Let’s banish Band Aid
There’s no need to be afraid, but 40 years since the advent of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’ by Band…
I must stop hating politicians
Hate crimes, hate speech, hate groups… It is quite possible that we have less of these things today than ever…
Farewell Gary Lineker, you won’t be missed
Gary Lineker is to leave Match of the Day at the end of the current football season, and to exit the BBC…
The Marsh family and the sad spectacle of Trump-bashing Brits
There is something slightly uncanny about the musical Marsh family of Faversham in Kent, who recently gathered millions of YouTube…
The cult of Paddington has gone too far
‘Kindness is like marmalade – a little goes a long way,’ Paddington Bear tweeted recently. But it isn’t only imaginary…
Halloween indulges a very human obsession
Halloween is approaching. The Americans, who go very big on it normally, are distracted this year by the election, so…
Paddington shouldn’t have been given a passport
Paddington has an official passport. The makers of the new Paddington film Paddington in Peru revealed this in passing to the Radio Times today.…
The TV industry should be worried about AI
ITV are searching for an ‘AI expert’ to ‘create TV shows, films and digital content’, and to use this possibly…
The unspectacular joy of quiz shows
Quiz shows on TV – the kind you can join in with at home by shouting the answer at the…
Thank God for Elon Musk
Like many people this weekend, I couldn’t tear myself away from videos of the booster rocket of Elon Musk’s Starship…
Why is Gary Lineker worth all the bother?
There’s been another development in the wearying saga of Gary Lineker, the over-salaried presenter of football on the BBC and…
Doctors and the trouble with the BBC
The BBC’s daytime soap Doctors will soon vanish from our screens after 24 years. But while the final episodes make…
How doom scrolling changed TV for ever
Are you one of the growing number of ‘second screen’ television viewers? For all too many of us, it seems…
Will things really get better under Labour?
Labour’s honeymoon didn’t last long. Keir Starmer won power less than three months ago with a vow to ‘change Britain’.…
When will EU flag wavers get the message?
Arguing about the last night of the Proms is as much of an annual tradition as the music itself. Usually…
We’re being ruled by a 1980s left-wing student elite
We are now governed by people who were left-wing students in the 1980s and early 90s. This is one of…
There’s no shame in being ‘weird’
Are Conservative politicians ‘weird’? A series of focus groups carried out by More in Common suggests that voters – particularly…
What Carol Vorderman gets wrong about the TV industry
Carol Vorderman has given a speech to the Edinburgh Television Festival, in which she complains that the TV industry is too middle class. This…
Why the ‘sensibles’ aren’t happy now the Tories are gone
I have to confess that, like many other commentators, I thought that the coming of the Labour government would mean…
The tyranny of twee
The horrific murders in Southport earlier this month were followed by horrific riots and horrific counter-riots. But fear not. Because…
Should civil servants be allowed to wear inappropriate clothes to work?
Does His Majesty’s Government have a policy on civil servants wearing fetish clothing in the workplace? It’s not the sort…
Just Stop Oil and the secret power of the middle class
Just Stop Oil isn’t what it was. When a handful of protestors from the environmental group tried to block a…
Has the opening ceremony finished yet?
The 2012 British opening ceremony has sadly become a shorthand for nostalgic Remainy twee. But la grande débâcle in Paris last night brought…
Keir Starmer and the illusion of ‘seriousness’
The first few days of a totally new government are disorientating. Nobody knows quite how to react. The electoral dust…
The Tories: a requiem
And now the end is near. Barring a polling error of galactic proportions, we are hours away from the final…
