James Innes-Smith

Is there anything more dispiriting at this time of year than the dreaded 'celebrity' memoir – the publishing industry's annual two-fingered salute to all us starving mid-list authors? Last week I managed to weave my way through a heaving Waterstones, eventually arriving at one of those vast tables groaning with needy 'personalities'; there they all were, present and correct in their neat hierarchical piles (the higher the advance the bigger the stack). This year's roll call of vaguely familiar faces has been much the same as any other year.

With all of our institutions now firmly under the iron fist of progressivism it was only a matter of time before social justice mission creep slipped under the doormat and into the home. You can only promulgate the idea that we live under a tyrannical patriarchy for so long before young people take notice and begin to lose trust in the whole idea of intimate relationships with the opposite sex. Fourth wave feminism has shifted its focus from the work place to male/female relationships and a growing underclass of men is turning its back on women by joining poisonous underground groups such as INCELS and Men Going their Own Way (MGTOW). Why would any young person choose to settle down and have kids against such a toxic backdrop? Well, increasingly they aren't.

There's an air of familiarity about the former head chef of Claridge's penchant for plant-based food. It was reported this weekend that he has left his role after the hotel passed on his plans for an entirely plant-based menu. All credit to Claridge's who are one of the few institutions not to have swallowed this particular culinary cool aid. And yet these sorts of gastro-themed spats are becoming all too common. The all-or-nothing attitude of many plant-based devotees has made dining out an increasingly divisive experience. Remember when the 'vegetarian option' meant making do with a cheese omelette and ethical eating involved skipping the prawn cocktail starter and going straight for the steak and chips?

Even a few seconds can feel like an eternity when your favourite Spectator TV debate is interrupted by a sweaty bloke in a bedsit flogging digital currency. YouTube understands how painful its ludicrous advertising interludes have become which is presumably why they invented the five-second skip button. Regular ads are bad enough but it's those twenty-minute infomercials that somehow manage to catch us off guard that really grate. How does YouTube know when I am least able to reach for the skip button? It happened again the other day during my morning shower; midway through a favourite song a perky female voice barged in to ask whether it was 'ok to call someone queer'.

It's National Inclusion Week when we all come together to 'celebrate everyday inclusion in all its forms'. This year's theme is 'unity' where 'thousands of inclusioneers worldwide' are being encouraged to 'take action to be #UnitedForInclusion.' In the bewildering world of identity politics, however, there is one group of excluded individuals you won't be hearing much about. As a demographic, they suffer from all kinds of discrimination and yet social justice activists seem uninterested in their plight. Unlike oppressed minorities, this particular group may be in the majority and yet they garner little in the way of sympathy from anyone, barring their mums, perhaps.

The horror of August's mass shooting by 22-year-old Jake Davison caused many commentators to point towards a dangerous underbelly of male disaffection. But what many overlooked was the fact that the shadowy underground group of disenfranchised males that inspired Davison to take up arms is part of a much larger network of male activism dating back to the late 1970s when the men's liberation movement split into two camps consisting of the pro-feminist men's movement and the anti-feminist men's rights lobby. Focusing on what they saw as male disadvantage, oppression and discrimination, the men's rights movement hardened into Men's Rights Activism (MRA), an informal network of online communities known as the 'Manosphere'.

With so many of us forced to holiday at home this year, that most English of institutions, the country house hotel, has been experiencing something of a renaissance. The number of guests desperate for a slice of upper crust hospitality after months of slumming it at home has rocketed so you may struggle to book even the humblest of maid's quarters this summer. That said, my advice is to steer well clear. For all their bucolic grandeur, these odes to outdated class structures have a tendency to trigger a toxic combination of unwarranted snobbery and 'what-can-we-get-away-with' mediocrity. The hushed, awkward reverence that insists we remain on our best behaviour makes me want to lob loaded cake-stands at the fake family portraits.

Is it any surprise that research carried out by the corporation for its annual report found that more than a quarter of men feel that the BBC 'no longer reflects people like me'? In a concerted effort to redress gender imbalance men are gradually being airbrushed out. Across much of the BBC men have become something of a rarity. Many of the corporation's high-profile dramas are now female-focused, including the Pursuit of Love, I May Destroy You, Starstruck and Motherland. Female presenters dominate shows such as BBC Breakfast, The One Show and Songs of Praise. A rejuvenated BBC Three will be almost exclusively female led while Radio 4 has turned into one long episode of Woman's Hour.

The Duchess of Sussex says she wants her father/son themed children's book The Bench 'to depict another side of masculinity — one grounded in connection, emotion, and softness.' This assumes of course that men aren't already connected, emotional and soft, which, as a touchy-feely kind of bloke I find a little off.  Imagine if I had written a children's book about a mother/daughter relationship (that could never happen, of course) and then announced that I wanted to depict 'another side of femininity - one grounded in connection, emotion, and softness.

I would love to have been there at the original pitch meeting for Friends, 'So yeah, it's about a bunch of friends.' Pitching The Office must have been similarly brusque, 'It's about some office workers working in an office.' And The Simpsons? 'Oh yeah, that's the one about a family called… the Simpsons'. Like all great comedies, the premise for Friends is so simple it sounds almost facile. But embedded within the simplicity of the idea is the entirety of human experience; the joys, the sadnesses, the heartache and the tragedy; it's all there in Ross's remarkable range of expressions that ran from deep melancholy to boyish wonder.

One of my favourite Alan Partridge moments — and there have been many — is the now infamous scene from I'm Alan Partridge, where north Norfolk's most beloved DJ — Alan's words not mine — is chased down a remote country track by a psychotic stalker. On reaching a dead end our hero leaps over a fence and lands in one of those awkward forward lunges where in order to avoid tripping over you have to run to catch up with yourself.  This brief but beautifully realised moment encapsulates everything that made this particular incarnation of Alan Partridge such an excruciating but enjoyable watch. Here we see the cowardly little man desperately trying to maintain a modicum of dignity as his world collapses around him.

When racist graffiti appeared on the walls of a dormitory at Albion College in Michigan, the college heads and student body were outraged. The graffiti, which included racial slurs, anti-Semitic remarks and multiple references to the Ku Klux Klan, prompted college officials to put forward a $1,000 bounty for anyone with information as to the perpetrator. Albion College President Mathew Johnson warned that ‘if they are Albion College students, they will also immediately be subject to the student conduct process — including the potential for suspension or expulsion’. Criminal charges would follow. More than 450 Albion College students and staff members marched across town to boycott the injustices they believed were happening on campus.

MeToo may have fundamentally shifted the way men and women interact, but that hasn’t stopped a musty, old turn of the century relationship manual from making a surprise comeback. In Sherry Argov's 2001 bestseller Why Men Love Bitches, the journalist offers tips on how to bag a man. Her principal premise is a surprising one: that women should hold off having sex. And a new generation seem to be heeding her advice: the book has been a favourite subject of Gen Z TikTok videos as well as making a reappearance on the Sunday Times bestseller list. Argov's book emerged out of the barely recognisable age before online dating, slut shaming and revenge porn.