For a more critical analysis of imported beer, read BJ’s Imported Beer Drinkers’ Guide (R24,95). BJ Lankwarden, a self- confessed beer lover, has catalogued all the beer imported into South Africa. It has a breakdown of the beer’s origin, colour, alcohol percentage, strength, style of beer, a brief summary of its flavour, and, in some […]

From humble beginnings as a worker’s drink beer has become not only respectable, but hip, writes David Shapshak Lazy, hazy sun-filled days, beaches and bare flesh: these are the images that summer and beer conjure up – and rugby, let’s not forget where we are. But beer was once the little people’s drink, the common […]

Andrew Worsdale sampled some of the products and ideas on offer at the Second Film and TV Market, held in Cape Town If a tidal wave had hit Cape Town’s Long Street last week, most of the South African movie industry would have been wiped out. More than 1 500 local producers, directors, professional schmoozers […]

FRIDAY, 11.00AM: SPRINGBOK scrumhalf Joost van der Westhuizen is considering leaving the Blue Bulls after playing for them for the last seven seasons, because he feels his game is suffering. Van der Westhuizen said he is fearful of losing his Bok place ahead of the 1999 World Cup finals. “At this stage I don’t have […]

The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary gave us their own alternative key words for the past two decades: 1978 BMX, Teletext 1979 Space Invaders 1980 Reaganomics 1981 Walkman 1982 Exocet 1983 Star Wars 1984 Aids 1985 Yuppie 1986 Perestroika 1987 Freemarket, Black Monday 1988 Lager lout 1989 Poll tax 1990 Global warming 1991 Citizen’s […]

Melvyn Minnaar Together with vineyard virtuosos like Gyles Webb of Thelema, Beyers Truter of Kanonkop and Norma Ratcliff of Warwick, a new generation of winemakers is gaining more and more attention. At Stellenzicht, originally almost a second label to Neethlingshof, a confident and sometime controversial Andr van Rensburg is making wines for a new era. […]

revenge Barney Spender Rugby On a little side-street in downtown Biarritz there is a poorly-lit bar called Le Frre Jacques. Not an original name for a bar, but chosen perhaps because Jacques is also the name of the self-styled patron, a silver-haired, pot-bellied figure who shuffles around smiling, shaking hands with the customers, his friends, […]

FRIDAY 6.00PM: THE ‘drugs bill’ controversy took a new twist on Friday, with the revelation that a patents advisory committee to the department of trade and industry warned that the proposed legislation contravenes both local and international patent law. At a hearing by the social services committee of the National Council of Provinces, a memorandum […]

Sauces from the Far East are tickling taste buds around the world. Michael Fitzpatrick sifts the superior beans from the has-beens As taste buds begin responding favourably once again to the taste of the Far East, this time the preferred flavour enhancer is, thankfully, not monosodium glutamate but soy sauce. In Japan there’s not a […]

What with Christmas only six weeks away and the new “Unintel Inside” postal services in full delay mode, I thought it might be prudent to spend this and the next column getting in a few early suggestions for ideal Yuletide gifts. Here they are, a list of what I think are offbeat but also very […]