: On crying
Is crying such a bad thing? I’ve been doing a lot of it recently, for reasons regular readers will be aware of, and it never ceases to help
Read the full article17 April 2024
Multicultural Man: On View-Master
If I want to see the Alps nowadays, all I have to do is pick up my View-Master, point it in the direction of a light source, and begin depressing the lever
Read the full article10 April 2024
Multicultural Man: On pilgrimages
A pilgrimage on foot from London to Canterbury is par for the course of this very pedestrian life
Read the full article03 April 2024
Multicultural Man: On beards
I have decided to grow a beard – my mission is to reconcile the two most antipathetic faith communities of London in the contours of my own face
Read the full article20 March 2024
Multicultural Man: On churchgoing
Church is one of the only places in London with black and white people doing something wholeheartedly together that isn’t working for the goddamn man
Read the full article20 March 2024
I’ve got news for you.. satire is dead
As a new series of HIGNFY approaches, its comedy is now preaching to the converted, and feels toothless in an age of virtue signalling but no virtue.
Read the full article13 March 2024
Multicultural Man: On DIY
When it comes to working with my hands I am a dunce. Enter Rashad and Google Translate
Read the full article06 March 2024
Multicultural Man: On no-go areas
Paul Scully says Tower Hamlets in east London has “no-go areas”. How would he know?
Read the full article28 February 2024
Multicultural Man: On food
An Indian mission to feed hungry British students makes for a bizarre reversal
Read the full article21 February 2024
Multicultural Man: On TV licensing
Everyone must die – and so must broadcast TV
Read the full article14 February 2024
Multicultural Man: On the church
In order for churches to be properly cherished they’ll have to welcome in people of other faiths and no faith at all
Read the full article07 February 2024
Multicultural Man: On micrography
A fountain pen gives an almost pervy sensation of smooth abandon as the nib unspools the long line of effort and beauty
Read the full article31 January 2024
Multicultural Man: On assumptions
When ordering from a Japanese bakery a lot can be lost in translation
Read the full article24 January 2024
Multicultural Man: On dresses
It would do men a lot of good to go out in a dress for a few days and feel the wind of change it occasions
Read the full article17 January 2024
Multicultural Man: On coal
I’m old enough to remember what life was like before the generality of houses and flats were centrally heated – and now I’m experiencing it again
Read the full article10 January 2024
Multicultural Man: On sherbet
The 1970s was an era as filthily culpable as any other and its only redeeming feature was the cheapness and availability of sherbet lemons
Read the full article02 January 2024
Multicultural Man: Oh, and I have cancer
The predicament of cancerous smokers is a bit like that of Brexit voters: we all did something fucking stupid, knowingly, and now we’re paying the price
Read the full article20 December 2023
Multicultural Man: On mosques
In a way, the Ahmadi feel like a very suburban, very pacific, rather twee and English sort of Muslim sect
Read the full article