Spectator Life

Modern dating is a mess: it's a shallow world of filters, FaceTune and superficial swiping. Across the internet, Gen Z complain that daters flake, catfish, scam, and – most objectionably of all – ghost. A new dating app, Snack, proposes a solution. Snack is described as ‘Tinder meets TikTok': a place where Gen Zs can film themselves flirting, create content with fun video prompts, and enjoy a ‘more authentic video-first dating experience’. Snack also enables its users to punish those who ‘ghost’ them by leaving them negative reviews. ‘Ghosting’ is rejection without the closure – you’re talking to someone and, suddenly, they stop responding and disappear.

What’s the next step for a macho gangland drama that’s already built a fanbase in some 183 countries worldwide? That’s right: a collaboration with one of the highest regarded companies in UK contemporary dance. When it opens in September at Birmingham’s Hippodrome theatre, The Redemption of Thomas Shelby – a 20-strong dance production from the South Bank’s Rambert Dance Company – will mark yet another cultural milestone for Peaky Blinders: the BBC’s historic drama about a gang of Brummie ruffians who ran parts of the city between the two world wars.

The trope of a loner, either new in town or returning from years away, who is forced to confront the corruption and violence of the bad guys now in charge, is a familiar storyline in both film and TV. Westerns such as Shane (1953) and the classic TV series Kung Fu (1972-75) revolved around this scenario, but it also plays out in a variety of other settings ranging from Ancient Rome (Gladiator, 2000) to outer space (Soldier, 1998). And all points between. Amazon’s Jack Reacher adaptation is only the latest in this long line of wrong-righting protagonists and has been picking up positive reviews for beefy star Alan Ritchson’s depiction of the titular character.

As Sigmund Freud once told me in a YouTube video: ‘Who lacks sex – speaks about sex, hungry talks about food, a person who has no money – about money, and our oligarchs and bankers talk about morality.’ So beware anyone who starts preaching ‘self-love’ at you. Chances are they hate themselves quite as much as you do – if not more so – and have been duped by the latest fad into revealing their deeply narcissistic behaviour patterns.

Every now and then you watch something that makes you realise how much the likes of Netflix have skewed our viewing habits. While the kings of streaming may have injected more money into Hollywood than ever before, they’ve also stacked the deck yet further in favour of the celebrity blockbuster, the big and the bombastic. Quieter, subtler films all too often disappear into the ether. You can understand Netflix's position. What better way to attract the fleeting attention of the scrolling viewer than with a glimpse of the likes of Leonardo Di Caprio or Benedict Cumberbatch? Throw in a big, juicy concept – like an imminent asteroid collision – and things are really looking up. But what about those would-be classics which fail the clickbait test?

The paperback’s cover showed a woman and man walking down Ludgate Hill towards Fleet Street with St Paul’s behind them and a red double decker passing to their right, dressed in the office fashions of the post war years. It looked like a still from an Ealing Comedy. A friend posted the image on his social media because he liked the look of the Fontana edition which he had found on his father’s shelves. It was a copy of London Belongs to Me by Norman Collins. Most people seeing this would immediately start thinking of the fifties but for me it had rather different associations, triggering intense memories of the 1990s. This was because I had spent many hours over several years of that decade trying to find a copy of this very book.

Our countryside is one of the wonders of the world – a great patchwork quilt of green fields, hedgerows, and rolling hills. But our sad little secret is that England ranks among the most nature-depleted countries in the world. Countless species have vanished altogether, and others cling on in isolated patches of remnant nature. While most of us are dimly aware of nature’s decline – car windscreens no longer splattered with insects after a summer car journey; a countryside strangely silent in springtime – few realise the full extent of the catastrophe that is unfolding around us. Accounts from earlier centuries describe meadows riotous with colour, hedgerows thronged with songbirds.

Novak Djokovic’s readiness to walk away from tennis on a point of principle is an act of sporting heroism on a par with Muhammad Ali’s refusal to fight in the Vietnam war. Like Ali was when he said he had ‘no quarrel with them Viet Cong’, Djokovic is widely accepted to be the greatest master of his sport of all time. Ali, then at the height of his powers, was banned from boxing for three years for his stance. For refusing to take a Covid vaccination — a matter of conscience — we don’t yet know for how long Djokovic will be prevented from playing tennis at the highest level.

