By Joe Mellor Deputy Editor The best players are out there in Brazil playing sexy samba football to excite the world. Most of these superstars are paid handsomely by their clubs, but they are also given huge fees to represent their nations, during the month long tournament. Ronaldo, The 29-year old Portugal superstar, is reportedly earning $490,870 a week, after tax, amounting to a staggering $2,243,997 (USD) to take part in the 32-day event. But how far does this fortune...

By Tomas McGoldrick Northern Ireland has often been accused of being behind the times, but in one area we seem to be ahead of the curve. The recent European elections have seen a surge in support for anti-immigrant, xenophobic parties. In Britain UKIP dominated the headlines by topping the poll, yet in Northern Ireland they managed only 3.9 per cent of first preference votes. One of the reasons why they may have failed to make much inroad in Northern Ireland...

England are out of the World Cup with a team that doesn't really contain any "characters," James Milner aside, obvs. Pele famously said he believed Best was the greatest player to ever have graced a football pitch, which is similar to Elvis claiming that Tom Jones was his favourite singer. Of course George Best didn't play for England and sadly his drink problem caused his early demise, but these are still legendary quotes. Remember Maradona good, Pele better...George Best 1. "That's...

By Harry Bedford On a warm summer evening in the centre of London, just a stone’s throw from Covent Garden, you could be forgiven for not wanting to enter the underground cave that is Borderline, but you'd be making a big mistake. Mason Jennings, all the way from Bob Dylan’s home state of Minnesota, is due on stage at 9pm promoting the album Always Been that was released back in December. It had been seven years since he played on...

By Guy Dorrell @GuyDorrellEsq With one outburst, Tracey Emin unwittingly created a new art movement. “Your paintings are stuck, you are stuck! Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!” criticised her at-the-time boyfriend, Billy Childish’s view on how art should be. Emin’s art had become about the conceptual; My Bed and Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995 being her two most notorious pieces. Childish however, had less interest in conceptualism than in traditional figurative painting, essentially to make art imitate life. When life...

By Phillip Oppenheim Cuba – sexy, sultry, sandy, salsa – and the last frontier of emerging markets? If you don’t count North Korea, that is. Maybe not everyone’s choice of place to do business, but you might be surprised. Following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, the Cubans tried to keep the flame of socialism burning, only to find themselves almost starving without the help of the massive Soviet subsidies they had enjoyed. Plan B from 1995 was...

  By James Mackney With the release of J K Rowling’s new novel, published under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith, I thought it would be an appropriate to head back and look at the filmic works of the her ever successful Harry Potter series. To date the Harry Potter films have collectively grossed a total of $7,723,431,572, a staggering achievement. Does this mean they are all works of cinematic brilliance? Of course not and I would be inclined to say...

By Harry Bedford Today we have lost not only one of the greatest pop songwriters, but also one of the most important. Gerry Goffin was the man who put the words to the music of two of the finest melody writers in pop history, his then wife Carole King and Michael Masser. His career began with his teenage wife in the early sixties. Their first stroke of genius came in the form of Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, performed...

By Jack Peat There's no such thing as a frugal recipe. Indeed, the idea of a recipe negates the very concept of frugality. But there is method behind the madness. Some mothers in Eastern Europe refuse to shop until all reserves in the pantry have been used up. It wasn't until a Polish friend of mine went into my kitchen after a night out to find little more than a few cans of soup, stale bread and some dated cruciferous...