Steerpike

So, farewell then, The Mash Report. This morning the Sun reports that the newly appointed BBC director general Tim Davie has ordered the axing of the notoriously unfunny BBC Two show after four series. The show’s creators were told at the time of the appointment to find a better balance of targets than ‘digs at the Tories’. Not that this seems to have been taken on board by the show's hosts.  Sources close to the Beeb’s top man report reportedly thought it disproportionately critical of Brexit — perhaps unsurprising given its main star Nish Kumar declared to the Guardian in 2019 that he had ‘still not got over it’.

In the wake of last summer's Black Lives Matter protests, a number of leading British private schools announced plans to decolonise their syllabus. Winchester, Fettes, Ampleforth and St Paul's Girls were all reported to be 'formulating new approaches' to teaching about Britain's colonial past and whether subject curriculums were inclusive enough. Now Mr S can reveal that the Haberdashers' Aske's schools are the latest to join the list. The governing body of the Haberdashers' Company has written to parents and guardians at its famous boys and girls schools in Elstree and its sister Federation in South London about its benefactor Robert Aske, a London merchant who died in 1689.

Statues toppled, buildings renamed — last summer's BLM inspired iconoclasm changed the face of streets and landmarks across Britain. Surely though this reckoning with the past was merely restricted to the physical manifestation of our shameful past? Apparently not, according to the director of Kew Gardens. In an interview with the Evening Standard, Richard Deverell has today spoken of his concerns about the history of the plants based in the Royal Botanic Gardens in south west London.  The world heritage site plans to 'completely change' the display information on plants such as sugar cane to reflect their links to empire and slavery.

Trebles all round at the New York Times after another dose of anti-British bile. Mr S last week noted that the Gray Lady's news reporting of Covid in the UK mixed misrepresentation with outdated figures. This week the newspaper has followed this up with the inevitable crowing comment piece to follow Harry and Meghan's Oprah interview. Titled 'Down with the British Monarchy' it mocks the Queen as 'some utterly random rich wastrel' and claims her own 'claim to legitimacy' is being 'the child of the child of the child of someone who was, centuries ago, the nation’s biggest gangster.