Imagine a State occasion where the Queen is wearing trainers with her tiara because she thinks it will make people like her better, more folksy. It's unthinkable. But that's patently the thought process Gordon Brown (or his spin doctor) went through before the Prime Minister appeared on the world stage in Beijing without his suit and tie.

All the suits I buy have to be tailored, no matter what. But it's not just because of my height; it's because I've been skating for so long. My waist is very small, but my legs are just huge. Most really nice suit makers are Italian, and usually they make suit pants for Italian men. I'm like, 'Those Italians must have pretty skinny legs.'

Everybody who is anyone wanted to meet a real life gangster, and here's Joey Gallo hitting the scene. What more could you want with a gangster? He looked the part. They call it gangster chic. He dressed like the 'Reservoir Dogs' - black suit, white shirt, skinny black tie. You know, he had the whole look down. And the big shades, of course.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the blue blazer's a bit of a loose cannon. A suit decided long ago what it wanted to be, and it doesn't want to hear your ideas, but a blue blazer only got around to half the job. So it leaves it up to you to find its bottoms. Gray slacks, blue jeans, patterns, white pants and different blue shades all work.

I didn't really know of 'Black Lightning' until I got the script and started to investigate - it wasn't a hero that I grew up with. So I didn't know if his powers were natural or if it was the suit, but those things are, for me, very important. I really like the idea that his powers are his - that whether he has the suit or not, he has them.

We hear the stories every day now: the father who puts on a suit every morning and leaves the house so his daughter doesn't know he lost his job, the recent college grad facing up to the painful reality that the only door that's open to her after four years of study and a pile of debt is her parents'. These are the faces of the Obama economy.

When I was a West Virginia lad of 17, I met a Massachusetts lad of 42 by the name of John F. Kennedy. At the time, I was in a bright orange suit that I had just purchased to wear to the 1960 National Science Fair, where I hoped my home-built rockets would win a medal. Kennedy was in West Virginia trying to win the state's presidential primary.

If we get outside the EU, if we leave the EU system, we will be relieved of a huge amount of unnecessary regulation that is holding this country back. We will be able to set our own priorities, make our own laws and set our own tax policies to suit the needs of this country. We have a huge opportunity also to make people's votes count for more.

Share This Page