Lara Prendergast

Lara Prendergast

Lara Prendergast is executive editor of The Spectator. She hosts two Spectator podcasts, The Edition and Table Talk, and edits The Spectator’s food and drink coverage.

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Under ctrl, the Epping migrant protests & why is ‘romantasy’ so popular?

39 min listen

First: the new era of censorship A year ago, John Power notes, the UK was consumed by race riots precipitated by online rumours about the perpetrator of the Southport atrocity. This summer, there have been protests, but ‘something is different’. With the introduction of the Online Safety Act, ‘the government is exerting far greater control over what can and can’t be viewed online’. While the act ‘promises to protect minors from harmful material’, he argues that it is ‘the most sweeping attempt by any liberal democracy to bring the online world under the control of the state’.

Tuesday

Lara Prendergast

With Charlotte Ivers

35 min listen

Charlotte Ivers is the restaurant critic for the Sunday Times; most recently she reviewed Lupa, Fenix and Home SW15. Charlotte started her career as a media adviser in Theresa May’s Number 10, before she moved into the world of radio. She was a political correspondent at talkRADIO and Wireless Group before joining Times Radio.  On the podcast, Charlotte tells hosts Lara Prendergast and Olivia Potts about chasing the high she felt from tasting risotto for the first time, how a second date unwittingly converted her from vegetarianism and what she thinks makes a good restaurant critic.

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Soul suckers of private equity, Douglas Murray on Epstein & are literary sequels ‘lazy’?

44 min listen

First up: how private equity is ruining Britain Gus Carter writes in the magazine this week about how foreign private equity (PE) is hollowing out Britain – PE now owns everything from a Pret a Manger to a Dorset village, and even the number of children’s homes owned by PE has doubled in the last five years. This ‘gives capitalism a bad name’, he writes. Perhaps the most symbolic example is in the water industry, with water firms now squeezed for money and saddled with debt. British water firms now have a debt-to-equity ratio of 70%, compared to just 4% in 1991. Britain’s desperation for foreign money has, quite literally, left Britain ‘in the shit’.

Tuesday

Lara Prendergast

With Thomasina Miers, co-founder of Wahaca

17 min listen

Thomasina Miers is a chef, writer and restaurateur who co-founded Wahaca – the award-winning restaurant group that brought bold, sustainable Mexican street food to the UK. Her new book, Mexican Table, is out in August. On the podcast, Thomasina tells Lara about early memories of stirring onion with her mother, why she moved her family across the world to live in Mexico, and why bread is the ultimate comfort food.

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

War and peace, why restaurants are going halal & the great brown furniture transfer

45 min listen

This week: war and peace Despite initial concerns, the ‘Complete and Total CEASEFIRE’ – according to Donald Trump – appears to be holding. Tom Gross writes this week’s cover piece and argues that a weakened Iran offers hope for the whole Middle East. But how? He joined the podcast to discuss further, alongside Gregg Carlstrom, the Economist’s Middle East correspondent based in Dubai. (01:51) Next: why are so many restaurants offering halal meat? Angus Colwell writes about the growing popularity of halal meat in British restaurants. This isn’t confined to certain food groups or particular areas – halal is now being offered across restaurants serving all sorts of cuisine, from Chinese to Mexican. But why is it so popular?

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Starmer at sea, Iran on the brink & the importance of shame

46 min listen

Starmer’s war zone: the Prime Minister’s perilous position This week, our new political editor Tim Shipman takes the helm and, in his cover piece, examines how Keir Starmer can no longer find political refuge in foreign affairs. After a period of globe-trotting in which the Prime Minister was dubbed ‘never-here Keir’, Starmer’s handling of international matters had largely been seen as a strength. But as tensions escalate in the Iran–Israel conflict, global events are beginning to create serious challenges. They threaten not only to derail the government’s economic plans but also to deepen divisions within the Labour party, particularly between the leadership and much of the parliamentary party. Tim joined the podcast alongside The Spectator US editor Freddy Gray.

Tuesday

Lara Prendergast

With Nadine Dorries

15 min listen

Nadine Dorries is one of the most recognisable Conservative politicians from the past two decades. Elected as the MP for Mid Bedfordshire in 2005, she notably clashed with David Cameron and George Osborne (who she called ‘two arrogant posh boys’) and lost the whip in 2012 when she took part in the reality show I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here. Loyal to Boris Johnson, she served in his government and rose to be Culture Secretary. She stood down in 2023 and went on to write about politics in the bestselling books The Plot and Downfall. On the podcast, Nadine tells the Spectator’s executive editor Lara Prendergast about her memories of tinned burgers and Sunday lunches as a child, working long shifts as a nurse in Warrington and what it was like spending a year in Zambia.

