-an OD of Toughts-

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when a leather-clad heavy-metal drummer trades her Kawasaki for a government car and a desk in Tokyo — well, wonder no more. Because Japan, that meticulously organised island where trains arrive on time and people apologise to ticket machines, has just appointed its first female Prime Minister: Sanae Takaichi . And she’s not your standard-issue politician. Not one of those grey, soulless suits who sound like they were programmed by Microsoft. No — she’s got thunder in her veins, oil under her fingernails, and probably still hums X Japan when she’s reading defence briefings. The Headbanging Beginnings Let’s start from the top — or rather, the garage. Takaichi was born in Nara , western Japan — a quiet, historical town known for its deer, temples, and general lack of roaring engines. But young Sanae wasn’t one to blend into the Zen landscape. While other girls were learning calligraphy, she was beating the living daylights out of a drum kit in ...

California, land of palm trees, movie stars, and people who put kale in everything, has found itself in a very sticky situation. The wine industry, once the pride of the state and the liquid symbol of American sophistication, is now in complete meltdown. Napa and Sonoma, those golden lands where wine used to flow like confidence at a Silicon Valley party, are drowning in their own product. The harvest this year is apparently marvellous. The grapes are plump, juicy, and bursting with potential. It should be a celebration. Instead, the wine world is in such deep trouble that even the Wall Street Journal said it is the worst crisis since the days when people had to drink gin made in bathtubs. The problem is simple. They have too much wine and not enough people willing to drink it. Which, in America, is like saying there are too many burgers and not enough mouths. Too Much of a Good Thing For decades, California was the king of American wine. Eight out of ten bottles came from there....

If you have ever wondered what Victorian London would look like if faeries and mythical creatures were real and constantly in trouble you need to step into the world of Carnival Row. It is a show that is equal parts murder mystery, political intrigue, and forbidden romance and it somehow manages to pull it all off with style. The streets of the city are grimy, fog-laden, and beautifully detailed so much so that you can almost feel the damp chill on your face as the drama unfolds. At the centre of it all are Rycroft “Philo” Philostrate, a brooding detective with a troubled past, and Vignette Stonemoss, a faerie whose life has been torn apart by human cruelty. Together they navigate a world where prejudice, politics, and passion collide. What makes Carnival Row truly addictive is its stunning visual storytelling. The costumes, the architecture, the subtle details of faerie wings and mystical creatures are all done with meticulous care. Yet, for all its beauty, the series does not shy ...

  “I Like Me: The John Candy Story” isn’t just another syrupy Hollywood documentary made to milk nostalgia. This one actually has a heartbeat. It’s about a man who wasn’t just funny; he was pure warmth in human form, the sort of bloke you’d want to share a pint and a plate of chips with while talking absolute nonsense about life. From the start, you realise this isn’t a highlight reel of his best gags. It’s an emotional rollercoaster that lets you see Candy as he truly was — generous, insecure, and genuinely good. The clips of him on set, cracking jokes between takes, are gold. Then suddenly, the laughter fades and you’re hit with the toll of fame, the health issues, the pressure to keep smiling when his own life was quietly breaking apart. What makes this documentary brilliant is that it doesn’t wallow in tragedy. It celebrates him. It shows why everyone loved John Candy — not because he was perfect, but because he made imperfection look beautiful. The directors nailed it. The ...

 Right then — The Girlfriend (2025). A psychological thriller so British it practically smells of Waitrose champagne and suppressed emotions. We begin with Laura, played by Robin Wright — a woman who’s got it all: money, a career, a lovely house that looks like it was decorated by someone with a Pinterest addiction, and a son who appears to be made entirely of naivety and bad decisions. Enter Cherry, the new girlfriend — younger, charming, mysterious, and with that unmistakable air of “she’s definitely up to something.” What follows is a battle of wits between two women who’d both rather die than admit they might be wrong. Laura starts sniffing around like a bloodhound with a PhD in paranoia, while Cherry plays innocent so convincingly you almost want to believe her. Almost. Now, the setup’s great — Gone Girl on a yacht, You without the voiceover, EastEnders with better lighting. And the acting? Spot on. Robin Wright could make buttering toast look sinister, and Olivia Cooke ’...

