Sandra Harris Writes

  FOOTY FOR WOMEN … THE EUROS EXPLAINED. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Dear Reader, Today I propose to tell you everything I know about football. Having no postage stamps to hand, I will use this document instead. This is a good time to talk about football, as a big tournament called the Euros is currently being held in cities across Europe. It’s kind of like the Eurovision, but without the sparkly dresses. Here comes the science, so pre-furrow your brows in mild bewilderment, ladies.  Football is a game played on a grassy pitch by twenty-two men with round, medium-sized balls. Eleven men on each side go to make up a team. The referee is the man in charge of the game. Referees are frequently being advised by the fans to visit Specsavers in order to rectify their deficient eyesight. (‘Are ya effing blind, ref, or wha’?’) In recent years, VAR, or the much maligned Video Assistant Referee, has come into play to aid the more myopic of the referees. The object of the game is to kick a ball i...

  A NIGHT IN WITH E.L. JAMES, BY SANDRA HARRIS. © I recently paid a couple of quid for the privilege of spending ‘a night in’ with billion-selling author and creator of the FIFTY SHADES OF GREY book and film trilogy, E.L. James, real name Erika Mitchell. In reality, this didn’t bestow an actual night with the author on me; it only gave me access to an hour-long conversation between E.L. James and former X FACTOR presenter Kate Thornton, but this was still really enjoyable and entertaining and well worth the couple-a bucks I spent on it. British writer E.L. James is the author I most admire. What she managed to achieve was quite simply phenomenal. I first heard of her in 2012, when suddenly everyone was talking about a book trilogy entitled FIFTY SHADES OF GREY. This was the first book; the other two were entitled FIFTY SHADES DARKER and FIFTY SHADES FREED . I was bemused to see that all three books seemed to materialise in the bookshops all at once. What gives, I wondered?...

  LEAVING NEVERLAND. (2019) A DOCUMENTARY DIRECTED AND PRODUCED BY DAN REED. STARRING WADE ROBSON, JAMES SAFECHUCK AND ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE OF MICHAEL JACKSON. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. © This is a documentary co-production between Channel 4 and HBO. It comprises two ninety-minute episodes, and it makes for shocking and powerful viewing. It’s made up of interviews with two men, Wade Robson and Jimmy Safechuck, who each claim that they were sexually molested as children by music superstar Michael Jackson, with whom they’d each had a long-standing friendship/relationship. The funny thing for me- not that there’s anything funny in this whole situation, mind you- is that, the week before I’d watched this film, I’d seen Martin Bashir’s interview with Jackson in the ITV 2003 film LIVING WITH MICHAEL JACKSON . Concerns raised in this film led to Jackson’s being criminally charged with several counts of child molestation in 2005, although he was found not guilty on all counts. I’d cried...