The heartbreaking story of Pecky, a young green woodpecker
Ever since I was a child, I’d always yearned to see a green woodpecker. With its scarlet cap and lime-green…
Norway’s noir
Valkyrien (C4, Sunday) is the hot new Scandi-noir series, which is being billed as Norway’s answer to Breaking Bad. In…
Dave’s kept his head down, so let him chillax
David Cameron was in the news again this week after being paid £1 million a minute to give a speech…
In praise of Netflix
All this week I have been trying, with considerable success, to avoid being bludgeoned by TV programmes telling me in…
No true Tory can support this gender idiocy
I’ve had it with the Conservatives. For me, and I know I’m not the only one, the final straw was…
Dethroned by feminism
I’m a bit worried about Game of Thrones (Sky Atlantic). Not seriously worried: there’s too much money invested, too much…
Let’s keep up the Moggmentum
‘We need to talk about why the internet is falling in love with Jacob Rees-Mogg, because it’s not OK,’ warns…
Cathar country
I once spent three months living in the Languedoc, writing my first novel. The highlight was the few days I…
In praise of braindead filth
Melvyn Bragg on TV: The Box That Changed The World (BBC2, Saturday) was just what you would have expected of…
The Bank of England is enslaved by groupthink
I do find it odd that I’m so often having to write about the science of global warming, species extinction…
Trouble in paradise
‘Riviera is the new Night Manager,’ I read somewhere. No, it’s not. Riviera (Sky Atlantic, Thursday) is the new Eldorado…
I don’t blame millennials for voting for Corbyn
On the morning after the election I was drinking coffee with one of my heroes, Sir Roger Scruton. We talked…
How the west coast was won
There’s an incredibly addictive old iPhone game called Doodle God where you effectively invent civilisation from scratch by combining basic…
Do penises cause climate change? Discuss
‘Why not think about Gender Studies?’ asked an advertorial aimed at prospective students in the newspaper I was reading. Actually,…
The great rock’n’roll swindles
Birds have been giving me a lot of grief of late. There’s Tappy — the blue tit who has built…
We owe it to hunt staff to repeal the ban
Though I don’t think much of Theresa May’s paternalistic soft-left politics, I do like her no-nonsense style. That Q&A she…
Serial offenders
Since completing season two of the brilliant Narcos, I’ve been unsuccessfully looking for a replacement serial drama that is more…
Thanks, Jamie Oliver – you’ve stolen my childhood
Whenever I want to travel back in time to my 1970s childhood, all I need is a glass of Lucozade.…
The real deal
The other day I had a very dispiriting conversation with a TV industry insider. It turns out that everything you…
Is Trump’s revolution already over?
There were three reasons why I so badly wanted Donald Trump to win the US presidential election. One was that…
Look back in anger
‘What we really need is a faux-historical drama series about police brutality and black activism set in 1970s London,’ said…
Britain’s most hated man isn’t all that hateful
‘Christ, I would be shot for buying this if people knew,’ says an anonymous fan in the comments below Amazon’s…
Oh! What a lovely Waugh
Jack Whitehall could have been perfectly awful as Paul Pennyfeather in Decline and Fall (BBC1, Fridays). He has spent most…
Where’s the due diligence on renewables?
You know that lovely warm glow you get on a summer’s evening when it’s still 42 degrees outside and you’re…
For a real Oxbridge education, go to Durham
‘Should I just have done with it and tell them they’re a bunch of tossers?’ I was on my way……
