Bbc

Sunday

James Delingpole

What would we do without nutcases like Steve Backshall

Down the Mighty River with Steve Backshall (BBC2) was perfect Sunday-night TV — one of the most enjoyable adventure travelogues I’ve watched in ages. So I was quite surprised to see it reviewed lukewarmly by another critic. One of the critic’s objections was that the scene where Backshall spots a bird of paradise through his binoculars by the Baliem river in Papua New Guinea was a bit crap. Why couldn’t we have seen it in loving close-up detail, as you would on a David Attenborough? But this is precisely what I loved about the documentary. It had a roughness, an unpredictability, a spontaneity that you rarely find on TV any

Thursday

James Delingpole

To die for

Down the Mighty River with Steve Backshall (BBC2) was perfect Sunday-night TV — one of the most enjoyable adventure travelogues I’ve watched in ages. So I was quite surprised to see it reviewed lukewarmly by another critic. One of the critic’s objections was that the scene where Backshall spots a bird of paradise through his binoculars by the Baliem river in Papua New Guinea was a bit crap. Why couldn’t we have seen it in loving close-up detail, as you would on a David Attenborough? But this is precisely what I loved about the documentary. It had a roughness, an unpredictability, a spontaneity that you rarely find on TV any

Kate Chisholm

A matter of life and death | 16 March 2017

It was the crime story that showed us just how much China has changed since its years of social, political and economic isolation. The discovery on 16 November 2011 of the dead body of the British businessman Neil Heywood in Room 1605 of the Lucky Holiday Hotel in the Chinese city of Chongqing was not in itself so shocking. Sordid maybe, as it was declared by the Chinese authorities that he had died of excessive alcohol consumption. But nothing more than that. The revelations that followed, though, transformed the case into an international cause célèbre, the inner workings of Chinese politics unravelling before the greedy eyes of the foreign media.

Friday

Steerpike

John McDonnell’s Question Time excuse falls short

On Thurday’s Question Time, there was one politician notably absent from the panel. For a second time, John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, had to cancel his appearance — this time putting it down to train delays. And whose fault is this? Well, the Conservatives obviously — as if Labour were in power the trains would be nationalised: 4 hour delay on train & flights full, so sorry to miss @bbcquestiontime. Jinxed! Won't have this problem when we renationalise the railways. — John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) March 9, 2017 However, there’s a problem. First, those flights sold out after Mr McDonnell had been booked on a flight – but he arrived

Steerpike Steerpike

Watch: BBC pundit’s interview interrupted… by his children

Oh dear. They say never work with animals or children, but what about when your own children get in the way of your job? This is what happened on BBC news when an American man by the name of Robert Kelly appeared ‘down the line’ to discuss the unfolding situation in South Korea. Alas things took a turn for the worse when his children made their way into the study — leaving the BBC presenter perplexed. Mr S suspects a door lock would be useful in future…

Tuesday

Brendan O’Neill

Jenni Murray isn’t a bigot – she’s a victim of bigotry

It’s a curiosity of the 21st century that there is no one quite as bigoted as the person who screams ‘bigot!’ all the time. More often than not, those who casually brand as bigots anyone who has the temerity to hold a different point of view to theirs are the ones behaving with bigotry. Consider the stink over Jenni Murray’s comments on trans women. Murray is being demonised as a bigot, as a daft, obtuse ‘transphobe’, for saying trans women aren’t real women. But it’s her accusers who are the bigots; it’s their petitioning for Murray to be sacked and silenced that is the true bigotry. Murray is a victim

Sunday

Katy Balls

Paul Nuttall goes on the offensive as he fights for Ukip’s future

It’s not been a great week for Ukip. Following Paul Nuttall’s by-election loss in Stoke-on-Trent Central, the Ukip leader went on holiday while his party went into free fall. As Nigel Farage mounted a coup against Douglas Carswell over reports that Ukip’s only MP had scuppered Farage’s chances of being awarded a knighthood, Arron Banks labelled Nuttall’s leadership ‘weak’ and told the Ukip leader to make him party chairman (or else). Today Nuttall finally resurfaced with an appearance on the Andrew Marr show. The Ukip leader attempted to draw a line in the sand over the negative publicity his by-election campaign had attracted. Asked about reports that he had lied about losing a close friend at Hillsborough, Nuttall went

