Gareth Roberts is a TV scriptwriter and novelist who has worked on Doctor Who and Coronation Street. He is the author of The Age of Stupid substack.
Mind your language! There has recently been another smattering of incidents featuring accusations of inappropriate choice of words, or even just the wrong tone. I think it’s worth taking a closer look at some of these for what they reveal about our hang-ups, the tender areas of our discourse. What makes us wince? What is
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The government has serious work to do. As world war looms and the economy dives perilously close to recession, they have announced yet another bold and exciting policy to meet the historical moment: banning chips from school dinners. Labour are bizarrely obsessed with directly feeding the nation, something that the private sector has done pretty
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Before the 1980s, our broadcasters had a terrible habit of throwing their own recordings away to save storage space. Videotapes were simply wiped and reused. Every single episode of Doctor Who from the 1960s met this fate, but because the BBC sold the series around the world on film copies about two thirds have survived.
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Yesterday’s news that Scott Mills had been dismissed as the host of BBC Radio 2’s breakfast show – with immediate effect, his contract terminated – was a shock. The BBC never moves that fast; we are used to suspensions, investigations and deliberations before anything is actually done. The BBC issued a terse announcement from its cold
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The news that a British version of Saturday Night Live was in the offing raised an enormous gestalt groan throughout the land. A US show that was last a reasonable proposition in about 1996, reimagined for the UK? Why stop with SNL – there’s also Home Improvement, Murder She Wrote or Dr Quinn Medicine Woman.
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When I woke up yesterday morning, almost the first thing I saw was the announcement that Keir Starmer was to address the nation imminently. Despite the seriousness of the situation in the Middle East, I’m afraid my first thought was ‘Nah, we’re all right, don’t put yourself out Keir mate’, although possibly not quite so
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The enormous fun of Crufts has reminded us that Britain is a nation of dog lovers. Or maybe we’re kidding ourselves? Because policy documents on the Green party website reveal that they are ‘opposed to the wholesale breeding, manipulation and destruction of those animals who are chosen as companions to the human race’. What marvellously
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Nadiya Hussain, winner of The Great British Bake Off in 2015, has it seems reached the end of the road with the BBC. Ten years in prime time is an incredible run; most TV careers are far shorter, and reality show breakouts usually flash by. The Alison Hammonds of the TV world are rare. It’s hard
At the Baftas on Sunday night, John Davidson – whose story of living with Tourette’s syndrome is dramatised in the (very good) film I Swear – shouted out the n-word when black actors Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan were on stage to present an award. You’d hope that by now people might understand the mechanics of
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Reform has topped every national poll for a good long while – benefitting, as the Greens also have and the Lib Dems haven’t (because there are limits), from a combination of public fatigue and disgust with the two old main parties. But there are other new kids on the right-wing block, both fronted by ex-associates
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Actors have been saying unscripted things again. Riz Ahmed is the star of a new film version of Hamlet directed by Aneil Karia and set among the South Asian community in contemporary London. He told the BBC at the weekend that the ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy is not actually about contemplating suicide
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According to the Times, the BBC – strapped for cash as millions more stop paying the TV licence, and struggling to compete in a world dominated by high-gloss American ‘content’ – is brainstorming a portfolio of wizard wheezes to replenish its bank account. One of these, quite incredibly, could be the return of the radio licence. ‘BBC
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As the three-word headline, ‘STARMER BLOCKS BURNHAM’ smashed on to our phone screens on Saturday, I felt I could almost hear the gleeful communal roar across the country; the same kind of Mexican wave of delight that passes through a school canteen when a dinner lady drops a big tray of puddings, a heap of
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With all the talk of Brexit, do you ever get the sense that social media is stuck in 2016? Well, now it really is. A trend has taken off online involving people posting throwback pictures from a decade ago. A Tumblr video captioned ‘Welcome back #2016’ kicked off the nostalgia. It has resulted in a
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The eerie and the uncanny fascinate us, whether it’s the abominable snowman, the Loch Ness monster or the Bermuda Triangle. And now we have another great mystery to puzzle over: why is this Labour government so awful? What is it all for? At the election I was not optimistic about Starmer’s mob, but I allowed
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MTV has pulled down the shutters on its dedicated music video channels, casting off what remained of its original raison d’être. In the age of YouTube and TikTok, the only surprise is that it’s taken so long. This is a signal moment. As a truly mass medium, the music video is – after almost half
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New Year’s resolutions are a cruel and demoralising prank. Don’t start any personal alterations until April. Spring is the real beginning of the year, as the Romans once knew and the taxman still does. Attempting to remodel yourself as a fountain of self-improvement in the bleak midwinter is just silly. But in the spirit of
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Keir Starmer is unpopular. You may have noticed this from his record-breakingly low approval ratings. The weekend just gone brought pungent public confirmation: booing at the mention of his name at the Royal Variety performance at the Albert Hall and a spirited chant among the crowd at the World Darts Championship at Alexandra Palace, which
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What a mess. This little phrase seems unequal to the task of describing the situation Britain finds itself in after decades of multiculturalism and liberalism. In a – perhaps surprising – spirit of compassion and generosity, I find myself feeling for some of the liberals who are now regularly being mugged at scale by reality. There
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Rewatching the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express the other night, I was struck by the incredible organisational skills of Mrs Harriet Hubbard, played by Lauren Bacall. (Spoilers on the line ahead). Mrs Hubbard assembles an extremely disparate team of 12 potential killers with a grudge against the victim, books them all on
