THE backpackers who got naked on the sacred mountain in Borneo aren’t a great advert for the phenomenon we call ‘gap year’.

One of the most unwavering let’s-not-go-there subjects in the history of let’s-not-go-there is prostitution.

I TUNED into BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, because it was about Ireland, and I still had that buoyant feeling from last week, says Suzanne Harrington.

I’ve never voted in Ireland because I left for good in my teens. I didn’t leave for economic reasons; I had a perfectly good job, unlike many of my peers during the late Eighties recession. No, I left for social reasons.

THE ARTIST David Hockney thinks gay people today are boring because they “want to be ordinary — they want to fit in.” 

IN AN attempt to alter my mind without the assistance of drugs or alcohol, I sign up for a month’s special offer of hot yoga. I used to do it a lot, and remember the amazing spaced out feeling that lasted all day after the class. 

IN 2015, bad travel is when a cheapskate airline charges you extra for your luggage because it weighs a few kilos too much, or when your flight has been delayed and you have to sit around an airport terminal full of ridiculously over-priced shops while eating your ridiculously over-priced sandwich, says Suzanne Harrington.

WHEN you think of Sue Perkins, the English broadcaster who has Enid Blyton levels of spunky jolliness, you might think, ‘ah yes, cake’.

AS THE Germanwings plane crash filled us all with horror, hearing that the co-pilot deliberately flew the plane into the side of a mountain doubled that horror.

Imagine if a barely literate Ned Flanders climbed through your window and got his hands on your books. Your literature, your novels, your classics, your memoirs, your contemporary fiction, your cult titles.