BBC
The fibs of Blue Planet III
Whenever I hear the phrase ‘national treasure’ I reach for my shotgun. Take David Attenborough. Yes, he may be impressively…
A new BBC series that captures some of the channel’s old values
I watched Smiley’s People on BBC iPlayer recently because I fancied a nostalgia trip back to the days (1982) when…
BBC1’s Time isn’t subtle – but it’s still riveting
Jimmy McGovern is a writer whose sleeve is rarely heart-free. Since cutting his teeth on Brookside in the early 1980s,…
War is as good as Succession
In his ruefully funny 2012 novel The Man Who Forgot His Wife, John O’Farrell compares the increasingly uncivilised process of…
Now I’ve left Today, I can finally say what I really think…
Hello, what’s this I see before me? A blank page; and a pen unencumbered by the heavy weight of BBC…
I didn’t want to like Rod Liddle
One of the joys of being director of digital at The Spectator, back in 2015, was seeing the magazine proofs…
‘The Middlesbrough Shakespeare’: Why I loved Rod
I met Rod 22 years ago this month. We had been selected as team-mates on a gameshow pilot, and, halfway…
‘I asked for a substitute for the f-word. He suggested the c-word’: the joy of editing Rod
It was in Westminster Magistrates’ Court, where I was sitting waiting for the judge’s verdict, that I decided I needed…
Rod’s genius? Driving his enemies nuts
There is a reason the death of Rod Liddle has provoked such a swirling tide of grief among his millions…
To be a Spectator reader was to love Rod
Since becoming Spectator editor there was one observation I heard more often from readers than any other: ‘Rod is the…
I suspect a lot of TV is AI-generated
AI slop is not a new phenomenon. But it is becoming more prevalent as the lazy, the modish and the…
Alexis de Tocqueville’s America has vanished
When Alexis de Tocqueville arrived in New York in 1831, he found a city a quarter of the size of…
Labour’s mad media protectionism
Just when you think this government cannot get any madder, it publishes a truly mental green paper. Called ‘Watch this…
Why does Farage care if he’s on Desert Island Discs?
The big revelation in Lord Ashcroft’s forthcoming biography of Nigel Farage is that he’s been banned from Desert Island Discs.…
Stopping the boats shouldn’t require magical thinking
The BBC’s tracking-down of Kardo Ranya as a people-smuggling mastermind is a triumph of investigative journalism. But anyone who thinks…
The BBC at its nation-unifying best
Children of the Blitz began with the surprising news – to me anyway – that while 800,000 British children in…
Can our democracy survive the ‘bad chaps’?
What is the greatest threat to British democracy? Zack Polanski’s call for ‘building a society’ that ‘doesn’t include’ people who…
The BBC’s shameful treatment of Top Cat
Films nowadays often come with warning of ‘smoking’, ‘partial nudity’, ‘drug use’ or something called ‘language’ (presumably to prevent alarming…
Sunday shows round-up: Will Labour axe fuel duty hike?
Bridget Phillipson: We don’t need to act yet on fuel duty The war in Iran has now gone on for…
The insidious rise of Tannoy spam
Six people meet for a picnic on Richmond Green. They eat Popeyes chicken nuggets, Sainsbury’s sausage rolls, M&S sandwiches, Cadbury…
Does Sadiq Khan approve of colonising?
How to report Iran? It is a huge story. Perhaps as many as 30,000 people were recently murdered there by…
Why won’t the BBC use the word ‘Jews’?
I was intrigued to learn from the BBC Today programme on Tuesday that ‘buildings across the UK will be illuminated…
Our verdict on the new In Our Time presenter
Melvyn Bragg’s first ever intro to In Our Time in 1998 clocked in at 21 seconds. Misha Glenny, meanwhile, took…
The age of absolutism
A Labour MP was prevented from visiting a school in his constituency because the teaching unions and the Palestine Solidarity…
Lucy Worsley’s sleuthing is rather impressive
Lucy Worsley’s Victorian Murder Club opened with its presenter unexpectedly channelling that gravelly voiced bloke who used to do all…