On Monday supermodel Naomi Campbell was pictured posing with her new baby daughter for the first time on the cover of British Vogue. Having become a mother in her 50s, she described having a child as 'the biggest joy I could ever imagine.' And yet it's a 'joy' few members of the younger generation want to share. New statistics reveal that half of women in England and Wales are now childless by their 30th birthday. In 1971, just 18 per cent of 30-year-olds had no children – now that figure has risen to a record 50 per cent. This phenomenon is by no means unique to Britain; fertility rates are collapsing across the developed world.

Ever since Prince Harry moved to Los Angeles, royal commentators with an interest in the English language have been watching what he says. He may have walked the walk but has he also started to talk the talk? In October 2020, the Mail ran a piece headed ‘Prince Harry calls opening the bonnet 'popping the hood' as he picks up Americanisms after seven months in US with Meghan Markle’. In May 2021, the Express announced 'Prince Harry swaps Queen’s English for Americanisms in desperate bid to "be liked"', gasping that 'Prince Harry has dropped elements of his cut-glass English accent in favour of Americanisms'.

'There’s no such thing as bad snow, just bad skiers' (Popular skiing saying) The 2022 Olympics have to an extent been overshadowed by diplomatic boycotts over host nation China’s alleged human rights abuses. The US, UK, Canada, Australia, Lithuania, Kosovo, Belgium, Denmark, and Estonia will not be sending any ministers or officials. Other countries (New Zealand, Austria, Slovenia, Sweden, and the Netherlands) cite Covid concerns for the lack of official representation. Whether boycotting the event will have any discernible effect is debatable. France’s President Macron certainly doesn’t think so: 'I don't think we should politicise these topics, especially if it is to take steps that are insignificant and symbolic.

Last week, the nominations for the BAFTA film awards were announced and very swiftly afterwards the annual chorus of lamentation started up. For whatever poor old BAFTA does, a vocal segment of film fans and critics alike will declare themselves unhappy. BAFTAs-bashing, it can often seem, is how those in cultural circles like to keep themselves warm and entertained in the darkest and dullest months of the year. As if that weren’t enough, hot on BAFTA’s sweaty heels come the Oscar nominations, providing the opportunity to grumble on an international scale. As recently as 2020, grave accusations of ‘whitewashing’ were levelled at the British Academy, when it somehow managed to locate not one actor of colour worthy of nomination in the four acting categories.

Jimmy Carr is known as the hardest-working man in comedy. He loves making people laugh and most of all he likes making people laugh at the things they know they shouldn’t. He also loves making money and knows full well that audiences have become a lot more sensitive in recent years. That’s why he opens his Netflix show by saying: 'Before we start, a quick trigger warning. Tonight’s show contains jokes about terrible things. Things that may have affected you and the people you love. But these are just jokes. They’re not the terrible things.’ If you continued watching after that and were offended, I’m sorry you were upset but that’s on you. No one made you watch.

A suitcase landed in my garden. It seemed to have come from the sky. Soon after, two policemen urgently knocked on my door. Confused, I invited them in, they hurriedly went to retrieve the bag. Inside was a load of money, drugs and keys belonging to expensive cars. They inquired if the items were mine. ‘Certainly not,’ I said. After they’d gone, I was filled with questions. That evening the policemen returned and I was interviewed for an hour. I asked them for more information, but they were unable to tell me anything. Drug deals occur regularly on our street. They happen in a flash; a hand through a car window, bowed heads and hushed voices. The flying suitcase incident added a touch of reality to one of my favourite past times which is crime fiction.

‘Nobody has stronger opinions about Joe Rogan than people who have never listened to Joe Rogan,’ is Edward Snowden’s view but I am the exception that proves the rule because the more I listen to him the more I profess my love for him. At points in the past year, the Joe Rogan podcast has been all that’s prevented me hurling myself out of the window with Elizabeth Day’s latest book. If you feel isolated and lonely in the post-lockdown world you might find yourself – among the legions of truck drivers stuck in cabs and Amazon workers waiting for robots to replace them – falling for him too.

