Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, has spent four decades proving that the British monarchy is less a venerable institution and more an open-air reality show where the cameras never blink and the script is written by the tabloids. From the moment she married Prince Andrew in 1986—thereby acquiring a title and, more importantly, a lifetime…
MUNICH—Somewhere between the cease-fire talks in Geneva and the crypto-currency meltdown in Singapore, a woman named Ingrid Oliver walked into a Bavarian television studio, did a ten-minute sketch about bureaucratic anxiety, and inadvertently became a global Rorschach test for late-capitalist dread. To the BBC she’s “that comedian with the glasses.” To German state broadcaster BR…
Millwall vs Watford: When a South London Suburb and a Hertfordshire Dormitory Town Pretend the World Is Watching By Our Man in the Away End Who’s Just Been Told His Press Badge Is “Non-Existent” It is 14:47 GMT in Bermondsey, and a cold wind off the Thames carries the faint smell of fried onions, damp…
Euro 2024: A Continent’s Mid-Life Crisis Played Out on Grass By our man in the international press box, still nursing a lukewarm lager and existential dread The calendar says June 2024, which means Europe has once again decided that the most rational response to inflation, war on its eastern flank, and a climate that now…
Kara Lawson, the Duke Women’s Basketball coach who recently told a hushed post-game press room that “it’s bigger than ball,” has become the latest American export that nobody asked for but everyone is suddenly dissecting like a rare truffle. From Berlin sports bars to Lagos Twitter threads, the clip of her impromptu sermon on racism,…
Rafa Benítez: The Last Managerial Nomad Still Searching for Wi-Fi in the Desert of Modern Football By our man in the departure lounge It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a Champions League medal must be in want of a new employer every eighteen months. Enter Rafael Benítez, the…
Marlon Wayans: The Global Phenomenon of “Him” and the Art of Meme Diplomacy By Dave’s Locker International Desk It began, as most modern tragedies do, on TikTok. One uncanny, slightly-too-long freeze-frame of Marlon Wayans—eyes wide, smile frozen somewhere between court jester and hostage negotiator—was stamped with the caption “him.” Within 48 hours, the two-letter pronoun…
OpenAI Stock: The Ghost IPO Everyone Pretends They Can Trade By the time you finish this paragraph, at least three group chats from Lagos to Lisbon will have erupted with the same urgent question: “How do I buy OpenAI stock?” The short answer is you can’t—OpenAI remains a private, nonprofit-capped-profit chimera that makes unicorns look…
PARIS—In a world where supply-chain disruptions, inflation, and populist rage are the daily specials, the gods of athleisure have gifted us the ultimate comfort-food combo: Nike Skims. Yes, the Swoosh and Kim Kardashian’s shapewear empire have conspired to fuse compression tights with “performance sculpting,” which is marketing Esperanto for “we’ll suction you into a streamlined…
PARIS—In a city that has canonised Zidane’s volley, fetishised Mbappé’s pace, and generally treated every misplaced pass as an existential crisis, a modest training-pitch reunion last week managed to feel both trivial and oddly resonant. Rolando Aarons—yes, that Rolando Aarons, the human highlight-reel Newcastle once kept in bubble-wrap—was spotted jogging alongside Olympique Marseille’s reserves, trying…
Markets Slouch Toward Tokyo: A Global Fainting Couch for the Red Numbers By the time Wall Street’s opening bell finished echoing across the Atlantic, traders in London had already poured their second consolatory whisky and Tokyo’s salarymen were dozing on the last bullet train home, portfolios tucked under their arms like broken umbrellas. The world’s…
S&P 500: The World’s Favorite American Soap Opera By Our Correspondent in the Departures Lounge, Somewhere Between Frankfurt and Existential Dread The S&P 500 closed at yet another all-time high last week, prompting champagne corks in Greenwich, polite golf claps in Geneva, and a low, guttural groan everywhere else. From the bodegas of Buenos Aires…
