Gareth Roberts is a TV scriptwriter and novelist who has worked on Doctor Who and Coronation Street
In my time I’ve watched a lot of TV, and so I’ve seen a lot of bad TV. But the interview with Graham Linehan this week on TalkTV marks a new nadir. Rosanna Lockwood – who I must admit I’d previously never heard of – is currently standing in for Piers Morgan as host
Steve Barclay is appalled. A source close to the health secretary has told the Mail that he is ‘appalled to hear some NHS managers are failing to respond’ to a directive that told them not to let Stonewall write their ‘inclusivity guidance’. But fear not! He ‘will be discussing with officials what further steps to
Electric cars made in China could be turned off remotely, immobilising them instantly and crippling the West. That terrifying prospect was highlighted by Professor Jim Saker, president of the Institute of the Motor Industry. ‘The car manufacturer may be in Shanghai and could stop 100,000 to 300,000 cars across Europe thus paralysing a country,’ Saker warned.
So, the figures are in. The total weekly audience for BBC Radio 2 has dropped by a million in the last three months. Those are the three months, significantly, since the somewhat rushed and awkward departure of its biggest draw, the immaculate and imperturbable Ken Bruce. Radio 4 has likewise managed to lose 1.3 million
The Cambridge Dictionary defines ‘normie’ as ‘a normal person, who behaves in the same way as most other people in society’. Merriam-Webster tells us it refers ‘to one whose tastes, lifestyle, habits, and attitude are mainstream and far from the cutting edge, or a person who is otherwise not notable or remarkable’. Oh, how I miss normies. Flicking through the streaming channels recently, I took a swerve
Have Just Stop Oil finally met their match? The splendidly named counter-organisation ‘Just Stop Pissing People Off’ have pulled off two bracing publicity coups in the last week. First, in Elephant & Castle in south London last Wednesday JSPPO ‘kettled’ JSO activists who were planning one of their slow marches down the public highway, forming
28 min listen
This week (01.13) Freddy Gray, on why Ron De Santis is no longer ‘de future’ in the race for the Presidency, (09.50) Mary Wakefield recounts the train journey from hell,(16.10) we hear from Gareth Roberts about the screenwriters and actors striking over AI potentially taking their jobs and (22.24) Rachel Johnson shares her diary of
38 min listen
This week: In his cover piece for the magazine Ross Clark writes about ‘the war on motorists’. He argues that the backlash against London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s expansion of Ulez is just the beginning, as motorists – and Labour MPs – prepare to revolt. He joins the podcast alongside Ben Clatworthy, transport correspondent at the Times, to
We are edging into the third month of the strike by the Writers Guild of America, called because of shrivelling residual royalty payments from streaming movies and TV, as well as concern about AI such as ChatGPT being used to generate story ideas – and indeed to write scripts. Hollywood’s screenwriters have now been joined
Clive Myrie, now probably the top face of the BBC, and host of their television coverage of the Proms, had a strange one on Twitter this weekend. A fan gushed at him that ‘[the Proms are] completely accessible – no formal dress code and you can buy a Prom ticket on the day for the
The mucky allegations about a ‘household name’ BBC star – who is said to have paid thousands of pounds to a teenager for sexually explicit pictures – has exposed our obsession with TV presenters. We invite these people into our homes every day. Stars we never meet become familiar, a part of our lives and
I read a lot of fiction. I always have. It’s not unusual for me to have three of four books on the go at the same time, which I read in rotation, a chapter at a time. I say this not as a brag. It just is. I do it because I really enjoy doing
In his most recent column for the Mail, Boris Johnson fires a shot at, among other things, ‘the leftie twittersphere’. Lest we forget, that would be the same Boris Johnson that, during his time as prime minister, told us there was ‘nothing wrong with being woke’; who seemed remarkably unbothered about mass illegal immigration; who
After Spotify sacked/let go/‘mutually agreed to part ways’ with, in the words of one of its executives, those ‘f-ing grifters’ Harry and Meghan, there have much discussion about where it all went wrong for the podcasting pair. The general consensus is that the Sussexes may have overestimated public interest in anything they have to say
You may have missed it amid all the other news of the last few days, but the aliens have apparently landed. In fact, they’ve been landing – or more commonly crashing, the clumsy green scatterbrains – for decades. And just like in the movies, secret military departments around the world have been scooping up the
It’s forty years since the Smiths released their first single ‘Hand In Glove’. We’ve already seen a slew of articles on the anniversary, and the clichés about this most singular, most wonderful pop group are doing their weary rounds yet again. The Guardian tells us that the Smiths are incredibly influential. But this is sadly
The government has paid a whacking out-of-court settlement of £100,000 to Anna Thomas, a whistleblower sacked after she tried to warn them about the infiltration of the DWP by political activists. Baroness Falkner, chair of the equality watchdog, was placed under investigation after a spurious ‘dossier’ of complaints was compiled by staff, which just so
It’s strange to reach the end of something you’ve relished with a sense of relief. HBO’s Succession has given me and many others lashings of pleasure, but I was glad as the credits rolled on the final episode. Fascinating though they were, it was satisfying to wave goodbye to the Roys, every one of them
The rift between Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield, long-standing sobbing/giggling presenters of This Morning, has been one of the big talking points of recent weeks. A torrent of Holly ‘n’ Phil headlines has covered every twist and turn: Holly’s shock This Morning departure! (She clocked off ten minutes early to attend a function.) Shock This
Radio 4 is in trouble. Listening figures for the station have dipped to their lowest level since 2007. The Today programme, Radio 4’s flagship morning show, is doing particularly badly: its audience fell 12 per cent year on year, from 6.5 million to 5.7 million, according to Rajar. For anyone who has tuned in to Radio
