A strange dinner in China

Comedian Bill Bailey is deeply serious about wildlife, says Michael Odell in The Times. He campaigns for various animal charities, and his home in west London doubles up as an informal animal sanctuary. It’s a passion that has led him into some bizarre situations. On a tour of China in 2012, for instance, he was invited to a restaurant where Eurasian eagle owl was on the menu. He ordered the bird, “and before they cooked it I said, ‘No, I want it to take away’, so they wrapped this live bird in parcel paper and we drove off with it in a taxi.” In the car, he rang an expert, who said the owl could probably be safely released if it wasn’t traumatised. “It wasn’t depressed – it was just trying to rip its way through the paper with these gigantic talons, so we drove to some woodland and let it go. That restaurant visit cost me about £200 and we didn’t even get a meal, but I like to think we did the right thing...”

Some of us are worrying about whether we’ll be able to spend Christmas with our families. Tracey Emin just hopes she is still alive by then, says Decca Aitkenhead in The Sunday Times. The artist, 57, was diagnosed with bladder cancer in June. Doctors initially hoped they could cut out the tumour and treat her with chemotherapy; but it turned out to be too aggressive. The surgeon talked her through what had to be done. “He said, ‘So we’re going to remove your bladder and we’re going to remove your uterus, your fallopian tubes, your ovaries, your lymph nodes, part of your colon, your urethra.’ I said to him, ‘Oh my God, anything else?’ And he said, ‘Yes, part of your vagina.’ And I went, ‘Oh f**king hell.’’’ She is in constant pain, but she intends to keep painting. In fact, not painting more, in the 1990s, is one of her regrets; but there are others. “I just wish I hadn’t spent so much time drinking and smoking. And partying – yeah, definitely. Really, really, really, really, really, really wish I could turn the clock back on that one.” She wasn’t even enjoying it. She was, she says, just trying “to fit into a social scene”. But there is one aspect of her life to which she is now reconciled, and that is her childlessness. “Because there was one big problem I didn’t have to face, did I? Didn’t have to look my children in the face and say, ‘Mummy might be dying’.”