Recently, at a London dinner party, I found myself sitting next to a beautiful young woman with a PhD in physics and a passion for bondage. At first I thought: I’ve hit the jackpot! Brains-Beauty-Bondage — here she is: wife number three! And then she treated me to a long monologue on the joys of bondage; the intricacies of knot-tying, bondage etiquette, arcane bondage practices from roughly the Middle Ages to the present (or so it seemed), plus her own bondage biography. Believe me, there’s no bore like a bondage bore. Granted, we boring old heterosexuals have our faults and our limitations. We lack glamour. We rarely bonk outside the box. But at least we can laugh at ourselves; we’re happy to recognize the comedy — and the tragedy — of erotic life.

My name is John Sturgis and I am a Wordle addict. It’s not quite heroin or crack cocaine but it did have me hooked within minutes of trying it. And I have been chasing the high that those first hits gave me ever since. Or at least, I was a Wordle addict. Just two weeks ago I was confidently predicting that this was a hobby that I would keep up on a daily basis until I went to the grave. I was completely sold. Today that seems a much less likely scenario. I hear of people who find it so easy they are now attempting it in French or Spanish Wordle was invented by a British geek, Josh Wardle, working in the US tech sector, the game’s name a wordplay, natch, on his surname. He launched it for family and friends last summer and went public in the autumn.

The 'American Downton' has just hit our screens in the form of The Gilded Age on HBO, a busty, curtain-heavy romp through the moneyed boudoirs of late nineteenth-century New York starring Cynthia Nixon and Christine Baranski. Written by Julian Fellowes, the man who has done more PR for the upper classes than the Windsors could ever dream of, the drama sets its sights on that most nebulous of concepts, American aristocracy. But wait, they don’t have an aristocracy, I hear you cry. Oh but they do, retorts Fellowes. Just look at all the upstairs downstairs drama, sudden destitution of young fatherless women a la Sense and Sensibility, and bitchy sniping in earshot of the servants.

After some lengthy troughs and fallows, iconic Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar is enjoying a purple patch with critical acclaim for 2019’s autobiographical Pain & Glory and his new picture Parallel Mothers. Star Penélope Cruz is tipped to have a good chance of winning the Best Actress Academy Award for her performance as middle-aged mother-to-be Janis Martinez. But if anyone believes that advancing years (he turned 72 last September) have tamed the provocateur, they should think again, as the film’s theatrical release poster (featuring a lactating nipple) was temporarily censored by Instagram.

The news that former England manager Roy Hodgson is the new manager of Watford Football Club at the grand old age of 74 has generated quite a lot of excitement. Much of it, of course, is focused on his age ­– 74 is undoubtedly old for a Premiership Football manager, particularly when you consider he’ll be three times the age of his players. Don’t forget that when Sir Alex Ferguson retired as manager of Manchester United in 2013 he was 71, which is positively Jurassic in the land of football. Hodgson’s even older. But we shouldn’t be surprised or indeed sceptical about this, because come 2050, chances are we’ll all be doing a Roy Hodgson. Not managing Watford, but working.

A friend told me awhile ago that whenever they saw my name they’d think ‘Oh no – what has she done to upset people now!’ I was mildly miffed at the time but, as a long-standing defender of Katie Price – the criminal formerly known as Jordan – this is invariably my reaction these days on seeing her name. Seeing her dressed up as a nun to launch her foray into OnlyFans, even I was moved to tut. As an admirer of KP’s sauciness and stoicism, I have watched her antics over the past few years with the feeling of growing dismay which I suspect many of my ex-friends feel viewing my own epic game of Snakes & Ladders with the English media.

You've got to hand it to Ozark, Jason Bateman's showy crime series about a slippery financial adviser who becomes immersed with Mexican drug cartels. In the years since its debut, the narco drama (whose final season arrived on Netflix last week) has been on somewhat of a journey. And then some. When it premiered back in 2017 – with an opening episode in which Bateman's character, Marty Bird, goes from sexless marriage to a near-death encounter with a drug kingpin – its shtick felt too obviously derivative to be taken seriously. Here was a drama, you felt, that had been commissioned for one purpose: to serve as Netflix's 'next up' show for viewers who'd just binged Breaking Bad and couldn't be bothered to reach for the remote.

There’s a school of feminist thought which says that women in the public eye should never have scraps with each other. I disagree. I don’t recall anyone ever commenting that when young black male rappers have big public beef with each other they’re being disloyal to the civil rights movement by refusing to speak with one united voice. But this is the way of the Woke. All other oppressed groups – riot! Women – be good little trans-maids and don’t report rapists to the police.