  Ah yes, The Woman in Cabin 10 . A thriller that promises Hitchcock on the high seas and instead delivers a mildly confusing hangover on a ferry to nowhere . Let’s start with the premise: a travel journalist, Lo Blacklock, boards a luxury cruise for a puff-piece assignment. She’s meant to sip champagne, write about rich people, and enjoy the view. Instead, she hears a splash in the night, thinks she’s witnessed a murder, and — surprise! — nobody believes her. Imagine Rear Window , but instead of Jimmy Stewart and binoculars, it’s a drunk woman waving her iPhone at the North Sea. Now, the first half actually pulls you in. There’s atmosphere, paranoia, and just enough claustrophobia to make you check the air vents. The setting — a posh, high-tech yacht with only a handful of passengers — should be perfect for tension. But then, things start to wobble. Not in a “storm at sea” sort of way. More in a “the plot’s sprung a leak and nobody brought duct tape” sort of way. Lo, our heroi...

  A Manifesto Against Automotive Nonsense Because they're ruddy EXPENSIVE, you blithering idiot! Do you know why? Because modern cars have become a technological equivalent of a Swiss Army knife that also makes tea, sings lullabies, and can predict next week's lottery numbers! Utter. Bloody. Nonsense! The Rise of the Useless Feature Take the window controls. Not content with being simple up/down buttons, they've evolved into something so complicated that NASA uses the same system to launch rockets! Press briefly → window goes down automatically like some sort of robotic butler. Hold longer → window descends completely like it's trying to escape. Press down and pull up → window lowers just a smidgen, as if you're playing some bizarre game of "how low can you go?" Pull up and press down → window rises slightly, like it's doing a little window dance just for you! In the old days, you pressed a button, the window went down, you let go, it stopped. SIMPLE! ...

You know that moment when you sit down after a long day, crack open a drink, and think, Right, let’s watch something good,  only to realise that modern TV has turned into a therapy session you never signed up for? Well, that’s where I’m at. I’ve had it up to my eyebrows with the endless moral bushings and politically polished lectures that now pass for “entertainment.” So, I’ve gone back to watching old films and series, back when people made things to entertain , not educate you on the correct social vocabulary of the week. The Glory Days of Just Getting On With It In the old stuff, people simply did things . If there was a car chase, it was real, not a green-screened Tesla soaring through space while the main character delivers a monologue about personal identity. The actors smoked, shouted, fought, laughed, and didn’t give a toss about what Twitter thought of them, mainly because Twitter didn’t exist — and life was better for it. You had The Italian Job with Michael Caine...

 In 1776, Thomas Jefferson scribbled down a few words that would echo through history: “the pursuit of happiness.” Lovely, isn’t it? Sounds like an invitation to eat pizza in your underwear while watching Stranger Things until your eyeballs dry out. But here’s the twist — that’s not what he meant. Not even close. When Jefferson said “happiness,” he wasn’t referring to that fleeting, dopamine-fuelled nonsense we call fun. He wasn’t talking about a new iPhone, or a bottomless brunch with avocado toast and regret. Back then, happiness meant something a bit more… grown up . It was about flourishing. Purpose. Meaning. Doing something worthwhile even when life punches you square in the face and then reverses over you for good measure. See, Jefferson nicked the idea from Aristotle — a man who didn’t own a smartphone and probably didn’t smile much either. Aristotle said there are two types of happiness: Hedonic happiness — pleasure, comfort, distraction. Basically, Netflix and cri...

