The Oldie

The idea for the Oldie was cooked up 25 years ago by its founding editor, Richard Ingrams, and his much-lamented successor, the late Alexander Chancellor. Their aim was to create a free-thinking, funny magazine, a light-hearted alternative to a press obsessed with youth and celebrity. The Oldie is ageless and timeless, free of retirement advice, crammed with rejuvenating wit, intelligence and delight. With over 100 pages in every issue, The Oldie is packed with funny cartoons and free-thinking and intelligent articles covering a wide range of topics – from gardening and books to travel, arts, entertainment, and so much more.

The Oldie

The Old Un’s Notes

Among this month’s contributors

NOT MANY DEAD • Important stories you may have missed

Bliss on Toast • Quick, easy, comforting and delicious suppers

Cressida Dick is just wild about Wilde • The ex-Met Commissioner is devoted to my hero, Oscar

Confessions of a gambling addict • The Government has made it far too easy for us to bet our lives away

WHAT WAS a time ball?

WHAT IS adulting?

BOOM! It had all gone kablooey • Forty years after a bomb hit his ship in the Falklands War, Simon Weston still thinks he’s a very lucky man

Happy 50th birthday to the great Godfather • It’s a gangster movie, a family drama and a film about the corrupt American dream, all rolled into one masterpiece.

My dreary diary • Simon O’Hagan is astonished by how dull his teenage diaries are

Lucky Brummies • Jonathan Meades loves the new Pevsner guide to Birmingham – a city full of rich oddities and pleasingly bewildering contrasts

An Englishman’s castle is his home • Castles weren’t just military buildings – they were opulent residences for pleasure-loving noblemen.

Return of the bores • No longer confined by COVID, they’re back – and they’re coming to get you. A bore-spotter’s guide by James Pembroke

King of the Cleethorpes hypochondriacs • How can the doctor cure my life-threatening knee condition?

How to talk proper • Pronunciation has changed dramatically in recent years – and not for the better, says elocution teacher Serena Greenslade

Old lags • The number of over-80s in jail is booming. Duncan Campbell talks to old-timers who are still doing time

A troubled bridge over untroubled water

The world isn’t my oyster

The real Brideshead revisited • For a brief moment between the wars, Oxford sparked into life. But was it as glamorous as Evelyn Waugh thought?

I depend on the kindness of snowflakes • Don’t bash the young. They’re always so helpful to Mary Kenny

Raise a glass to Nadine Dorries

Quite Interesting Things about ... doctors

A small picture of Hell

Lady Maclean (1923-2021)

My audition for Dr Death • Watch out for relations who want to harm – or kill – patients

READERS’ LETTERS

Sandy Wilson

My lucky Severn days

Stick to the day job • Eric Morecambe, Les Dawson and Harry Secombe all tried it – now Dolly Parton has written a celebrity novel.

The Red of My Blood: A Death and Life Story

ROBERT O’BYRNE Burning the Big House: The Story of the Irish Country House in a Time of War and Revolution

ALEXANDER LARMAN Not Far from Brideshead

Wreck: Géricault’s Raft and the Art of Being Lost at Sea

Female of the species is as randy as the male • From lizards to lobsters, females enjoy multiple-mating

Levelling up is nothing new • The 17th-century Levellers had radical ideas to reform the country

Bring on the last days of • The BBC’s evening news show has been stuffed ever since Paxo left

The joy of coupling

RANT Music without melody

HARRY...