Katie Jenkins

Katie Jenkins is Digital Editor (Production) at The Spectator.

Tuesday

Katie Jenkins

We have forgotten Diana

From our UK edition

We need to discuss Diana. Or we might ‘forget her soon enough’. So gasped the past week's front pages as the Earl of Spencer sparred with King Charles in the latest War of the Wilting Roses. While news alerts played ping-pong between what the princess’s brother and ex-husband had or had not said, a second Diana story was racking up views on TikTok. Trending under the ‘Princess of Wales’ were clips of her little black ‘revenge dress’, on display at Sotheby’s in London before it goes under the hammer in New York. ‘Diana was such a baddy!’ posted one user with a clip of the 1994 cocktail dress. ‘This ICONIC dress belongs in a museum!’ commented another. ‘Don’t sell it to Kim Kardashian!’ waded in several more. Are we honouring the People’s Princess?

Tuesday

Katie Jenkins

How to eat your way through Bourdain’s New York

To experience the Big Apple properly, you don’t just take a bite: you take a carbohydrate-laced mouthful. Think smoked salmon bagels thick with cream cheese or $2 pizza slices dripping with grease. Think warm, salted pretzels, or frankfurters from a street kiosk, or steaks as big as the genetically modified cows from whence they came. Even so, for the full I <3 NYC gastronomic voyage, there’s only one restaurateur whose bagel-crumb trail is worth following: Anthony Bourdain, of course. The ‘bad boy’ Big Apple he represented is a city long devoured and spat out Why, eight years after his death, are we still feasting on our obsession with ‘Tony’ (as last month’s biopic would have us call him)?

Wednesday

Katie Jenkins

Do I need an ‘attachment coach’?

Towards the tail-end of my 20s, I fell in love with a man who (for legal reasons) we’ll simply refer to as J. J had been a good friend since journalism school. Think dark eyes and public school vowels, like south London’s less hacked off answer to Hugh Grant. He told me which football team to support (Spurs, which didn’t age well); I told him which novels to read on holiday. He took me for pizza after I’d had a bad day; I took him for pints after his. He told me to ‘treat men mean to keep ‘em keen’; I told him to just bloody communicate. By the time we discussed becoming ‘something more’ seven years into our friendship, it seemed too When Harry Met Sally to be true.

Wednesday

Katie Jenkins

Nobody goes to Wimbledon for the tennis

From our UK edition

Two hours and 17 minutes after arriving at Wimbledon, I realise I hate tennis. Hate it? I loathe it. All ‘40-love’ jargon and thwack thwack of a ball. It’s football without the pack mentality. Badminton with better PR.   ‘Why are you even here then?’ asks an Argentinian tennis agent when I say this by the players’ lounge. ‘This is the oldest tournament in the world! It’s the best!’ He’s right. He’s an international expert so of course he’s right. Even if all his singles players were knocked out by day three.  But, of course, that’s exactly why I’m here.

Saturday

Katie Jenkins

‘I’d revamp the White House’: An interview with Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen  

From our UK edition

Unsurprisingly, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen (LLB) doesn’t judge No. 10’s recent occupants by their policies. Rather, it’s their interior design. First there was Theresa May, ‘desperately trying to keep everything lidded and controlled in mid-century John Lewis’. Then there was Boris Johnson in a ‘ridiculous operatic explosion’ of Lulu Lytle. As for Andy Burnham, he’ll probably go ‘mad for Manchester with graffiti everywhere’. If LLB were asked to redecorate No. 10, would he do it? ‘Well I’d have to really get a skittle on if it was for Keir Starmer, wouldn't I?’ he laughs.

Thursday

Katie Jenkins

Strictly won’t survive without Claudia (or Tess)

From our UK edition

Put down the glitterball. Mop up the sequins. The news – oh, the unthinkable news – has arrived: Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman are quickstepping away from Strictly Come Dancing.  ‘We have loved working as a duo and hosting Strictly has been an absolute dream,’ the pair announced on Instagram this morning. ‘We were always going to leave together and now feels like the right time.’ You can almost hear the wails from Broadcasting House: how sad, how shocking, how very bittersweet! Another era of prime-time ratings dribbling down the drain. The show wasn’t just about the ratings or the romance rumours or, even, the glamour.

Sunday

Katie Jenkins

Don’t underestimate Bolivia’s election

From our UK edition

Towering above the baroque low-rises of Bolivia’s largest city is the 29-storey presidential palace. Built by the then left-wing leader Evo Morales in 2018, the £25 million glass-fronted skyscraper comes kitted with a designer-furnished gym, spa, helipad, three underground floors and even a private elevator for the president’s personal use. ‘Morales claimed he built this for the people. That it was the symbol of the new Bolivia,’ said my ‘guide’, an unemployed biochemistry graduate, when I visited the building in La Paz last year. Gesturing at the golden motifs adorning its facade, he added with a wry smile: ‘This is what socialism really looks like. No?’ Today, the ‘Great House of the People’ as the skyscraper is named will get a new resident.

Sunday

Katie Jenkins

Running is being ruined by the ‘wellness’ brigade

From our UK edition

Is there a more obnoxious introduction in 21st-century Britain than the words ‘I’m a runner’? ‘I’m a runner,’ followed by the gulp of a protein shake or (shudder) the announcement of a 5k personal best. ‘I’m a runner,’ from a wheezing wannabe in carbon-plated trainers: ‘The shoes Kelvin Kiptum wore when he broke the marathon world record? Yes, yes they are.’ I am no Kelvin Kiptum. I’m not even Simon Pegg in Run Fatboy Run. But I am a runner, with the blackened toenails, tight hamstrings and race medals to prove it. It seems that those things are no longer worth much, though.