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Porn Britannia, Xi’s absence & no more lonely hearts?

47 min listen

OnlyFans is giving the Treasury what it wants – but should we be concerned? ‘OnlyFans,’ writes Louise Perry, ‘is the most profitable content subscription service in the world.’ Yet ‘the vast majority of its content creators make very little from it’. So why are around 4 per cent of young British women selling their wares on the site? ‘Imitating Bonnie Blue and Lily Phillips – currently locked in a competition to have sex with the most men in a day – isn’t pleasant.’ OnlyFans gives women ‘the sexual attention and money of hundreds and even thousands of men’. The result is ‘a cascade of depravity’ that Perry wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy.

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Nigel wants YOU, secularism vs spirituality & how novel is experimental fiction?

52 min listen

How Reform plans to win Just a year ago, Nigel Farage ended his self-imposed exile from politics and returned to lead Reform. Since then, Reform have won more MPs than the Green Party, two new mayoralties, a parliamentary by-election, and numerous councils. Now the party leads in every poll and, as our deputy political editor James Heale reveals in our cover article, is already planning for government. The party’s chair, tech entrepreneur Zia Yusuf, describes the movement as a ‘start-up’; and like a start-up, Reform is scaling up at speed. Among the 676 councillors elected last month, a number are considered more than ready to stand as MPs.

Tuesday

Lara Prendergast

With Jun Tanaka

25 min listen

Jun Tanaka is a Japanese-British chef with over 30 years’ experience in some of London’s most famous restaurants, including La Gavroche, Restaurant Marco Pierre White and The Square. In 2016 he opened the Ninth, which was awarded a Michelin star two years later. On the podcast, Jun tells Lara why the smell of baking brings back early food memories, how Japanese packed lunch is superior to English packed lunch, and why, in his view, you still can’t get a good ramen in London.

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Britain’s billionaire exodus, Michael Gove interviews Shabana Mahmood & Hampstead’s ‘terf war’

42 min listen

The great escape: why the rich are fleeing BritainKeir Starmer worries about who is coming into Britain but, our economics editor Michael Simmons writes in the magazine this week, he should have ‘sleepless nights’ thinking about those leaving. Since 2016, nearly 30,000 millionaires have left – ‘an outflow unmatched in the developed world’.  Tax changes have made Britain a ‘hostile environment’ for the wealthy, yet we are ‘dangerously dependent’ on our highest earners: the top 0.01 per cent pay 6 per cent of all income tax. If the exodus is ‘half as bad’ as those he has spoken to think, Simmons warns, a 2p hike to income tax looms.

Sunday

Lara Prendergast

The quiet frustrations of Puerto Rico

If you like piña coladas – and I do – Puerto Rico will suit you just fine. The cocktail was born on the island in 1954, though debate lingers over exactly where it was first dreamt up. A bartender at the Caribe Hilton is credited with blending coconut cream, pineapple and rum into its original form, but some claim it was at Barrachina that the drink evolved into the slushier, icier version we know today. But does it really matter? What’s important is that in Puerto Rico, you’re never far from a piña colada. Spring break was in full flow when I arrived on this tropical US territory. The college kids were easy to spot. The girls paraded around in string bikinis, which barely held everything in. Some of the boys, meanwhile, bore fresh hickeys, badges of honour.

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Scuzz Nation, the death of English literature & are you a bad house guest?

40 min listen

Scuzz Nation: Britain’s slow and grubby declineIf you want to understand why voters flocked to Reform last week, Gus Carter says, look no further than Goat Man. In one ward in Runcorn, ‘residents found that no one would listen when a neighbour filled his derelict house with goats and burned the animals’ manure in his garden’. This embodies Scuzz Nation – a ‘grubbier and more unpleasant’ Britain, ‘where decay happens faster than repair, where crime largely goes unpunished, and where the social fabric has been slashed, graffitied and left by the side of the road’. On the podcast, Gus speaks to Dr Lawrence Newport, founder of Crush Crime, to diagnose the issues facing Britain – and offer some solutions to stop the rot. (01:28) Next: is it demeaning to study Dickens?