James Delingpole James Delingpole

How refreshing to find the BBC doing its job instead of handwringing about Islamophobia

Here’s the bad news. One day you or someone like you will be shopping in a mall or enjoying a concert or about to catch a train when the first sudden, sharp crack will rend the air and your world will change forever. Around you, people will start to crumple and as the panic and horror finally dawn the screams will begin while the automatic rifle fire escalates and those still standing will begin to flee — but where to? If you run away from the gunfire you’re being herded into a trap. If you run towards it you’ll be shot, either killed immediately, or casually, later, as you lie

Friday

Steerpike

Question Time audience member on EU nationals: ‘Who would be serving our coffee in Pret?’

Oh dear. After the Lords rebellion this week on the status of EU nationals in the UK post Brexit, the issue looks set to continue to be a thorn in the government’s side. As Theresa May attempts to hold firm that it is a matter for the negotiations, one Question Time audience member on last night’s show from Bedford attempted to express her concerns over a Britain without EU nationals. Alas, her comments soon hit a bum note when she appeared to imply that the reason EU nationals should be allowed to work in the UK is so that British people get their coffee on time: ‘For anyone who works in London: who would

Steerpike Steerpike

Campaign in Copeland? I get car sick, says Labour MP

So far, Labour’s by-election defeat in Copeland has been blamed on everything from Tony Blair to a lack of Labour voters owning cars. However, on last night’s Question Time, Dawn Butler came up with an excuse even Mr S hadn’t heard before. Discussing the by-election which saw Labour lose the one-time safe seat to the Tories, the MP for Brent Central explained to David Dimbleby that she hadn’t actually been able to go up to campaign as she… gets car sick: DB: I didn’t go to Copeland as I suffer from car sickness and I heard the roads are really bad. But I did a lot of phone… DD: That doesn’t sound

Thursday

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 2 March 2017

Chief Constable Simon Bailey, who heads Operation Hydrant, the police investigation of ‘non-recent’ child abuse cases, now says that paedophiles who view images of child abuse should not be prosecuted, because police cannot cope with the numbers involved. Mr Bailey is wedded to the doctrine that someone who says he is an abuse victim must automatically be believed. The result, said Sir Richard Henriques in his scathing report on Operation Midland, is that the criminal justice system totters: ‘Chief Constable Bailey’s argument ignores the consequences of false terminology.’ Another consequence is that the child abuse statistics, unchecked, explode. Mr Bailey will not admit his error and so, in order to

Charles Moore Charles Moore

There’s a simple way of dealing with the BBC’s TV licence bullies

Congratulations to the Daily Mail for exposing the unpleasant methods by which TV Licensing’s staff make people pay their television licence fees. Capita, the company that does the dirty work for the BBC, encourages its employees to use ‘ruthless and underhand tactics’ to collect the money, says the Mail. The paper offers painful examples of the victims — ‘RAF man with dementia, mum in a women’s refuge’. It could have added ‘veteran Spectator columnist’, since these activities were first exposed on this page in 2006, when I got fed up with being pursued by Capita to buy a TV licence for a flat without a television. The Mail correctly identifies

James Delingpole James Delingpole

The terrible truth

Here’s the bad news. One day you or someone like you will be shopping in a mall or enjoying a concert or about to catch a train when the first sudden, sharp crack will rend the air and your world will change forever. Around you, people will start to crumple and as the panic and horror finally dawn the screams will begin while the automatic rifle fire escalates and those still standing will begin to flee — but where to? If you run away from the gunfire you’re being herded into a trap. If you run towards it you’ll be shot, either killed immediately, or casually, later, as you lie

