Archive

  • Mitchell: 'We must treat our war heroes better'

    Military personnel leaving the forces are put on a par with criminals coming out of prison, the leader of Oxfordshire County Council has claimed. Keith Mitchell spoke out about the plight of servicemen and women re-adapting to civilian life, and said

  • Oxford to host major cycle race event

    A MAJOR cycle event is coming to Oxford next month and will shut off main streets for the day. The Halfords Tour Series features the country’s top teams and will star Olympic gold medallists and World Champion riders. Round three of 11 will be held

  • Exhibition explores abandoned worlds

    EERIE images of abandoned buildings and industrial estates left to decay are in the frame at a new Oxford exhibition. Echoes For Company opens at the Jam Factory in Hollybush Row next month and will run until the end of June. Photographer Darren Nisbett

  • Market chairman lands national role

    DEDDINGTON Farmers’ Market chairman Geoff Todd has been elected to the Council of the National Farmers’ Retail and Markets Association (Farma) for the next three years. Mr Todd helped set up the market in 2001 as part of Deddington Market Management

  • Barry's odd view of the name 'Chris'

    Second to none in my admiration for Dame Edna Everage, I was naturally as saddened as anyone to learn of her impending retirement from the stage. Mind you, I couldn’t help wondering last week whether her alter ego Barry Humphries was beginning to show

  • Madeley really should grow up

    Exposed to a witless “oo-er missus” approach to sex at Wycombe Swan’s Funny Peculiar on Tuesday night (reviewed elsewhere on this site), I awoke the following morning to further confirmation that where supposedly ‘adult’ matters are concerned some of

  • Alex James - From hell-raiser to a happy cheesemaker

    The transformation of Alex James from hell-raising rock star to farmer and cheesemaker has been well chronicled in the journalism that has proved to be a third area of expertise for this versatile man. Let me at once mention a fourth, fatherhood

  • I'm an Aristocrat, Get Me Out of Here

    Improvisation whiz kids Gonzo Moose tickled my ribs mightily at the Cornerstone Arts Centre in Didcot with their latest fun spoof, I’m an Aristocrat Get Me Out of Here! This time the company have created a hilarious retelling of The Scarlett Pimpernel

  • Two to Tango: The Mill, Banbury

    This turned out to be a very pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Inside the auditorium though, it could have been night time, as the lighting was kept very low, in keeping with the clubby feeling the performers were aiming at. Instead of rows

  • Preview of Blood Wedding: Oxford Playhouse

    Oxford Theatre Guild aims high next week when it brings Frederico Garcia Lorca’s 1932 play Blood Wedding to Oxford Playhouse. Replete with passion, deception and death, the play is centred upon a wedding in which almost everyone involved bears

  • Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker: New Theatre, Oxford

    This was Matthew Bourne’s first full length work, made three years before the ground-breaking Swan Lake, with its cast of male swans, that hurled him into ballet super-stardom. Its enduring appeal is evident in the fact that it’s playing to full houses

  • The White Oak, Cookham

    This week’s restaurant review is not so much an essay in the descriptive arts as an exercise of memory. A visit to the establishment under consideration brightened life for Rosemarie and me in the first month of the year; for reasons too tedious

  • The gentle farmer with a smile for all

    For many years an annual highlight for me has been the spring phone call I would receive from Charles Gee, the farmer from Medley Manor Pick Your Own in Binsey. He would ring to tell me he had just picked the first bunch of asparagus. Regardless

  • The Cabin the the Woods and Battleship

    You have to give writer-director Drew Goddard full marks for effort for The Cabin in the Woods. With tongue wedged firmly in cheek, he lampoons hoary cliches and attempts to reinvigorate the horror genre with this slick tale of college kids in peril that

  • Tips on buying and preparing asparagus

    The asparagus season is tantalisingly brief — just six weeks if we are lucky — so we have to make the most of it. This year it will be appearing through the soil early in May and will continue until late June. It is a vegetable that has

  • Book supplies our template for life

    Hatching, matching, and dispatching. The Book of Common Prayer, which celebrates its 350th anniversary this year, continues to play an important role in the rites of passage in the lives of many of us today (baptism, marriage and death) — and some

  • Losing the Thread, West Ox Arts, Bampton

    How surprising to find so many creative ways of using textiles. One’s sense of self is memory laden; Mair Edwards became conscious of this when her mother lost her memory; taking nine panels she embroidered over her mother’s handwriting, using

  • Clive Sheridan: Branca, Walton Street, Oxford

    Sheridan’s early life in the Cheshire countryside and his time in Australia have given him a love of the natural world and through it of texture, form and movement. Now Warwickshire-based, he makes use of weather-fallen trees, along with discarded

