''Look! Look! It says Dodi!" The fat lady jabs excitedly at the glass case; her companion - thin, dingy, perhaps her daughter - squints at the paper within. It is the typed draft of Earl Spencer's address for his sister's funeral, and, sure enough, it contains a sentence - crossed out in pen - thanking Dodi "al-Fayed" by name for helping to make Diana's last weeks happy.

"You see," says [...]

Any public schoolboy who isn't completely stupid soon realises that he is hated. It's not that the jeers from the real world are lobbed at you very frequently, nor that they're very hurtful when they land. It's just that you learn to make practical adjustments to your habits to take into account the hostility of thousands of otherwise ordinary people. My lifelong interest in endurance running was developed not on [...]

In a high, panelled, municipal room, inlaid with the names of past lord mayors of Birmingham, several dozen people are watching a clock inch towards 2.30pm. Some exchange whispered small talk; many sip coffee in silence; all seem pointedly well behaved, like visitors to a National Trust property. All but three of the men wear ties.

It's a Thursday afternoon, and the people of the Midlands are waiting for their [...]