Television
Diary
There’s nothing quite like a First Night — and last Friday we launched the Proms, the most celebrated classical music…
The questions you don’t ask at the BBC
There was a remarkable scene in one BBC Today programme morning meeting in about 1995, as all the producers gathered…
Barometer
Dropping the Clangers The Clangers made a comeback on BBC television. Some Clanger facts: — The actors doing the voices…
Reality check
Why I had to say no to Celebrity Big Brother
Washington Notebook
This week has been all about the election, the US presidential election that is. It is 18 months away but…
High life
It’s a famous quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald, one that Elton John should ponder (when he’s not out shopping, that…
Barometer
Watching brief Samsung warned users of its voice-activated televisions that what they said in front of the TV could be…
Saint Joan and the treacherous phone
My time with Joan Collins was wonderful – except for one mortifying moment
Thatcher’s soap
How EastEnders became a positive reflection of Tory values
From Umbrella Man to the Coughing Major
Are you sitting comfortably and wearing your tinfoil hat? If so, open YouTube and watch a full-screen version of the…
With one push of a button, political interviews have become interesting again
The other night on Channel 4, I watched the best political interview I’ve seen all year. It was with Nick…
Diary
As weather bombs brew in the north Atlantic, I’m roughing it by heading off to Rajasthan, and the literary festival…
Dear Mary
Once again Mary has invited some of her favourite figures in the public eye to submit personal queries for her…
Fame at last
There’s nothing like getting your face on the telly to turn you into a narcissist overnight
Diary
The most unfashionable show on television, Songs of Praise, has had a makeover. The BBC had apparently discovered that the…
I’m a celebrity, get me in there
I had thought that my days of being approached by reality show producers hoping to put together a cast of…
Reem
Joey Essex is a celebrity who appeared in the ‘scripted reality’ programme The Only Way is Essex, named not after…
You shouldn’t watch Dapper Laughs. But you really shouldn’t let the likes of me stop you
As you’ll know by now, I’m big on thinking the right things. Should a thought strike me that m’colleague Rod…
Brain food with zombies
I’m ashamed to say it took me a while to watch an episode of The Walking Dead, the fifth season…
Great leaps forward
Anybody feeling a bit depressed about the shortcomings of humanity could do worse than watch Brian Cox’s new series Human…
Boastful and bored
Has there ever been a nun or a priest who wasn’t a bent sadist? Because here we go again. At…
The ‘no’ campaign’s problem was that it sounded like me
Journalistically speaking, it’s been a good year to be Scottish and Jewish. Had I been a Welsh Zoroastrian, say, I…
Clarkson and the case of the cowardly comedian
‘Outspoken comic Frankie Boyle has called on the BBC to sack “cultural tumour” Jeremy Clarkson.’ Can anyone tell me what’s…
Off the telly
In the world of YouTube and Netflix, generations no longer share a culture
The theatre of politics
On 1 October 1950 the BBC broadcast a seemingly innocuous little play by Val Gielgud. A light-hearted and critically unremarkable…
