Death! Death!

‘So what led to these feelings of victimisation?’
‘You affirmed your kids? We told ours to stop being idiots.’
‘Right kids, bedtime.’
‘True enlightenment is only achievable if you listen to my podcast.’
‘If he really wanted to save the planet, he’d throw soup at a Van Gogh.’
‘I’ve been on Ozempic.’
‘He’s planning to let his treehouse out on Airbnb.’
‘It’s the only reduction our water company has ever offered us.’
‘He’s very sensitive to comments made online.’
Is Stewart Lee a comedy genius or just another smug leftie comic? The country’s 41st-best stand-up, as he likes to remind us in reference to a Channel 4 poll, has built up so many protective layers that he is almost beyond criticism – which I imagine suits him just fine. As if to prove the point, he’s posted dozens of negative reviews on his website, presumably to get one over on his more unenlightened critics: ‘See, not even your wrongheaded opinions affect me.’ He’s even included a quote from our own James Delingpole, writing in the Daily Telegraph, who describes Lee as ‘not funny and has nothing to say’. So
Have you ever heard of Duddies’ Branch? Chances are, you haven’t – because, firstly, its brief moment of fame came many years ago and, secondly, Duddies’ Branch does not actually exist. To explain: ‘Duddies’ Branch’ is the politely fake name given by an American anthropologist, Rena Gazaway, to a real and isolated settlement in a hollow of the Appalachian mountains (almost certainly in Kentucky). Herself born into ‘hillbilly’ culture, Gazaway spent many months of the 1960s living with the people of Duddies’ Branch. She later published her findings in a shocking 1969 book called The Longest Mile. What Gazaway encountered in that lost wooded ‘holler’ reads like dystopian fiction, even
Two British cities, Dundee and Nottingham, have been chosen as trial sites for a new government scheme to be piloted next year: state-subsidised restaurants. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has put up £1.5 million for the 12-month trial, initiated by the campaign group Nourish Scotland. If the restaurants are successful, they’ll be rolled out across Britain – nourishing us all – with a subsidised meal for £3. Inspired by second world war state-funded canteens, they’re going to be called ‘Public Diners’ – clever branding, with its quasi-American vibe. Their branding matters because – as anyone who ever ate greasy slop from a tray at a state-run stolovaya in
Rosé, like a lot of wine, is not much good. And yet people love it, for the simple fact that it is pink. This reminds them of all nice things – and especially of warm summer evenings somewhere non-grotty. Like the south of France. Or… the Napa Valley. That is where the new branded rosé of Meghan Markle comes from – the latest in a carousel of celebrity rosés. The output of ‘As Ever’, her lifestyle brand, the wine is a ‘thoughtfully curated’ vintage. The former Suits star is pleased to offer ‘a roundness and depth of flavour’ that ‘invites you to celebrate warm summer moments with the ones you
The clue is in his appearance. The sandy-haired, blue-eyed, 6ft 2in star Jannik Sinner is the world’s No. 1 tennis champion and has just clinched his – and Italy’s – first win in the world-famous Wimbledon tournament. Sinner, the new hero of tennis after his victory over the previous reigning Wimbledon champion Carlos Alcaraz, may hold an Italian passport, but he doesn’t look or sound like a typical Italian. In fact, Sinner is a member of one of the many ethnic and linguistic minorities who populate the supposedly united countries of the European Union. The 24-year-old was born and brought up in the Alpine province of South Tyrol – known
Homer is much praised, but I find him unreliable. The Mediterranean cove in which we were swimming, for example, was not in the least wine-dark. We were turning around and swimming back, the sights on display at the nudist end of the beach having startled the spluttering elegance of my head-above-water breast-stroke. ‘I wouldn’t mind if it was only young women,’ I said to my wife, as we swam back. Rather than accepting my dispassionate nod toward prevailing cultural aesthetics, she replied she didn’t mind in the slightest, and couldn’t see the harm. An unspoken charge of puritanism hung in the air. ‘It was just a bit too much like
Modern irritations seem to come in threes. No sooner do you trip over a Lime bike ‘parked’ on its side in the middle of the pavement than you discover that the self-checkout in the Co-op has a handwritten note stating ‘out of order’ taped to it and the man in front of you in the queue for the sole remaining human-staffed counter is attempting to buy (and scratch) 14 lottery tickets. That’s what happened on my venture out of the house this morning, anyway. The experience sent me scurrying home again to muse on whether I have had a more dispiriting, in the picayune sense, start to any morning this