Tuesday

Lara Prendergast

With Mary-Ellen McTague

25 min listen

Mary-Ellen McTague is a chef based in Manchester. She is the culinary driving force behind Aunbury, 4244, the Creameries and her newest venture, Pip at the Treehouse Hotel. Mary-Ellen is also the co-founder of Eat Well MCR, which has delivered almost 100,000 meals across Greater Manchester since 2020 to those sidelined by poverty. On the podcast, she tells Liv and Lara why, as a child, she would only eat orange cheese, why Lancashire hotpot is so nostalgic, her Eureka moment when she decided to become a chef – and where you should eat in Manchester.

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Chambers of horrors, the ‘Dubai-ification’ of London & the enduring obsession with Diana

37 min listen

This week: the left-wing radicalism of Garden CourtGarden Court Chambers has a ‘reassuringly traditional’ facade befitting the historic Lincoln’s Inn Fields in the heart of London’s legal district. Yet, writes Ross Clark in the cover article this week, ‘the facade is just that. For behind the pedimented Georgian windows there operates the most radically effective cell of left-wing activists in Britain’. Ross argues that cases taken on by Garden Court lawyers raise questions of impartiality. Is this just another example of ‘law’s expanding empire’ over the domain of elected politicians, as former Supreme Court judge Jonathan Sumption has warned? The Spectator’s editor, and former Justice Secretary, Michael Gove joined the podcast to discuss.

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

See change, A.I. ghouls & long live the long lunch!

38 min listen

This week: the many crises awaiting the next pope‘Francis was a charismatic pope loved by most of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics’ writes Damian Thompson in the cover article this week. But few of them ‘grasp the scale of the crisis in the Church… The next Vicar of Christ, liberal or conservative’ faces ‘challenges that dwarf those that confronted any incoming pope in living memory’.   Ahead of Pope Francis’s funeral this weekend, Damian joined the podcast alongside the Catholic theologian Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith to unpack all the political intrigue underpinning the upcoming papal conclave. They say that he who enters the conclave as a pope, leaves as a cardinal – do we have any clues to who could emerge as Francis’s successor?

Tuesday

Lara Prendergast

With Roger Pizey, Head of Pastry at Fortnum and Mason

20 min listen

Roger Pizey is a baker, chef and one of the most influential pâtissiers in the UK. He started his culinary journey as an apprentice at La Gavroche under Albert Roux before taking on the role of head of pastry at Marco Pierre White’s Harveys, during the time it achieved three Michelin stars. He has since worked at a number of London institutions and now serves as the head of pastry at Fortnum and Mason. On the podcast he tells Liv and Lara about childhood memories of Manchester tart, what he learnt from Albert Roux and Marco Pierre White, and why Fortnum’s rose éclair is the perfect dessert.

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Easter special: assisted dying, ‘bunny ebola’ & how do you eat your creme egg?

34 min listen

This week: should the assisted dying bill be killed off?Six months after Kim Leadbeater MP launched the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, a group of Labour MPs have pronounced it ‘irredeemably flawed and not fit to become law’. They say the most basic aspects of the bill – having gone through its committee stage – do not hold up to scrutiny. Dan Hitchens agrees, writing in the magazine this week that ‘it’s hard to summarise the committee’s proceedings except with a kind of Homeric catalogue of rejected amendments’ accompanied by a ‘series of disconcerting public statements’.  With a third reading vote approaching, what could it tell us about the country we live in?

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

Trump shock, cousin marriage & would you steal from a restaurant?

39 min listen

This week: Trump’s tariffs – madness or mastermind?‘Shock tactics’ is the headline of our cover article this week, as deputy editor Freddy Gray reflects on a week that has seen the US President upend the global economic order, with back and forth announcements on reciprocal and retaliatory tariffs. At the time of writing, a baseline 10% on imports stands – with higher tariffs remaining for China, Mexico and Canada. The initial announcement last week had led to the biggest global market decline since the start of the pandemic, and left countries scrambling to react, whether through negotiation or retaliation.

Tuesday

Lara Prendergast

With Gok Wan

25 min listen

Gok Wan is a renowned stylist and television presenter. Over the years, Gok has transformed the way we think about style and body image with his much-loved series How to Look Good Naked and Gok’s Fashion Fix – his focus on body positivity was the antidote to the crash-dieting fads which dominated the 2000s. Later in his career, Gok drew upon his Chinese heritage to author books on Chinese cooking. On the podcast he tells Liv and Lara about growing up in a Chinese restaurant, why hosting is more like ‘theatre’ and why he always abides by the five-second rule.