Ballroom dancers, suicide cases, charlatans: Blackpool has them all. No place has so much possibility or holds so much of the British soul on one bright, windswept drag. I first came here for Conservative party conference, where the cognitive dissonance of pre-Coalition Tories in funeral suits and the reality of the country they sought to govern – love, loss and candyfloss – felt wild. Did these people even know each other? It turns out they didn’t. Then I came to watch Russell Brand pretend to be Jesus Christ at the Winter Gardens for people alienated enough to think Russell Brand is a viable alternative to anything. They all meditated together. Blackpool is a city of lunatics, and I love it, especially its name: it’s daring you to jump into the peat-stained stream that runs off Marton Mere. The black pool.  

Is it time to scrub Andrew from the line of succession?

How the Nazis used vanity to lure pilots to their deaths

War on Iran was not ‘unprovoked’

The industrial revolution made a party town and it’s this.........

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