The Griper's Times

YOU know those stories about members of the public who claim to have encountered big cats in quiet corners of the British countryside... this is mine. I should be quite clear that I don't believe it's plausible for a large population of apex predators to be living in a nation as small and densely-populated as our own. And yet I saw something on a nature reserve near Coventry more than 20 years ago and I'm intrigued that so many eyewitness accounts continue to trickle in around the country every month. At the time I was 11-years-old and at Brandon Marsh,  a 220 acre habitat, for a bat walk. It was summer - some time in August I believe - and with the light fading I was the first to emerge from a pre-walk talk on pipistrelles and the like. But as I stepped out into a courtyard, which looked out across the reserve, I was stunned to see a large feline shape pass by a fence maybe 20 metres from where I was standing. It was far too large for a domestic cat, the size of a large d

RATHER like the novel I've been trying to write since my teens, losing weight is something I've very much failed to do for far too long. I know this because I tried diets after a particularly grisly food tech lesson on "furring of the arteries" and on the back of a climb up the steps of York Minster left me on the verge of keeling over - even while 78-year-olds seemed to power up the 15th century tower. I was off the spicy nik naks when I was first training to be a journalist, I'd denounced jammy dodgers after my (in) voluntary redundancy a decade ago and I was denying myself anything with sugar during the first lockdown. Now and then I think I may have discovered the state-of-mind that will make the slimming stick. Perhaps the twinge of fear that would accompany a bout of indigestion (is this in actual fact a heart attack), or worries about whether an overweight socialist was a contradiction in terms. I would fret about the fact that one of the first things that

BORIS Johnson believes the implosion of his political career is proof positive that the dice are loaded, the system rigged and a powerful collection of forces have conspired to pursue their own agenda. A serial liar and narcissist has inadvertently exposed the uncomfortable truth that lies at the heart of our democracy.  Of course our political system is in hock to vested interests and bad faith actors. Of course it perpetuates grave injustices to serve troubling ends, often in the name of reason and fair play. This is a system that Johnson should know better than any other - it is the system which propelled him to power. The question that should preoccupy us in the days and weeks ahead is not why the former PM fell from grace so dramatically. It is certainly not - as, an admittedly diminished, group of allies and media cheerleaders speculate - whether he may yet rise again. It is how such a man with such obvious flaws, which were exposed throughout his time in public life,  was able t

A GREAT, grey block of student accommodation built in the 1960s is the very last place that you'd expect something so utterly unnerving to happen. Yet the non-descript dorm rooms of Belfast's Allenbrooke Hall have proven the star attraction of BBC radio series and podcast Uncanny - billed as the single biggest investigation of the supernatural ever. It's a bold claim, but turning over cases to an army of social media sceptics and believers alike certainly feels a step change from three men with night-vision cameras in a cellar somewhere in Bracknell. Presenter Danny Robins came to fame as the writer of 2:22 - a smash-hit play which poses the question of just what a ghost story should look like in 21st century Britain. In an era where many people are more used to getting their fix of fear from true crime or - perhaps rather grimly - the news, it's interesting to see what far older, arguably primordial fears appear like in the modern-day. Uncanny, launched in 2021 and now