  • Preview of The Long Crendon Mystery Plays

    This year is the 40th year in which Long Crendon villagers have staged a cycle of Mystery Plays, an impressive history in its own right. But when one adds the fact that these plays are based on the 15th-century York Cycle of Plays (the most complete known

  • Funny Peculiar: Wycombe Swan

    Notices on the doors to the auditorium warn of full-frontal nudity and very strong language in Funny Peculiar. A more useful announcement might have been that here was a comedy seriously short on laughs — from my seat in the stalls, at any rate

  • Unstuff: The Art Cafe

    Trevor Barton uses this cameo exhibition — four paintings in total — to provide an innovative way of experiencing art and the opportunity to share what you think with others, as each piece is also part of an online interactive exhibition. Those

  • Henry V, Propeller: The Watermill Theatre, Newbury

    ‘Can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France?” as the Chorus asks. Indeed, it can — and brilliantly. Propeller’s all-male production of Henry V — unveiled at Newbury’s Watermill Theatre as long ago as 1997 — returns there in triumph as part of

  • Orchetra of St John's: Dorchester Abbey

    Passions. But OSJ conductor John Lubbock has a passion of his own — imaginative programme building. So instead of offering one single work, he presented appropriate music by no fewer than 14 different composers, ranging from Giovanni Francesco Anerio

  • Swinging at the Cotton Club: The Theatre, Chipping Norton

    This show was a real dive back into the past, and the predominantly grey-haired audience was obviously relishing a reminder of the days when going out dancing meant jiving to the likes of Chris Barber and Acker Bilk at 100 Oxford Street. But it’s set

  • College proposes new sports pavilion

    A SPORTS pavilion looks set to be built for Oxford’s youngest college. Green Templeton College, off Woodstock Road, has submitted a planning application to construct a pavilion which will be used for a maximum of 10 years. It will replace

  • Anything Goes: Oxford Playhouse

    ‘All ashore that’s goin’ ashore,” cries the Purser. Those were the days — now it’s all photo identification and swipe cards. It’s unthinkable that people might just swan on and off a ship prior to departure. On the other hand, perhaps modern security

  • Heading to Berlin by Bike to remember Adam

    AFTER Adam Rowbottom’s sudden death, his family and friends are determined to live life to the full in his memory. The 23-year-old died of heart failure in his sleep at home in Mattock Road, Abingdon, last July. Now six of his close friends and brother

  • Festival Revels In Woody Allen's Finest

    The FILMS: * PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM (1972) Written by Woody Allen (based on his stage play), and unusually for Allen, directed by Herbert Ross. Starring Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. Screening on Sunday May 13 at 8.45pm. Story

  • Opportunity is golden for celebrating Pegasus milestone

    One of Oxford’s best-loved youth organisations celebrates its 50th birthday this year. And to mark the occasion, members of Pegasus Theatre are taking a nostalgic look back at five decades in the heart of the community. Theatre chief

  • THE DISABLED SPACE: Obstacle race of getting around

    Do you remember playing Blind’s Man Buff when you were young? How about What’s The Time Mr Wolf? Both games, in their own way, focusing on sight. Are your memories of sports day positive or negative? Those embarrassing moments when, tied to your partner

  • FOOTBALL: OFA accused in a row over ineligible youth player

    The Oxfordshire FA have been accused of allowing a junior team to reach one of their county cup finals by “unfair means” after it came to light the club had fielded an ineligible player. Ardley United were fuming that they weren’t reinstated in the Oxfordshire

  • FOOTBALL: Yarnton's extra-time heroics land cup joy

    Yarnton Res won the Ivor Gubbins Cup with a 4-2 extra-time victory against Division 2 basement boys Stonesfield Res at Oxford University Press on Monday. But it was strugglers Stonesfield who drew first blood when Lewis Stayte fired home just after the

  • FOOTBALL: Oxford Mail Boys League receive honour

    THE Oxford Mail Boys League have been awarded League Charter Standard status following a year’s hard work by the management committee. The Charter Standard programme assesses the ability of leagues to provide a high-quality, safe and enjoyable football

  • ‘Heart-attack’ motorist dies

    AN 80-year-old driver collapsed behind the wheel of his car from a suspected heart attack as he drove in The Moors opposite Helwys Place in Kidlington. He was taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, where he later died. The local

  • FOOTBALL: Slade make history with Ben Turner Cup win

    Slade Farm United were celebrating after lifting the Ben Turner Cup for the first time in their short history with a 2-0 victory against Horspath at Oxford University Press on Easter Monday. After a goalless first half, the Bicester club, who

