James Delingpole reviews television for The Spectator.
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Some of you are going to be appalled that it has taken me till now to read Trollope’s Autobiography. And quite right too. If I’d read it in my mid-twenties instead of my mid-forties, I would have had two dozen novels under my belt by now instead of a measly five-and-a-half. And you would never
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The Jeremy Vine show (BBC Radio 2) rang the other day to ask whether I’d come on and talk about the newly ennobled Tory peer Howard Flight’s remarks about ‘breeding’ and the underclass. The Jeremy Vine show (BBC Radio 2) rang the other day to ask whether I’d come on and talk about the newly
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I love statistics. Possibly my favourite is the one from Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist: the total number of birds killed in the Exxon Valdez disaster was the same as are killed each day in the US flying into plate-glass windows or the same as are killed in Britain every two days by cats. It’s
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In New York last week I was gobsmacked to discover I’d won the Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism. So gobsmacked that I hadn’t thought to prepare a magnanimous, funny victor’s speech, only a halting, rueful runner’s-up one. In New York last week I was gobsmacked to discover I’d won the Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism.
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It told the story of two best mates, Frankie and Peter, serving in an unidentified northern regiment in Afghanistan where Peter quickly discovers he can’t cope under fire — and as a punishment is made the unit’s ‘camp bitch’ by the sadistic Lance Corporal Buckley (Mackenzie Crook). ‘Our interest’s on the dangerous edge of things.
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In India last week I found myself thinking about Mohandas Gandhi and his famous quote when asked what he thought about western civilisation. ‘I think it would be a good idea,’ he replied. When I first heard that story — probably about the time of the Richard Attenborough biopic majoring on British colonial oppressiveness like
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Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story (Channel 4, Thursday) was unquestionably the most important programme that will appear on British television this year. Britain’s Trillion Pound Horror Story (Channel 4, Thursday) was unquestionably the most important programme that will appear on British television this year. Yes, even more important than Downton Abbey. The thing that really
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Now I know why so many people hate me. It came to me in a flash during dinner with a group of bright, articulate, well-balanced sixth-formers from Roedean girls’ school. I was banging on in my rabid right-wing way about the importance of free markets and the shortcomings of feminism and suchlike when I happened
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When my brother and I were teenagers growing up in the arse end of nowheresville — Bromsgrove to its friend — we were mainly looked after by Nanny VHS. When my brother and I were teenagers growing up in the arse end of nowheresville — Bromsgrove to its friend — we were mainly looked after
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One of the few professional stand-up comics I’ve met who wasn’t bitter, twisted, malign, graceless, grumpy, chippy, egomaniacal and slightly to the left of Stalin is Mark Billingham. One of the few professional stand-up comics I’ve met who wasn’t bitter, twisted, malign, graceless, grumpy, chippy, egomaniacal and slightly to the left of Stalin is Mark
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For some time now I’ve had this idea for a running gag in a comedy sketch series. For some time now I’ve had this idea for a running gag in a comedy sketch series. It would star a character called Unfunny Observational Comic. Each week we’d see him dying a death with his ‘Have you
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The other weekend the Fawn and I were invited to stay at Chilham Castle. Obviously, if you’re Charles Moore, this is no big deal because it’s the kind of thing you do 24/7, 365 days of the year. For us, though — me especially, the Fawn being slightly posher than me — it was a
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James Delingpole says You Know It Makes Sense Apparently I’m in the doghouse. It’s because of a piece I wrote in Tatler which asked the question: ‘If you had a boy and a girl and could only afford to educate one of them privately, which would you choose?’ All other things being equal, I foolhardily
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Don’t get me wrong, I love farmers’ markets. I love going to the fashionable one in Borough, London, and that wonderful rich feeling you get whenever you don’t buy anything. And I love going to the one near me in south London and bantering and haggling with the fish man till he succumbs to giving
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My friend Mickie O’Brien, late of 47 and 44 RM Cdo, died the other day. My friend Mickie O’Brien, late of 47 and 44 RM Cdo, died the other day. I’m not sure how old he was — late 80s, I would imagine — but, whatever, it was good going for a man who should
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One of the few things I respect about mainstream TV is how utterly shallow and addictive it is. In many ways it’s like crack: it doesn’t pretend that it’s good for you but it gets you to where you want to go way more effectively than tofu or wheatgrass juice or organic dolphin-friendly tuna caught
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At a dinner party a couple of years ago I was lucky enough to be sat near one of my heroes, Roger Scruton — like being a couch away from Socrates at a symposium. But then, halfway through, the great man began sounding off on one of the two things he is completely and utterly
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Big River Man (part of More 4’s ‘True Stories’, Tuesday) was one of the most gripping and brilliant, infuriating and disappointing documentaries I’ve ever seen. Big River Man (part of More 4’s ‘True Stories’, Tuesday) was one of the most gripping and brilliant, infuriating and disappointing documentaries I’ve ever seen. It was gripping and brilliant
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What I thought I’d do this summer holidays is catch up with all those classics I’ve been meaning to read for ages: A la recherche du temps perdu, Moby-Dick, David Copperfield, Crime and Punishment, Madame Bovary, Vanity Fair, everything by the Brontës, anything German, Metamorphosis, the Odyssey, the Iliad, most Balzac, anything by P.G. Wodehouse,
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I do wish the Prince of Wales weren’t such a terrible prat because then I wouldn’t have to say it in print and quite ruin my chances of a knighthood. But he is a prat. A dangerous prat at that — as he reminded us yet again just the other day in a speech he