Griff Rhys Jones

Thursday

Griff Rhys Jones

Biden’s Burden: can he save the free world?

42 min listen

Joe Biden wants his administration to be a departure from the days of Donald Trump, but will a change in foreign policy harm American interests? (01:00) Why is it taking so long to reach a Brexit deal? (17:10) And finally, should cyclists be given priority on London's roads? (29:35)With The Spectator’s deputy US editor Dominic Green, Chatham House's Leslie Vinjamuri, The Spectator's political editor James Forsyth, EurasiaGroup's managing director Mujtaba Rahman, journalist Christian Wolmar and writer, actor, and comedian Griff Rhys Jones.Presented by Lara Prendergast.Produced by Max Jeffery, Matt Taylor and Alexa Rendell.

Saturday

Thursday

Griff Rhys Jones

London’s war on motorists isn’t helping anybody

Late one evening in Yangon in Myanmar a few years ago, I noticed a grey Morris Minor van patrolling the streets. It had an old-fashioned double--ended trumpet loudspeaker on its roof blaring out an amplified voice. ‘What’s it saying?’ I asked my guide. ‘It tells the people “It’s late! Stop drinking and go to bed! You have a busy day tomorrow!”’ That’s the spirit. We should get some of that in London. ‘Stop eating! Get on your bike! Pedal faster!’ Why has Covid brought out a rash of virtuous bullying? I have lost count of the number of times that Radio 4 has asserted that this plague needs to create a better, more caring, more aware, lovelier human race. (And if not, we can, of course, be ordered to be so.

Thursday

Griff Rhys Jones

Griff Rhys Jones’s diary: I am now less of a celebrity than my daughter’s dog

In order to promote the Dylan Thomas in Fitzrovia festival, I am trying to persuade Jason Morell, the director, that he must help me come up with stunts. ‘It’s stunts that will get us into the meeja,’ I tell him. So we launch the ‘Dylan Thomas Fitzrovia Breakfast Challenge’. Gary Kemp, Tom Hollander, Owen Teale and myself swallow a glass of beer with a raw egg in it — the great Celtic bard’s preferred nutritional morning kick-off. We are supposed to film it and challenge three others to do the same in aid of inner-city charities, and thus news of our festival will spread like a west African disease. Nobody else wants to do it. My other ideas have been a parade (‘Bermondsey Poets Say Do Not Go Gentle into the Good Night’ etc.

Thursday

Griff Rhys Jones

Griff Rhys Jones: Burma, My Father and the Forgotten Army

Burma, My Father and the Forgotten Army, with Griff Rhys Jones, is on BBC2 at 9pm on Sunday, 7th July. I have spent a week with old, old men, interviewing veterans who served with the West African regiments in Burma in the 1940s. It’s for a television programme about my father’s war. The young men who were shipped off to the Far East are nonagenarians now and, black or white, universally charming and calm: unhurried, unflappable and brimming with patient good humour. At first, I thought that that’s what must happen as you approach your own centenary. But then I realised it might be the other way round. Perhaps this admirable lack of neurosis was what kept them alive. So stop fretting. Get cooler. I fancy another 30 years myself.