  • Rapist caught following Mail’s Bad Eggs campaign

    A CONVICTED rapist wanted by the police on recall to prison was arrested after featuring in the Oxford Mail’s Bad Eggs Easter campaign. John Bisson, of no fixed address, was arrested by police on Saturday night after a tip-off from the public

  • £1,000 of damage for just £30 of lead

    METAL thieves stripped lead off a village church over the Easter weekend. The thieves — who netted themselves £30 worth of the metal but caused at least £1,000 worth of damage — were last night condemned for targeting Grove Parish Church over

  • COMMENT: As low as it gets

    THE epidemic of lead thefts from public buildings continues with the case of the church in Grove. We have become far less reverent of institutions as a society over the past 30 years but it still amazes that anyone would countenance targeting a church

  • No inquest yet

    The inquest into the death of a 68-year-old man who died after a collision in Langford Lane, Kidlington, has not yet been opened. The passenger in a silver Subaru Impreza died at the John Radcliffe Hospital on Saturday after the crash on March 26.

  • Concern over centre closure

    The Communication Trust, which campaigns for children with speech and communication needs, has expressed concern about the closure of The ACE Centre in Headington. The centre, which has been going for 30 years, provides technology for children and adults

  • Mystery game aimed at enticing students

    TEENAGERS turned detectives as they uncovered a ‘dead body’ at a special event at Oxford University. The amateur sleuths, including 10 young carers from Oxfordshire, were invited to a special event aimed at giving prospective students a taste

  • Mixed reaction to police set-up

    PEOPLE in Oxfordshire are keeping their powder dry when it comes to standing as an elected police crime commissioner. Every police force in the country will have a police crime commissioner on an £85,000 a year salary from November. The newly created

  • FOOTBALL: Swan's swoop for Ridgeway Cup glory

    BLACK Swan defied the odds to lift the Ridgeway Cup with a superb 2-0 victory over Saxton Pirates, writes TIM SIRET. More than 400 people packed into Abingdon Town’s Culham Road ground to watch the Division 3B side stun their Division 2 rivals

  • COMMENT: Big shoes to fill

    tHE creation of a Commissioner to oversee Thames Valley Police is uncharted territory that at this moment in time holds no guarantee of success. From November, Thames Valley Police Authority and its 18 elected and independent representatives will be

  • FOOTBALL: Unlucky Johnson’s gift for Carterton

    WITNEY & DISTRICT FA Carterton A edged through to the Senior Cup semi-finals with a 2-1 victory against Hanborough thanks to Craig Johnson’s own goal, writes Anthony Barlow. Dan Haggie scored for the hosts, with Dave Craig levelling,

  • Families may be out of homes for weeks

    ELEVEN families left homeless after a fire in their block of flats last Friday will not be able to return for weeks. More than 40 people were evacuated from their homes in Venners Water, Didcot, as firefighters tackled the blaze, after being called at

  • FOOTBALL: Launton stroll in

    Launton Sports Res eased to a 2-0 victory at Eynsham Res in Division 2 of the Oxfordshire Senior League. Matt Woodward opened their account, before Andrew Chatty sealed it. Goals from Paul Salmon and Jimmy Gray netted a 2-0 win for OUP Res at Adderbury

  • FOOTBALL: Vale turn on style in Isle Of Wight

    VALE of White Horse Schools reigned supreme at the ESFA Isle of Wight Festival – being the only team to win all four of their games and also picking up the Bert Worrall Fair Play Shield for the first time. They opened up with a 1-0 win over East Cornwall

  • Residents sound off about music venue's extra hours bid

    PLANS to extend opening hours at Oxford’s leading music venue have sparked a backlash among residents. Managers at the O2 Academy, in Cowley Road, have applied to open the venue an hour earlier every day and stay open until midnight on Sundays – an hour

  • THE ISSUE: Is horse racing cruel?

    No . . . Grace Muir, founder of Homing Ex-Racehorse Organisation Scheme (Heros) at North Farm Stud, Fawley, near Wantage. All life is cruel; especially humans on humans. In relative terms, horse racing is hardly cruel at all. Indeed it is very much

  • Showing love

    The very essence of life is recognising love and reciprocating that love. Without it, we are doomed. Love is the key to every door. Open each one to show love to whoever is on the other side. Throughout our lives we never show enough love to those

  • A trusting soul

    James Davdison (Oxford Mail, April 2) asserts CCTV cameras that the Oxford council wishes to install in taxis “are to protect customer and driver and will be only accessible to the relevant authorities”, he should have added also “Uncle Tom Cobley and

  • Greek tragedy continues

    In an otherwise largely instructive, interesting, learned and persuasive letter (March 26), Bruce Ross-Smith claims that “the origins of the disintegration of the Greek economy and, in effect, Greek civil society are far more complex than I and Keith

