Bbc

Thursday

Toby Young

My plan for Question Time: mug up and fail anyway

I was invited on Question Time this week, which gave me a few sleepless nights. Natalie Bennett’s disastrous interview on LBC was a reminder that appearing on a current affairs programme in this febrile pre-election environment can be a bit of a minefield. Admittedly, I’m not the leader of a political party but that’s no guarantee I won’t make a fool of myself — a moment that will be preserved for ever on YouTube. There are no opportunities for glory on Question Time, but plenty for embarrassment. The most you can hope for is to get through the experience in one piece. By now you may well have seen what

Steerpike Steerpike

Revealed: Emily Maitlis’s hairdressing dream

Mr S was a guest at last night’s Grazia ‘News at 10’ panel discussion, where Christina Lamb, Jayne Secker, Sue Turton, Emily Maitlis and Mishal Husain discussed their experiences as female newsreaders. For Maitlis, however, talk turned away from journalism and onto her first choice of career: ‘I never envisaged myself being a journalist – I was committed to being a hairdresser from the age of 14. My parents had a heart-attack.’ While her dream is yet to be fulfilled, the Newsnight presenter did manage to find work at a young age as the ‘world’s worst radio reporter’. ‘My first job was in radio – and I was the world’s worst radio reporter. Every

James Delingpole James Delingpole

The Great European Disaster on BBC4 reviewed: propaganda worthy of Leni Riefenstahl

My favourite bit of The Great European Disaster (BBC4, Sunday) was the lingering shot that showed golden heads of corn stirring gently in the breeze. It was captioned ‘Europe’. I cannot even begin to describe what a powerful effect this had on my subconscious. It was worthy of Leni Riefenstahl. Indeed, when I experimentally turned off the colour, it was Leni Riefenstahl. ‘Bloody hell!’ I thought to myself. ‘Suddenly it all makes sense.’ But my journey of discovery and enlightenment was only just beginning. I haven’t yet told you what the Ukrainian peasant said. I forget his exact words, but it was something along the lines of, ‘When I think

Wednesday

Lara Prendergast

An uncomfortable interview for India

British film-maker Leslee Udwin’s video interview with one of the Delhi rapists may not make for comforting viewing, but there are some home truths in there that must be faced up to. In the past hour, the Indian government has banned the video – a move which is both cowardly and futile. They fear the rapist’s remarks that he has ‘no remorse’, and that he ‘blames the victim for fighting back’ might create ‘an atmosphere of fear and tension’. In the West, a similar message is being touted around: that the rapist should never have been given a platform. Don’t show the video and allow him to justify his actions. I visited Delhi’s

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Måns Zelmerlöw’s ‘Heroes’ shows why Sweden rules the pop world

This is a blog written after the first screening of Måns Zelmerlöw’s Heroes, which went on to win the Swedish nomination and the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest. The world’s most-watched cultural event is some time away, but for Eurovision affectionados the entertainment has started already. Britain and Sweden are the continent’s two greatest exporters of pop music, but the UK Eurovision contestant is annointed by the BBC whose institutional snobbishness and soft xenophobia prevents it from understanding the contest. Sweden asks Swedes to choose from one of 28 entries in a six-stage event called Melody Festival, now in full flow. For MelFest, a song starts with songwriters. They’re celebrated, and shown on camera before the performer gets going. A song that wins Eurovision

Thursday

Alex Krasodomski

Monitoring social media is easier said than done

The three British girls who packed their bags and took a flight to Turkey have apparently crossed the border into Syria. Their intention seems to be to join the Islamic State and it looks like they may have succeeded. It emerged over the weekend that there had been contact between one of the girls and Aqsa Mahmood, a Scottish woman who travelled to Syria herself. Initially communicating through Twitter, it appears Mahmood played a role in their journey to Turkey and now into the heart of the conflict in Syria. Criticism turned on the security services: according to Aamer Anwar, the lawyer for the family of Aqsa Mahmood, they are not even doing the

James Walton

Critical on Sky1 reviewed: a new medical drama where everyone radiates an unusual degree of competence and concern

