Christopher Hitchens was a wit, a charmer, and a troublemaker, and to those who knew him well, he was a gift from - dare I say it - God.

There are similarities between being an editor and a tailor. Tailors have a vast supply of fabrics, buttons and thread at their disposal and put it together to make a whole. That's what an editor does - looks at society at a given time and pulls together the interesting aspects into a single issue each month.

Television has the obvious benefits of regularity and intimacy.

Take a random selection of photographs of America in 2012 and 2002 and 1992 and, except for the skinny jeans and the porkpie hats, you'll be hard-pressed to tell the years in which the pictures were taken.

Moping is an unattractive attribute in a man.

Somewhere along the way, New York became all about money. Or rather, it was always about money, but it wasn't all about money, if you know what I mean. New York's not Geneva or Zurich yet, but we're certainly heading in that direction. London is, too.

Those who remember New York in the 1970s, as I do, look back on a city that had hit a very rough patch - decaying, bankrupt, and crime-ridden. But fun.