David Mitchell's soapbox

Is it too late to stop the expression 'going forward' becoming mainstream? It's somehow made its way into our normal language, rather than just being something that awful management-speak people say

David Mitchell – he's the kind of guy that would stand a good chance of getting into Mensa, right? Well, that's a good reason not to join

Personal taste is an odd thing. In certain circumstances it's deemed fine to agree to disagree with someone

As a nation we are often criticised for being standoffish, but David Mitchell thinks this is a source of pride and a wonderful thing

David Mitchell rather likes Marmite, which doesn't fit into the strict love-hate dichotomy that its marketing team have somehow managed to turn into some weird proverb

Is it blindly optimistic to call the internet a challenge to the print industry, asks David Mitchell

David wonders how gangster movies ended up being considered art. Sure, The Godfather is brilliant. But it has a lot to answer for

This week David is coming to us from a murky red planet to rant about the meaning of 'great' in Great Britain

Getting people off the phone. It's a nightmare, isn't it? And phone calls aren't much fun anyway. They're like going for a coffee without the coffee

In last week's Soapbox, David claimed that the dearth of ready-to-order buttons and order-memorising waiters was what he'd most like to change about eating out. Correction: he forgot about tasting/sniffing the wine

This week David turns his attention to ordering in restaurants. But rather than ranting about it, he has a brilliant idea