James Delingpole reviews television for The Spectator.
Many years ago, when I decided to ‘become’ a novelist, I shipped myself off to a village in south-west France called St Jean de Fos for three months, banned myself from reading any novels in English (lest they corrupt my style) and became an obsessive maker of French dishes like cassoulet because my first book
‘I am Howard Roark in a world of Ellsworth Tooheys…’ I tweeted in a fit of depression the other day, though I rather wish I hadn’t. I’m not an architect — and if I were I definitely wouldn’t be a humourless monomaniac into concrete and influenced by Le Corbusier; I don’t have hair ‘the exact
I have been depressed lately and Why Did You Kill My Dad? (BBC1, Monday) wasn’t what I needed at all. I have been depressed lately and Why Did You Kill My Dad? (BBC1, Monday) wasn’t what I needed at all. In it award-winning film-maker Julian Hendy interviewed the families of some of the 100 innocents
No it’s OK, I didn’t mind one teeny tiny bit that Matt Ridley wrote an entire Spectator cover story on Climategate and the blogosphere last week without once mentioning the name of the brilliant Spectator journalist who broke the story on his Telegraph blog, and popularised the name Climategate, and got 1.5 million hits in
The closer we get to the Great Disappointment — aka the forthcoming Heath administration — the more I miss Margaret Thatcher. The closer we get to the Great Disappointment — aka the forthcoming Heath administration — the more I miss Margaret Thatcher. Just how much I was reminded by Michael Cockerell’s new series The Great
If I’d written the film it would have been called Four Funerals and a Wedding, because personally I find funerals much more fun. Not all funerals, obviously. But the funeral of someone who’s not a close relative and who’s had a good innings can be a very splendid occasion — as I was reminded the
I’ve got another brilliant idea for a TV series. I’ve got another brilliant idea for a TV series. It’s called MPs Walled Up in Scorpion-Filled, Ebola-Ridden, Plague-Rat-Infested, Acid-Drenched, Radioactive Tower Block of Slow Hellish Screaming Death. All right, so the title does give away the premise, slightly, but I’d still watch it, wouldn’t you? 24/7.
Bellamy’s People (BBC2, Thursday) began life in 2006 as a spoof Radio Four phone-in show called Down the Line presented by ‘award-winning’ Gary Bellamy (Rhys Thomas) with the Fast Show’s Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse playing the various callers. Bellamy’s People (BBC2, Thursday) began life in 2006 as a spoof Radio Four phone-in show called
The highlight of my Christmas holidays was taking the family to see Avatar. It’s not often a film comes along which wife, Boy (11), Girl (9) and I are able to adore in equal measure. But James Cameron’s $200 million epic ego-fest hit the spot perfectly and for those families out there still wavering, I
I think I might be about the second-last person on earth finally to have replaced his squat, bulbous, stone-age TV set with one of those new angled, wide-screen, narrow, HD-ready jobs. My worry is it’s not big enough. ‘No, you can’t have a 50-inch. No way are you having a 50-inch. Not in MY house,’
Ever since I gave up watching TV over Christmas and New Year I have become much, much happier. The reason Yuletide TV is so depressing is that — as with those tantalising presents under the tree — it’s fraught with a level of expectation it can never possibly fulfil. You think, ‘At last: I’m free.
It has been a weird, weird thing having a ringside seat at the messy unravelling of the greatest scientific scandal in the history of the world. The only experience in my life even vaguely similar was queuing outside the Wag club in the spring of 1988 watching all the straight people staring at us freaks,
I had to transfer some money into my Polish builder’s bank account the other day, so I rang up the Lloyds TSB Execmaster Super VIP service helpline. I had to transfer some money into my Polish builder’s bank account the other day, so I rang up the Lloyds TSB Execmaster Super VIP service helpline. As
‘Oh please let no one call Trevor McDonald a nignog. Oh, please. Oh please!’ It was sometime towards the end of the 1980s (before Britain’s first black newsreader got his knighthood) and my brother, my sister and I were standing on the pavement watching the village carnival go by, each of us offering up the
With hindsight it was probably a mistake to sit down with my daughter to watch Enid (BBC4, Monday). Before it started, Girl was a massive fan, especially of the Naughtiest Girl series and The Magic Faraway Tree. By the end, she pronounced herself so disgusted with the evil hag that she swore never to read
I don’t know quite how to put this without sounding nauseatingly smug or dangerously hubristic, but I think I might finally have become almost-famous. The revelation occurred while I was doing Vanessa Feltz’s show on BBC Radio London. I was burbling away in my usual self-hating way about how needy I am and unappreciated, and
A few months ago my wife said something to me so awful and shocking I contemplated divorce. ‘I don’t want to watch any more war programmes with you,’ she said. ‘It’s like watching paint dry.’ Imagine, then, my secret joy when, right near the end of Into the Storm (BBC2, Monday), I detected beside me
The global warming lobby, and the terrier who won’t let go two lines If the devil is in the detail then Satan’s foremost emissary on earth must be Christopher Booker. The Booker does the kind of proper, old-school things that journalists hardly ever bother with in this new age of aggregation and flip bloggery: he
Oh. My. God. Can it really be, like, 16 years since it was 1993? I very much fear it can and the reason the thought is so bothersome is that I remember thinking, even back then, ‘Blimey, I really am getting on a bit. Can’t do pills nearly as often as I used to. The
The Kindly Ones — Les Bienveillantes if you read it in French, which I didn’t — is probably the most brilliant piece of trash fiction ever written. I dedicated most of the summer to Jonathan Littell’s much-praised, internationally bestselling blockbuster and loved almost every minute of it. But it’s definitely not as great as Le