If there's a more Christmassy conveyance than the Post Office's Mail Rail, then it can only be Santa's sleigh itself, unless it's a police van in a town centre after last orders. But the Royal Mail has indicated that this may be the last festive season on which it operates its miniature railway underneath the streets of central London. So we had better make the most of this train set [...]

With my pin-sharp photograph as a guide, many readers will have recognised Islington almost at once. This lovingly reproduced waterway is not far from the restaurant where Tony and Gordon once settled the future of new Labour over their minimalist nosh. What you can't be expected to know is that this story involves a local dog that's been trained to howl at the Labour Party.

Timmy is the mutt in [...]

This is a story with a peg, as it's known in the trade. In other words, it's got a newsy angle. Not only that, but it concerns a false leg. A man called Yenline Neil, who comes from Jamaica, has begun a ten-year prison sentence after being convicted of smuggling £65,000-worth of cocaine into Britain inside his artificial limb. The jury heard that a sniffer dog at Gatwick took an [...]

If you go to the London tango festival this weekend, you may just be able to hear, over the swell of squeezeboxes and the tattoo of high heels, the sound of past masters turning in their graves. There are unconfirmed reports that work on Billy Elliot II has come to a virtual standstill and Angela Rippon is not returning her calls. Howling tots in tutus are being comforted by their [...]

The man who sat next to me at the dinner party in Brazil couldn't have looked more Japanese, though in fact we were in the country of his birth. Perhaps something of the duality in his background came through in his demeanour. He wore a dark-grey, double-breasted suit and as much hair oil as a Thirties gigolo, an extraordinary habit in such a hot climate. His name was Mr Lo [...]

This is my African Queen, berthed behind a barge on the Thames in east London. That's not her real name, of course. She's the Royal Iris, once a familiar sight on the Mersey and now ending her days on a strange stretch of water. But the sight could not be more redolent of a lifetime of riverine slog if Humphrey Bogart himself was at the wheel beneath a soot-blackened stack.

You've seen Top People's Crimper Nicky Clarke on TV. Perhaps you've treated your locks to his patent tonics and body builders, his scalp smoothies and rug gumbos. You may even have visited his flagship salon in London's prestigious Berkeley Square. But today this magazine brings you what would otherwise cost long money: a private appointment with the stylist in his sanctum of sanctums, the exclusive consulting room where he runs [...]

No one fries a fine fish in South Wales better than Barrie Rees (prop: "Barrie's Plaice".) His succulent cod and chips emerge driplessly from the golden bowl of Barrie's vat. The trick is to use the finest vegetable oil, he says. In a story which invites comparison with Compton Mackenzie's Whisky Galore, some of Barrie's neighbours have discovered that this versatile condiment not only puts a glow in your belly [...]

The Thames Barrier looks like a line of stepping stones, or perhaps conch shells. On most days, there is clear water between the shells, to let shipping pass. Today, they are threaded by a chain of metal, the barrier's movable gates, and there are raindrops on the screen of my computer. (A note to the reader: there are bold experiments with the idea of the author-in-residence at the time of [...]

You are sipping a latte, listening to a CD, trying to make up your mind which DVD to buy. Where are you? Answer: in a bookshop. Even readers who enjoy the extras of the bookstores-that-think-they're-a-mall could be forgiven for asking if the chains and multiples have lost sight of their core business. This is to say nothing of the lowering truth that the most eye-catching pitches in the shops - [...]