BBC

Jonathan Dimbleby is right: we need to rise up and defend the BBC

6 July 2019 9:00 am

There’s been a Dimbleby on air since before I was born but last Friday saw the end of that era…

Nice men make terrible leaders

29 June 2019 9:00 am

The Duke of Marlborough gave a toast last week that brought the house down during a Turning Point dinner for…

Diversity’s valued — unless it’s diversity of opinion

15 June 2019 9:00 am

The BBC has advised its journalists not to use the word ‘terror’ or ‘terrorist’ when some bloke blows himself up…

What would you do if you were a Syrian migrant?

1 June 2019 9:00 am

‘Put yourself in their shoes,’ says Zahra Mackaoui, a British-Lebanese journalist who has been following the stories of refugees from…

Lusty, roistering Suranne Jones as Anne Lister in Gentleman Jack. Image: BBC / Lookout Point / Jay Brooks

Sunday night on the Beeb was an orgy of virtue-signalling and third-rate sport

25 May 2019 9:00 am

After its new costume drama You Go, Girl! (Sundays) about how amazing, empowered and better-than-men women are, especially if they…

Are the ‘village idiots’ right about Brexit?

11 May 2019 9:00 am

The former BBC presenter Gavin Esler has very kindly given us an insight into how BBC people think (had we…

The UN’s extinction warning doesn’t add up

11 May 2019 9:00 am

Anyone watching the BBC’s News at Ten on Monday would have been surprised to learn that economic growth poses a…

Why do we still use the Qwerty keyboard layout and not Dvorak?

4 May 2019 9:00 am

‘Can you fly down this evening?’ she was asked by her boss in the Delhi office of the BBC. ‘Yes,…

Mark Tully, presenter of Something Understood, in New Delhi in 2015. Image: Shivam Saxena/ Hindustan Times/ Getty Images

Why was Something Understood cut?

27 April 2019 9:00 am

It was never given the choicest slot in the schedule, airing first thing on Sunday morning with a repeat at…

Frankie Boyle's New World Order, on which the comic is paid to say the totally and predictably sayable. Image: BBC/ Endemol Shine UK/ Brian J Ritchie

Why has Frankie Boyle gone so soft?

27 April 2019 9:00 am

‘I spend a lot of time helping teenagers who’ve been sexually abused…’ — beat — ‘…find their way out of…

The transgender agenda could topple intersectionality

13 April 2019 9:00 am

It is a great disappointment to me that my phrases don’t get picked up by other writers and then society…

Netflix’s ‘Our Planet’

If you liked Triumph of the Will, you’ll love Our Planet

13 April 2019 9:00 am

If you liked Triumph of the Will, you’ll love this latest masterpiece of the genre: Our Planet. The Netflix nature…

The man who changed the sound of radio

13 April 2019 9:00 am

He is said to ‘have changed the sound of speech radio’, not just by giving voice to those who until…

Art is often best experienced on the radio

6 April 2019 9:00 am

At its best audio can be a much more visual medium than the screen. Making Art with Frances Morris (produced…

Radio dial

Listening to plays in a foreign language is a weirdly engaging experience

30 March 2019 9:00 am

As the ravens circle around Broadcasting House in London’s West End, presaging difficult times ahead for BBC Radio, with less…

Is the increasing secularisation of funerals a good thing?

23 March 2019 9:00 am

‘You’re thinking these girls all wrong,’ Miss Mai tells Enid in Winsome Pinnock’s play Leave Taking, adapted from the recent…

I always come away more confused after listening to Moral Maze

2 March 2019 9:00 am

Is it me or are we now faced (or perhaps I should say fazed?) much more often by stories in…

Why wasn’t Poetry Please in the Radio Times’s top 30 greatest radio shows of all time?

23 February 2019 9:00 am

With the upsurge of listeners to Classic FM (now boasted to be 5.6 million listeners each week) and the imminent…

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My diversity targets for the BBC

16 February 2019 9:00 am

Terrible news for gay broadcasters —  the BBC has only one year to meet a diversity target which says that…

A blast of restorative air: comedian Mark Steel. Photo: In Pictures Ltd./ Corbis/ Getty Images

The attempt to bring back topicality to Ambridge has been far too effective

2 February 2019 9:00 am

It’s becoming clear that the travails afflicting all the major players in The Archers, Radio 4’s flagship drama, are intended…

Ruthless, uncompromising integrity: Sky's Gomorrah

Why Gomorrah could never have been made by the BBC

2 February 2019 9:00 am

Boy often likes to rebuke me for having impossibly high standards when it comes to TV. ‘Why can’t you just…

In defence of Fiona Bruce

26 January 2019 9:00 am

Will I be allowed to take my dog to Europe after 29 March? A trivial question, you might think, in…

Yemen's capital Sana'a after another airstrike, where Aziz H's award-winning new play is set. Photo: Mohammed Huwais / AFP

Why the BBC International Playwriting Competition really matters

26 January 2019 9:00 am

We don’t know whether ‘Aziz H’ listened to radio plays as he grew up in Yemen. In fact we don’t…

David Oyelowo as Javert in Andrew Davies's Les Misérables. Photo: BBC / Lookout Point / Laurence Cendrowicz

Les Misérables is another depressing example of the BBC’s woke quota targets

19 January 2019 9:00 am

As the Allies advanced towards Germany in September 1944, their supplies were brought all the way from western Normandy in…

The BBC’s quest to make Watership Down woke

5 January 2019 9:00 am

For a while, as a 13-year-old, I was obsessed with rabbits — the consequence of having read Watership Down by…