Kate Chisholm

All in the mind | 2 March 2017

At the third UK International Radio Drama Festival held last week in Herne Bay, entitled ‘And Let Us Listen to the Moon’, the entries included an Australian play about Chekhov, the limericks of Edward Lear translated into Serbian, a Czech version of Hamlet in which the palace at Elsinore is transformed into a sporting arena, and a play from Palestine in Arabic about three female political activists. Fifty dramas from 17 countries and in 15 different languages were broadcast at various venues across the Kentish town. Not quite Cannes in May — tea and scones stood in for champagne and caviar — but the festival’s success goes to show that

Thursday

Kate Chisholm

Olden but golden | 23 February 2017

This weekend Brian Matthew will present his last-ever Sounds of the 60s show on Radio 2. Now 88, he’s been in charge at breakfast time on Saturdays since 1990, his gravelly voice deepening and getting hoarser with the years. You could tell he was well past his clubbing prime, or for that matter being able to dance along to Bryan Ferry. Yet this has never mattered. Matthew’s band of devoted listeners have cherished his weekly two hours on air precisely because of his age. It has meant he was there when those classic Sixties’ records were made. He met the Beatles in their prime, and Dusty Springfield, Steve Winwood, Alan

James Walton

Occupational hazard

Rival law-enforcement agencies arguing about which of them should investigate a murder has, of course, been a staple of crime dramas for decades. Rather less common, though, is for the agencies in question to be the Metropolitan Police, the Gestapo and the SS. SS-GB (BBC1, Sunday), based on Len Deighton’s novel, poses the undeniably interesting question of what this country would have been like in 1941 if Germany had won the Battle of Britain. Its primary answer is that — in every way — it would have been very murky indeed. Again, plenty of crime dramas over the years have created a suitably noirish atmosphere, while cunningly saving on the

Monday

Steerpike

Mandy’s BBC interview riles the Corbynites

Oh dear. Yesterday Peter Mandelson appeared on the Andrew Marr Show to warn of the dangers of Brexit. The New Labour grandee used the primetime slot to criticise the government’s handling of Brexit and call for an Article 50 rebellion in the Lords. While Mandy managed to refrain from attacking Jeremy Corbyn, Mr S understands it wasn’t enough for Labour’s high command. In fact, a number of senior Corbynites are rather annoyed with the BBC that he was on so close to two crucial by-elections in Leave areas when the slot could have been given to a member of the shadow cabinet — or the dear leader himself. Then again, given that Corbyn is

Thursday

Kate Chisholm

United nations

The Indian Prime Minister has twigged something that President Trump has yet to understand. On Monday, celebrated as World Radio Day, Narendra Modi tweeted his congratulations to ‘all radio lovers and those who work for the radio industry and keep the medium active and vibrant’. Modi uses radio to reach out to those in his country who live in its most remote and inaccessible corners, giving a monthly address to the nation known as ‘Mann Ki Baat’ (or ‘To mind’). He says it’s his way of ‘sharing his thoughts’ with his citizens, and a useful way of extending the tentacles of government into those areas where television sets are uncommon,

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Fatal attraction | 16 February 2017

Recently on holiday I did a very bad thing. I nearly left the Fawn to die on a precipitous mountain path in the Canary Islands because she was having a terrible attack of vertigo that was threatening to spoil my fun. No, worse: it actually did spoil my fun. Now that I’m old and boring I desperately need little jabs of adrenaline to remind me I’m still alive, and this particular route was doing the job quite nicely. Although it’s actually so undangerous that even my eightysomething dad can do it, it’s reasonably steep, it’s gobsmackingly picturesque, and it does now and then give you at least the illusion of

Sunday

Rod Liddle

Why do liberal lefties cling to these unlikely heroes such as Bercow?

The BBC again. A profile of the speaker, John Bercow, for Radio Four. His  pet cat is called ‘Order’ – hilarious! And he’s stood up for stuff like same sex adoptions and opposed the ‘nasty’ (qv- BBC again) tendencies of the Tory Party. What a lovely bloke! And he’s been bloody brilliant as a speaker! This was the conclusion we were invited to draw from Mark Coles’s profile, which ran on Radio Four just before 18.00 on Sunday. Aaah, you hold your heads in the hands and wonder. Mark Coles is a superb reporter and one of the most talented makers of radio packages I have ever come across –