Jim Grenville

As seen in the Daily Telegraph Tis the end of silly season, when those of us who presume to scribe for a living scrape the bottom of the barrel. So we return to Markle, Duchess of Sussex and driver of clicks, summoning up the venom and spewing it over her American habits (shudder). Truth be told, I am not dispositionally opposed to her, partly for raison d’biographie. Having failed to make it to Cambridge on the first attempt, I snuck in as a postgraduate studying for a two-year MPhil. I showed up to my Middle Common Room in a borrowed Old Carthusian tie, a too-big Barbour (‘it belonged to an uncle in the Guards, dear’) and an invented family connection to the ‘Duke of Omnium’.

As seen in the Daily Telegraph I am sitting in my living room watching Songs of Praise, when a sudden burning smell assails my nostrils. I leap up from my armchair, deposing my poor delicate bichon frisé Wordsworth from my lap. ‘WILDFIRE,’ I shriek. I had heard the news of thousands being displaced in the South of France, but I never imagined the fires would reach Otford, Kent. Leaving Wordsworth to his fate, I make for the back door in the kitchen, only to discover the real culprit: my toaster, billowing black smoke. Oh heavens, I must have forgotten. Retrieving the two slabs of solid carbon from the now-defunct toaster, I muse on how, even if I hadn’t been about to be consumed by a climate change-induced wildfire, my fear of one raises an important point.

As seen in the Telegraph Two thoughts on the sad and controversial death of Henry Nowak. The first is about Kemi. Wow. She really is The One. While Nigel Farage has angrily stomped about, demanding certain laws and policies be changed to stop something like that happening again, Mrs Badenoch instead forensically called for people to be mindful of their language. Mummy has done it again. Little do they know that until 2020 there were no racial tensions in this country at all And here is thought two: I despise Americans, and the Americanisation of our culture. Nowak’s death has opened the floodgates to all sorts of barking, ill-informed commentary from the Yanks about this seat of Mars.