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Dylan Jones

Dylan Jones

An aficionado of all things male and stylish, Dylan Jones has edited GQ magazine since 1999. Previously he had worked at Arena, The Observer and The Sunday Times. He has written a number of books including, iPod Therefore, I Am and Mr Jones’ Rules for the Modern Man.

Dylan Jones: If you ask me

If you ask me, this year's furore over China hosting the Olympics hasn't even properly begun. We all expected there to be demonstrations interrupting the tour of the Torch, but I don't think many of us expected so many anti-Western outbursts by indignant Chinese. In the last few weeks, millions of young Chinese people (many of them students) have been signing online petitions expressing their anger at the Western media's support for Tibetan independence.

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Dylan Jones: If you ask me

Saturday, 3 May 2008

If you ask me, Provided You Don't Kiss Me will probably turn out to be the best sports book you read all year. Subtitled "20 Years With Brian Clough", Duncan Hamilton's episodic biography is that rare thing – a work of sporting non-fiction that has genuine literary resonance. This hasn't gone unnoticed, and as well as being reviewed favourably, it also won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. The paperback is published in a week's time, and I recommend you buy a copy.

Dylan Jones: If you ask me

Saturday, 26 April 2008

If you ask me Oman is in something of a quandary. Should it just become the overspill for those who now find Dubai a little downmarket for their tastes (where did all those tattooed Englishmen come from?) or should it try and turn itself into the Palm Springs of the Middle East? It is a question that upmarket resort companies have been asking themselves for the past five years, prompted by the fact that Dubai has become a rather disastrous victim of its own success.

Dylan Jones: If you ask me

Saturday, 19 April 2008

If you ask me, I'm still rather shocked that politicians find it so difficult to learn from their predecessors' mistakes. Honestly, don't they read the papers? They start off as though blasted from a rocket, full of beans and brio, stepping out of their homes in the morning as though the country's very existence was somehow the result of them putting on and polishing their shoes. And then, when it all goes horribly wrong, as it nearly always does, they express surprise and bitterness, crawling back to those very same homes, pulling the curtains and embarking on a special relationship with their spirit of choice.

Dylan Jones: If you ask me

Saturday, 12 April 2008

If you ask me, "Nessa" Jenkins is the funniest Welsh ex-Who roadie of a certain size currently working on BBC3. Nessa is covered in tattoos, smokes like a Vale of Glamorgan chimney, and works the slots at the Barry Island Amusement Arcade.

Dylan Jones: If you ask me

Saturday, 5 April 2008

If you ask me we should all stop beating ourselves up about liking things we shouldn't. For many of my generation, the band that we loved to hate more than any other was the Eagles. When I was at art school in the late Seventies (when I would regularly frequent the 100 Club, the Roxy and the Vortex), admitting you liked the Eagles was tantamount to admitting that you not only knew nothing about music, but also that you probably harboured a secret desire to light joss sticks and cover yourself in patchouli oil. Worse, it hinted you may be slightly more interested in cruising down Ventura Highway in an open-top Mustang rather than slumming it at the back of some dirty nightclub above a pub on the outskirts of Basildon.

Dylan Jones: If you ask me

Saturday, 29 March 2008

If you ask me everyone should be able to sum themselves up in one single sentence. Two hundred words would be OK, a paragraph would do, but a sentence would be better – more finite, funnier probably. Of course, it used to be said that everyone had a book in them, although as we've seen from a decade's worth of ghastly, ghosted celebrity autobiographies (many of them dictated before the subject has reached their 21st birthday), there are a lot of people with an especially bad book in them – books so bad that the public, or at least the retailers, demand a sequel before they've reached the grand old age of 22.

Dylan Jones: If you ask me

Saturday, 22 March 2008

If you ask me, networking is a waste of time. It's tedious. Obvious. Unnecessary. And – come on, admit it – a bit childish. Life is too short to chase relentlessly after people just because they're powerful, famous or cool. I've spent 25 years watching people do that and it's frankly embarrassing. It's the same in the public-relations world, the fashion world and, although journalists are always keen to tell you otherwise, in the political world too. Meeting people organically is a far more dignified way of spending your waking hours.

Dylan Jones: If you ask me

Saturday, 15 March 2008

If you ask me the Venetians deserve everything they get.

Dylan Jones: If you ask me

Saturday, 8 March 2008

If you ask me, the political cartoon is the calendar by which we remember it all. The feuds. The back-stabbings. The hubris. As well as the foibles, the previously unnoticed facial tics and the crudely drawn ears, noses and five o'clock shadows. Who will ever be able to forget John Major's underpants ("Super Useless Man" as drawn by the irrepressible Steve Bell) or Mad Maggie's nose (a beak that could pierce tins of Carnation Milk, as imagined by the one and only Trog)?

Dylan Jones: If you ask me

Saturday, 1 March 2008

If you ask me "Wichita Lineman" just might be the best song ever written. At the very least it's the first existential country song. As 1968 is currently being celebrated as the high-water mark of post-war cultural insurrection, it might seem perverse to lionise a middle-of-the-road ballad that harks back to a more innocent era, but Jimmy Webb's heartbreaking song was as evergreen then as it is now, and still seems to exist in a world of its own.

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