Ultimate faux pas

I know I had a go recently at the number of lazy travel writers who would describe a country as 'a land of contrasts' - and take a bow City AM for describing Chile as such recently and even today in What's On TV, actress Caroline Quentin said the same of India - but there is a new cliche in town.
 It's 'the ultimate fashion faux pas' and it appears on an almost daily basis on the Mail Online website. In the last week it has been applied to Lorraine Kelly for wearing slippers, Kelly Brook for wearing sheer leggings and Paris Hilton in pretty much whatever she puts on.
 I know the standards of reporting and subbing online at the Mail (and the Telegraph come to that) are woeful compared to those on their respective print editions but, come on, even teenage subs in an Australian warehouse - as some papers are resorting to - could do better than that.
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As soon as you hear someone ranting about Zionist conspiracies, rush them to rehab. Mel Gibson, Charlie Sheen and John Galliano all resorted to anti-semitism when they had a few. I don't know if it's a case of in vino veritas (ooh, get her) or if their views have been warped by whatever they're on. In which case they need help not ostracism. And in the case of Sheen, he doesn't need a worldwide audience of a million Twitter followers waiting to see if he commits suicide live on a social network.
But David Lynch - the white supremacist not the film director - was killed yesterday. Shot at his home in redneck America. The police have arrested someone though apparently they had 127 million suspects. He wasn't mad. Just evil.
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I had a really nice evening yesterday at the Royal Opera House, not to see their version of Anna Nicole but in a rehearsal studio on the site where the director David McVicar and others talked about the forthcoming production of Aida which is possibly the grandest of grand operas.
It was incredibly interesting to hear people who really loved what they do talking about...well, what they do. Though I was put off slightly by McVicar wearing one of those Mujahedin triangular scarf things like a 1980s student protester.
But will I be going to see Aida? I wish. Tickets are around £200 a time. No matter how much they talk about it, opera on this scale will never be for 'the people' and that's a great shame.
I'm not trying to be a snob but seeing an opera in the flesh is magical. One of the genuine 'things to do before you die' events I would recommend everyone tries at least once (though not at those prices.)
McVicar only got into opera after seeing it on TV as he grew up in the 1980s and when, as he put it, the BBC did culture properly. Though saying that, tonight the BBC has a doc on the wonderful and barking Maria Callas.
Sheikh McVicar then made a valid point. Aida has a cast of over 120 and has been given a budget of £400,000 to bring it to Covent Garden.
Round the corner, Andrew Lloyd-Webber invested £7 million to bring Love Never Dies - or Paint Never Dries as my theatre chums call it - to the West End stage with a cast of a dozen or so.
At the end of the session, McVicar took questions but my wife wouldn't let me ask: 'Why are you wearing the fucking stupid shawl?'
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If a joke's worth doing once, it's worth doing every week I say. So whenever my wife asks me to 'wind up the clock' - it has an eight day mechanism - I go up to it with my arms wide open, stand in front of it and say: "The clock next door is better than you, so what are you going to do about it, muppet.'
It makes me happy.
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It's a different world in the office where I work. The two young girls on my floor - they work in PR - were discussing school today. One went to Charterhouse, the other went to Roedean.
Apparently - and I'm not sure if I believe this or not - at Charterhouse some of the older kids used to go to neighbouring woods to have a crafty cigarette in the evening.
The teachers would, literally, set the dogs loose to find them. The way she described it was as if it was a kind of game. But it sounds horrific to me. Obviously it's in the blood for posh people - just ask foxes.
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Phil Collins is retiring from music. To anyone with musical taste Phil Collins is a bit like Marmite. You either hate him so much you want to shoot him or you hate him so much you want to stab him.
Looks like another day in paradise then...good night, Solly