Every so often, television does something that makes you sit up, spill your pint, and mutter “well, bloody hell.” Fleabag is one of those things. It’s not so much a series as it is a high-speed collision between your funny bone and your nervous system.   On the surface, it looks like yet another “quirky London woman with problems” thing. You know the type — artisanal coffee shops, awkward dates, a bus with a slogan about mindfulness. But within five minutes, you realise Phoebe Waller-Bridge isn’t just acting; she’s practically kicking the fourth wall in the groin, staring you dead in the eye, and saying: “Yes, I did that. Now deal with it.” And here’s the thing — you do. Because every gag, every filthy aside, every dead-on observation about family, love, or why guinea pigs make terrible business mascots, is sharper than a butcher’s knife at Christmas. But then — and this is where it goes full speed ahead— just as you’re laughing at some brilliantly inappropriate joke, she hits ...

So, I sat down expecting yet another glossy corporate puff piece. You know the sort: a bloke in a tweed waistcoat banging on about “heritage” while stroking a sack of barley like it’s his pet Labrador. But no — what I got was essentially Game of Thrones , except with fewer dragons, slightly less nudity, and vastly more pints. The whole thing is Guinness flexing harder than a bloke at the gym in January. Every episode is dipped in sepia, poured through a pint glass, and polished until it looks like the inside of an Instagram influencer’s brain. Sweeping shots of barley fields make you think a knight is about to ride through with a flaming sword — but no, it’s just some farmer moaning about soil like it’s a long-lost lover. Then it cuts to a master brewer fiddling with pipes and valves as if he’s preparing to launch Apollo 11, when really, he’s just making sure some lad in Dublin doesn’t end up with a pint that tastes like bathwater. And the drama… my God, the drama. The way they go on a...

There’s a new show on Netflix called Black Rabbit . It stars Jason Bateman and Jude Law, which means immediately you’re dealing with more furrowed brows than a field of freshly ploughed soil. The setup is simple enough: Jude runs a fancy New York restaurant and nightclub, Jason turns up like a drunken uncle at Christmas, and within minutes you realise this family reunion is going to end with bodies in the bin. Now, the first thing you’ll notice is the lighting. Or rather, the total absence of it. Every scene looks like it was filmed inside a coal mine during a power cut. You’ll spend the first episode fiddling with your TV brightness settings, then eventually accept that this is just what New York looks like now: murky, brooding, and about as cheerful as a funeral in Wolverhampton. The story itself? Imagine The Godfather had a one-night stand with Ozark in the back of a nightclub kitchen. There are debts, gangsters, broken loyalties, and the kind of tense conversations where every...

Every now and then, a politician says something that doesn’t just bounce off your ears — it crawls inside your head and refuses to leave. That’s what happened when Finance Minister Clyde Caruana recently spoke about Malta’s demographic future. He didn’t coat it in glitter. He didn’t hide behind statistics. He said it plainly: Malta is heading towards decline. A shrinking population. An ageing society. An economy wobbling under the weight of it all. It was equal parts fascinating and terrifying. Fascinating because, at last, someone dared to spell it out. Terrifying because deep down, we already know he’s right.  Why aren’t we having children? That’s the real question. Why are young couples delaying family life, or avoiding it altogether? Why are so many twenty- and thirty-somethings who would love to raise children quietly putting it off year after year? The answer is heartbreakingly simple: life is just too much . A country of tired faces Look around. Malta is full of exh...

The Honda GB350S is proof that sometimes the Japanese still get it right. Because while every other manufacturer is busy building bikes with 1,200cc engines, radar-guided cruise control, and dashboards that need a degree in astrophysics to understand, Honda has quietly gone: “What if we just built a proper bloody motorcycle?” And that’s what this is. A proper motorcycle. It doesn’t come with panniers the size of shipping containers. It doesn’t sound like a hairdryer in a biscuit tin. It doesn’t look like it was designed by an angry Decepticon. It’s just a bike. With wheels. A tank. And an engine. And my God, it’s brilliant. The engine itself is a single-cylinder lump the size of a small log. 348cc of “don’t worry, I’ve got this.” It doesn’t rev, it doesn’t scream, it just thumps. Twist the throttle and you don’t so much accelerate as… advance. Like a Roman legion. Slowly. Methodically. Utterly unstoppable. Riding it is like riding a very polite tractor—it won’t scare you, but it’ll plo...

