Dave Chappelle plumbs new depths of tastelessness in his new Netflix special
I loved every second of it
James Delingpole
James Delingpole reviews television for The Spectator.
Thursday
I like Brassic but the reason it’s getting such glowing notices is depressing
From our UK edition
Brassic (Sky One) feels like the sort of TV comedy drama they last made about 15 years ago but would never get commissioned now, certainly not by the BBC. Almost all of the main characters — apart from love interest Michelle Keegan — are white, male and heterosexual. And it’s set in the kind of
Thursday
When did English A-level become a science?
From our UK edition
Now that my youngest has got her A-level grades, I’m finally free to say just how much I have loathed the past 20 or so years I have spent helping my children with their English homework. This is a sad admission. After all, I studied English at university and still love reading classic literature and
Friday
Thursday
Rave revolution
From our UK edition
Jeremy Deller’s Everybody in the Place: an Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992 (BBC4) began with some footage of kids queuing up outside a warehouse rave in Stoke-on-Trent in 1991. It was at once banal and extraordinary: everyone was white; nobody was overweight; none of the clothes were designer, expensive or branded; nobody wore facial hair.
Thursday
A gang of sheep rustlers is stalking our county
From our UK edition
Though autumn is happily still some way off, we’ve already reached that stage in the shepherd’s calendar when full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn. In fact they now look bigger than their mothers. The easiest way of differentiating the ewes from the lambs is that the latter still have their fleeces while the former
Monday
McDonald’s straws and the policies of moral panic
From our UK edition
McDonald’s has bowed to public pressure and replaced plastic straws that you can recycle, with paper straws that you can’t recycle and which have to be put into the general waste and burned. How is this a victory for the environment? Well it’s not, obviously. Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore could have told you this a
Thursday
Perfectly grim, and gripping
From our UK edition
My favourite epithet about my favourite TV series was the headline in a review by the Irish Times: ‘Gomorrah. Where characters die before they become characters.’ The review appeared to suggest that this was a bad thing. But I disagree. What made Game of Thrones so original and compelling, especially in the early seasons, was
Thursday
Late at night, shrouded in protective gear, I crept up on the wasps’ nest
From our UK edition
Halfway up the back stairs on a ledge is the body of a wasp so big it’s either a queen or some kind of hornet. I’ve left it there as a warning to other wasps and also because I enjoy the weird effect it has on me. Even though obviously I know it’s there, every
Wednesday
Ministers of Sound: why this is the best Cabinet for years
From our UK edition
This really ought to be called the Ferrero Rocher cabinet: truly with these appointments the Prime Minister is spoiling us. Sure I’ve got the odd quibble – Amber Rudd, for example, seems far too closely associated with the values of the discredited old regime to be welcomed back into the fold so soon; and I’d
Thursday
Stranger Things’s third season is self-indulgent
Where season one had the creeping menace of Alien, the mood here is closer to Scooby-Doo
Saints and sinners | 18 July 2019
From our UK edition
I’m beginning to feel like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers: almost the last person on Earth who hasn’t been assimilated by the evil, shapeshifting, floral pod creatures from outer space. Losing my comrade Christopher Booker the other day didn’t help. Nor did turning to the once robustly sceptical Sun newspaper this morning
Thursday
Girl’s gone to Magaluf and it’s hard not to worry
From our UK edition
At the Leavers’ Ball held to mark our daughter’s last day at boarding school, there were only two topics of conversation among the anxious parents. How early could we decently slope off without being rebuked by our girls? And the dreaded Leavers’ trip to Magaluf. Magaluf — Shagaluf as the kids all call it —
Thursday
Go, West
From our UK edition
My plan to cut the BBC out of my life entirely is working well. Apart from the occasional forgivable lapse — that excellent Margaret Thatcher documentary; Pointless and Only Connect because they’re the only programmes we can all watch together as a family — I find that not watching or listening to anything the BBC
Monday
Stormzy was good but Miley Cyrus was better: Glastonbury Festival reviewed
From our UK edition
Glastonbury was almost ruined for me by Kylie Minogue. Very selfishly, she started her sunbaked set – in the Sunday afternoon slot reserved for pop legends – while Boy and I were packing up the tent ready to make a quick getaway later that evening. By the time we got to the Pyramid Stage, the
Thursday
Smart motorways are stupid
From our UK edition
‘An attempted improvement which actually makes things worse.’ The Germans have a name for this — Verschlimmbesserung — and I ran into a perfect example the other day when my power suddenly failed in the fast lane of one of those so-called ‘smart’ motorways. These are the new breed of motorways so clever and advanced
Thursday
What women want | 20 June 2019
From our UK edition
Six hundred and thirty years ago, Chaucer revealed in ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ that what women really want is to be totally in charge of everything. With Girl now back home permanently having done her A levels, I can confirm that this is true: no longer am I in control of what we watch
Saturday
It would be weird if Michael Gove hadn’t taken drugs
From our UK edition
Cocaine is an abominable drug, by far the most hateful of all the various uppers and downers and psychoactives because it turns you into such a complete moron. The problem with coke, as my friend, the drug historian Mike Jay, once explained to me, is that nature never intended us to use it the way
Thursday
It would be weird if Gove hadn’t taken drugs
From our UK edition
Cocaine is an abominable drug, by far the most hateful of all the various uppers and downers and psychoactives because it turns you into such a complete moron. The problem with coke, as my friend, the drug historian Mike Jay, once explained to me, is that nature never intended us to use it the way
Thursday
Blast from the past | 6 June 2019
From our UK edition
How many people do you think died at Chernobyl? 10,000? 50,000? 300,000? The correct answer, according to the never knowingly understated World Health Organisation — in a thorough report released nearly 20 years after the 1986 explosion — was ‘fewer than 50’. Ah, but what about all the mutant babies who ended up with two
