Spectacular invective: Jonathan Meades lets rip about Boris and Brexit

The title alludes to Jonathan Meades’s first collection of criticism, Peter Knows What Dick Likes, and to the album by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in their scabrous personae of Derek and Clive. Meades explains the title in his introduction: ‘It’s akin to “Two-Hour Dry Cleaners” where the operative, out of her head on perchloroethylene, tells you that’s just the name of the shop and it’ll be ready a week Tuesday.’ This does not exactly clear matters up but at least I found it funny.

And there is much to find funny here. A critic or essayist who is incapable of humour should be discarded. That said, bear in mind Meades’s humour, like that of Derek and Clive, is often not for the squeamish. If you think eating cats and dogs is not and never can be funny then avoid his second essay on Brussels and his one called ‘Pedigree Chumps’, on Bill Wiggins’s Dog Meat (Consumption) (Offences) Bill 2017-19: ‘The Bill… is not, despite its name, intended to prevent humans from stealing and eating meat intended for their pet dog.’ He calls Bill’s Bill’s supporters ‘the Bonio Bunch’, among other things, and has this to say about Daniel Kawczynski:

Does the left part of his brain know what the right is up to? His enthusiasms are, evidently, dogs, along with his newfound homosexuality and Saudi Arabia. An awkward trio, to say the least.

As might be inferred from this, one of Meades’s targets is easy populism; as he reminds us more than once, the mob voted to save Barabbas. (Not that he has much time for any religions, describing the Bible, the Quran and the Bhagavad-Gita as ‘palpable drivel’.)