 Political violence is always wrong. Always. Anyone who tries to argue otherwise is either insane, dishonest, or just loves chaos. Shooting someone because you dislike their opinions is beneath contempt, beneath common decency, and frankly, beneath explanation. But here’s the thing nobody wants to say: mourning Charlie Kirk is optional. Optional. You are under no moral obligation to light a candle, post a heartfelt social media tribute, or pretend the world has lost a saint. Kirk’s brain was like a rusted gearbox in a 1970s Lada—creaking, failing catastrophically, and emitting fumes of ignorance strong enough to kill small wildlife. And what ideas did he offer? Oh, just a parade of moral flatulence so noxious it could choke a small city. Nuremberg-style trials for doctors. “Some gun deaths” are worth it to protect the Second Amendment. Women should submit to their husbands, Martin Luther King was “awful,” and empathy is a made-up new-age fairy tale. Civil rights? A “huge mistake.”...

Right then, let’s sharpen the knives. The PN has a new leader. Alex Borg. But before anyone starts blathering about rebirth and fresh horizons, let’s call this what it is: a party that’s been lying in a ditch for a decade has just propped itself up on one elbow and muttered, “still alive, sort of.” Photo: James Bianchi/MaltaToday) Borg only just won, wafer-thin, narrower than a spaghetti strand, which is hardly the sort of triumph that makes people think “ah yes, here comes the saviour.” What he does bring is youth, a new face, and the sense that the PN isn’t entirely run by men who still think the fax machine is cutting-edge technology. But experience? He’s got about as much as a teenager on his first driving lesson. And let’s talk about the leadership race itself. If this was supposed to showcase competence, it was a spectacular own goal. The electoral commission ran it with all the slickness of a goat trying to ice skate. Delays, confusion, a media policy so laughably restrictive...

 Bang Bang Baby is one of those shows that makes you sit there, scratch your head, and mutter: “What on earth am I watching?” We’re in 1986 Milan. Bubble gum, a foul-mouthed parrot, a psychic, and a soundtrack dripping with Echo and the Bunnymen. It’s part mafia thriller, part fever dream, and occasionally part “did someone spike my drink?” At the centre is Alice, a 16-year-old who discovers her dad isn’t dead at all, just very busy being knee-deep in mobster business. And suddenly she’s hurled into a world of lies, bullets, and family drama that makes The Sopranos look like The Waltons. Now, don’t expect the show to hold your hand. It throws you into the deep end, shuffles between subplots like a dodgy deck of cards, and moves at the pace of a Fiat on a cold morning. At times, you’ll feel lost. At times, you’ll wonder if you’ve sat on the remote. But here’s the thing: once it finds its stride, it’s stylish, moody, and strangely magnetic. Every shot oozes atmosphere, the music is p...

Realistic Recovery: Grit and Grace Have you taken your walk today? I haven’t. It’s August, and if I get told to go for a walk and drink more water one more time, I swear to the ever-living god I’ll throw my phone into the sea. Then, of course, I’ll probably go on a walk anyway, because frustratingly, I know it will help my mood. And yes, I am dehydrated, despite my motivational water bottle with its smug hourly reminder.  photo by Lothar Baxmann Most good ideas are simple. But taking care of your mental health is hard. Well-meaning advice can be life-changing—or infuriating. Sometimes it’s like being handed a teaspoon of water for the house-fire that is your body, your brain, your room, the planet. They feel like a 2015 infographic: relevant once, now trite and overly earnest. And yet, the truth remains—complete fixes are a myth, usually a monkey’s paw in disguise. A life worth living is built from small but meaningful actions, often requiring more effort than you feel capable ...