Middle-market brand went into administration in March but in many ways it is a surprise it held on so long

Business live – latest updates

The business prospects of Ted Baker have been in turmoil since 2019 when the company’s founder, Ray Kelvin, resigned after allegations of “forced hugging”, and by March this year its UK arm had entered administration.

However, from a fashion perspective, the writing had been on the wall for much longer. The announcement at the weekend that the brand’s remaining 31 stores will close, putting 500 jobs at risk, will leave most in the industry compelled to do little more than shrug. In many ways, it is a surprise it held on this long.

Continue reading…

Pasta alla checca is where hot pasta meets cool raw tomato, fresh herbs and mozzarella to brilliant effect

The fan stopped working on one of the hottest days of the year, though that shouldn’t have come as a surprise. It has been trying to tell us for weeks, stopping unexpectedly, then starting again after a push; unable to stick to its settings and spinning too fast or too slow, and moaning slightly. I was chopping tomatoes when the ribbon tied to the guard cage of the pedestal fan suddenly flopped flat, and the air in the kitchen stopped moving. I hoped it was a power cut, until I saw the wifi light. I tried nudging it, then turning it off and on several times in the hope of jolting it back to life, but nothing. It was gone, broken, dead.

In his short story Scherzi del Caldo (Hot Weather Jokes), Alberto Moravia describes a small apartment in Rome on a hot day: “It seems that everything – furniture, clothes, utensils – has swollen and is falling on you”, and how “Everyone wears shirtsleeves, but the shirts are sweaty and smelly”, and that families “become quarrelsome”. I felt as if I was in Moravia’s story.

Continue reading…

I hate water so much I once went on the radio to defend my stance. Then I was introduced to massive bags of ice …

My son brought his girlfriend home last month and we really wanted to make things nice for her. We started with a shame-fuelled whirlwind clean, but were instantly betrayed the second our son stepped inside and exclaimed: “It’s so tidy! I’ve never seen it this clean!” (It got worse when he showed her my office, the portrait in the attic to the rest of the house’s Dorian Gray.)

She is from the US, which added an extra set of anxieties about how we live, specifically around ice and water. I have watched enough TikTok videos of shocked, disgusted Americans complaining about European hospitality’s inadequate water service and ice meanness to know that we are notoriously bad at providing sufficient, and sufficiently chilled, hydration for US visitors. Keen to do better, we scrambled to the supermarket to panic-buy bags of ice to fill the freezer, then affected a casual, offhand familiarity with this cold, watery way of life. Would you like iced water? Yes, we’re always offering each other giant glasses of cold fluid brimming with ice cubes, extremely normal behaviour here!

Continue reading…