  • FOOTBALL: Crowmarsh's title booster

    NORTH BERKS LEAGUE CROWMARSH Gifford took another giant stride towards the Division 1 title with a comfortable 3-1 win at Kintbury Rangers, writes PHIL ANNETS. They went six points clear with a game in hand after rivals Didcot Casualswere held to

  • LIFE LESSONS: Butcher's colourful life

    This week we talk to Wantage butcher Vincent Montgomery WHAT I’M CALLED: This depends on who you ask, but, needless to say I have been called some very colourful names. The ones I can list with pride include: Father, Son, Sweetheart, buddy, Monty and

  • FOOTBALL: Bletchingdon knock leaders OUP off the top

    Bletchingdon upset the formbook and eased their relegation fears as they knocked Oxford University Press off the top of the Oxfordshire Senior League Premier Division with a stunning 2-0 win, writes Brian Kirk. They took the lead on 65 minutes

  • In good company

    YOU recall (Oxford Mail, April 4) the occasion on which Keith Mitchell famously referred to protesting students as “oiks”. It is, I suppose, possible the description was intended as a compliment; certainly the students are in distinguished Conservative

  • Former naval personnel

    Did you ever serve on board any of the light fleet carriers, HMS Bulwark, HMS Albion or HMS Centaur? The HMS Bulwark Albion Centaur Association is open to anyone who served at any time on these ships. We send a magazine three times per year and run

  • League tables are wrong

    As might be expected from someone of Martin Roberts’ breadth of educational experience and achievement, he speaks with passion governed by knowledge and intelligence. “The tick-box, statistics-driven approach” he cites is rotten to the core, as are the

  • Cats are free spirits

    Your article about cats who go missing and then turn up out of the blue and showing no sign that they have ever been way, made me think about my son’s cat who has progressively spent more and more time away from home until, at one period, he was missing

  • O2 licensing bid is unfair on residents

    The 02 Academy’s application to open until 2am most nights and 4am at weekends is the opposite of what this city needs as we try to balance the needs of students and long-term residents. A minority of students returning home from the O2’s ‘Fuzzy Ducks

  • Robbers confront man in his own home

    A 23-YEAR-OLD man was confronted in his East Oxford home by a gang of knife-wielding robbers last Tuesday. The victim was confronted in his home in Howard Street by a gang of men who threatened him with a 4in blade and demanded drugs and money. When

  • Wolvercote boat fire not arson, say police

    Police last night said they were not investigating a blaze which left a canal boat badly damaged. Firefighters were called to the incident in Wolvercote Mill Stream at about 1.40pm on Monday and alerted the police that the fire could be a possible arson

  • Wives form choir to sing away the military blues

    LIFE at an army base can be lonely for the wives and girlfriends of soldiers serving in Afghanistan. So a group at Dalton Barracks near Abingdon have started a choir to help them meet up and support each other. About 120 soldiers from 4 Logistics Support

  • Strange yellow lines were 'innovative'

    HEADINGTON’S confusing double yellow lines were called “innovative” by the designers who gave them the go-ahead. But correspondence obtained by the Oxford Mail under the Freedom of Information Act has revealed officers didn’t feel the need to put the

  • Mini workers vote to reject pay offer

    WORKERS at the Cowley Mini plant have voted almost unanimously to reject a pay offer that included a move to cut tea breaks by 11 minutes. The result means industrial action, which could include a strike, is a step closer. Fred Hanna, regional officer

  • Inquest opens on young vet

    The inquest into the death of 25-year-old vet Rachael Jackson, of Lyne Road, Kidlington, has been formally opened and adjourned. The Oxfordshire coroner opened proceedings yesterday into Miss Jackson’s death in a crash on the A420 near Buckland last

  • Oxford United ace Adam delighted with his fluke goal

    Adam Chapman described scoring his first goal for more than two years as “an unbelievable feeling” – although he admitted it was also a complete fluke. The 22-year-old spectacularly netted direct from a corner in Oxford United’s 2-2 draw at home to Torquay

  • Facelift aims to spruce up town centre

    WITNEY’S town centre is set to get a grand £100,000 revamp to make its paving safer and its historic heart more attractive. Traders have been campaigning for improvements to the centre for years and Oxfordshire County Council has now committed up to

  • £15m leisure complex 'just what Didcot needs'

    A NEW £15m state-of-the-art leisure centre could open in Didcot in four years. Work to bring the new complex, with a swimming pool, sports hall, squash courts and fitness facilities, to the town is set to be put in motion tomorrow. South Oxfordshire