Wormwood Scrubs

Friday

Patrick Kidd

Patrick Kidd, Madeline Grant, Simon Heffer, Lloyd Evans & Toby Young

28 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Patrick Kidd asks why is sport so obsessed with Goats; Madeline Grant wonders why the government doesn’t show J.D. Vance the real Britain; Simon Heffer reviews Progress: A History of Humanity’s Worst Idea; Lloyd Evans provides a round-up of Edinburgh Fringe; and, Toby Young writes in praise of Wormwood Scrubs – the common, not the prison. Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

Toby Young

Wormwood Scrubs, my deserted little bit of paradise 

On the face of it, Wormwood Scrubs is not particularly appealing. I don’t mean the prison, but the common in the north-eastern corner of Hammersmith and Fulham. It is 170 acres of unsupervised scrubland with enough wooded areas to attract a smattering of predatory homosexuals – a poor man’s Hampstead Heath. Often, as I walk the dog around the perimeter, the only people I encounter are single men in tight T-shirts who eye me enquiringly as we pass. I respond by looking pointedly at Mali, as if to say: ‘Can’t you see I’m walking my dog, not cruising for action?’ Then again, Mali is a Cavapoochon, so perhaps they don’t