BBC
How I fell out of love with the BBC
One of the many technological things I don’t understand is, how come I’m paying to watch television? I know why…
Why the BBC licence fee makes sense
A consensus seems to be forming that the BBC licence fee is for the chop. In a digital age, the…
Letters: How to really revitalise the North
Devolved or decentralised? Sir: Paul Collier (‘Northern lights’, 22 February) conflates what devolution has come to mean, in UK terms, with…
Why are BBC dramas so obsessed with rewriting history?
If there was a Bafta award for Most Woke Television Drama, a BBC production would win every year hands down.…
The blindness of cultural Marxism
Words we are not allowed to use any more now include ‘cultural Marxism’. Suella Braverman, now the Attorney General, used…
How low can the BBC go?
Last weekend’s papers claimed that the government desires a ‘massively pruned back’ BBC. Former Conservative cabinet minister Damian Green and…
The BBC’s big problem is its obsession with itself
One reason people are disillusioned with the BBC is its obsession with itself. Here is the text of a question…
The last working-class people in the Labour party
A couple of people in the Hornsey and Wood Green Labour party have come up with a fascinating suggestion —…
The BBC has much to learn from Japan’s national broadcaster
NHK is Japan’s version of the BBC – it was actually modelled after the Beeb way back in the 1920s.…
Sarah Sands: I never wanted to climb the BBC career ladder
After I took the editor’s job at Today on Radio 4 nearly three years ago I had to answer to…
The joy of Radio 3’s Building a Library
So, you’ve fallen in love with a piece of classical music and you want to buy a recording. The problems…
A last chance to save the BBC
Whoever becomes the next director-general of the BBC should take a close look at last week’s Question Time. It came…
Why bother joining the Labour party?
Now that there is yet another chance to vote for a leader of the Labour party, if you are prepared…
BBC’s A Christmas Carol was the victim of tub-thumping lefty politics
‘Spoke to someone at The BBC yesterday, this person told me they are SH–TING themselves right now, as viewing figures…
Andrew Marr: Twitter fooled everyone during this election
It’s an unfashionable thought, but having spent many hours in the university sports hall where constituency votes for Boris Johnson…
How podcasts have transformed radio
As if on cue, Lemn Sissay’s new series for Radio 4 tackles all those questions we would rather ignore in…
The only way to survive Christmas TV is to avoid anything seasonal and watch Giri/Haji
The key to surviving the next couple of weeks of TV is to avoid like the plague anything that smacks…
My run-in with Westminster’s TV news circus
Leaving an evening meeting in Westminster on Monday night, I walked to Charing Cross. Approaching the public path which runs across…
War of the Worlds is as bad as Doctor Who
Edwardian England deserved everything it got from those killer Martian invaders. Or so I learned from the BBC’s latest adaptation…
Patronising, clichéd and corny: BBC1’s Gold Digger reviewed
Some last taboos, it seems, can remain last taboos no matter how frequently they’re confronted. Grief, the menopause, masturbation, mental…
Hillary Clinton is right to question transgender orthodoxy
Hillary Clinton’s BBC interview in London is making headlines mainly about Russia, but students of the debate about transgender rights…
God awful: BBC1’s His Dark materials reviewed
‘Here’s your new Sunday night obsession…’ the BBC announcer purred, overintoned and mini-orgasmed, like she was doing an audition for…
Why I love a bit of death on a Sunday night
There’s nothing like a nice bit of death on a Sunday evening. Radio 4 originally transmit their obituary programme Last…
BBC wildlife documentaries are just a chance to tell us all off
Older readers may remember a time when landmark BBC wildlife documentary series were joyous celebrations of the miraculous fecundity of…
Can giving voice to the horrors of the past re-traumatise?
It is 50 years since Ronald Blythe published Akenfield, his melancholy portrait of a Suffolk village on the cusp of…