Sky1’s new hospital drama Critical (Tuesday) can’t be accused of making a timid start. Within seconds, an urgent request had come over the loudspeaker system for ‘the trauma corps’ to head to the emergency department, causing the main members of the cast to sprint down various corridors at impressive speed. Meanwhile, a patient was briskly wheeled to the same department from a helicopter on the roof, pausing only to cough up blood all over the lift. Moments after that, the trauma corps were already exchanging the kind of rapid-fire medical speak — ‘Dullness to percussion on the left side!’— that most viewers mightn’t entirely comprehend but that clearly translates as

Wednesday

Steerpike

Anna Soubry’s choice of words raises eyebrows

After Inside the Commons drew to a close last night, a new row involving the House of Commons documentary developed. Reports have emerged claiming that in unused footage an MP was recorded calling Ed Miliband a ‘sanctimonious c-nt’. Anna Soubry has taken the hard line approach of denying she said any such thing, threatening legal action on anyone who wishes to accuse her. The Tory MP says any footage claiming to show this will prove that she said the word ‘rubbish’ as opposed to a profanity. While Mr S would never doubt an MP’s word, Steerpike couldn’t help but think back to the time the defence minister caused offence with her choice of language on The Andrew Marr

Steerpike Steerpike

House of Cards creator reveals rift with BBC over ‘insensitive’ Margaret Thatcher plot

The third series of the American adaptation of House of Cards, which stars Kevin Spacey, will see the programme go in a different direction to the political trilogy on which it is based. Despite this, the House of Cards author Lord Dobbs is confident that he will be happier with the end product than he was with the BBC adaptation, which aired in the nineties. Speaking to the Radio Times, Dobbs says that he fell out with the production team during the final series over their treatment of the death of Baroness Thatcher. Dobbs was so appalled by the BBC’s changes to his political thriller that he asked for his name to

Tuesday

Rod Liddle

To be ‘groomed’ is to gain instant victim status

A minor point, I suppose, but one worth noting. It was stated on the BBC and in the liberal press that these three girls who have scuttled off to Syria for a spot of beheading and FGM had been ‘groomed’  by radical Islamists. A word not used when it is young men who head off to fight for Isis. A word, which in its current – and terribly, terribly overused – meaning immediately confers victim status upon whoever it is who has been ‘groomed’. This was pointed out to me by a chap called John Locke in a debate about the girls on a social media website, and it was a very

Monday

Douglas Murray

Want to stop nice British girls going to Syria? Then show them the X-rated ‘Joy of Jihad’

I’m with Rod on the wannabe jihadi brides going to Syria.  The whole official approach demonstrated by the BBC et al is just the same as the government-sponsored videos that crop up on YouTube urging people not to join Isis: a sort of ‘please don’t go, we’re better together’ pleading. But if we really do want to stop young people going out, why not put a bit more grit into it?  A bit more stick as well as carrot?  Why waste this massive amount of airtime just to say that these poor girls didn’t know what they were doing, are nice girls really etc. Why not use it to actually

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Should we actually be worried about the Syria-bound schoolgirls?

Are you terribly worried about those three London ‘schoolgirls’ who have gone off to fight for the Islamic State in Syria? I must admit I haven’t lost an awful lot of sleep over it. The BBC ran the story at interminable length on Sunday night, the implication seeming to be that we should strain every sinew to get the poor mites back home to their loving and undoubtedly well-integrated community. I don’t think they should be allowed back in any way, as it happens. And by and large, the more similarly disposed Muslims who feel an attraction to Isis actually go to Syria, the better, frankly. Or is this callous and unfeeling of

Thursday

James Delingpole

UKIP: The First 100 Days, Channel 4, review: a sad, predictable, desperate hatchet job

Just three months into Ukip’s shock victory as the party of government and already Nigel Farage’s mob are starting to show their true colours: morris dancing has been made compulsory for every able-bodied male between the age of 30 and 85; in ruthlessly enforced union flag street parties, brown-skinned people are made to show their loyalty by eating red-, white- and blue-coloured Battenberg cakes until they explode. And what is that acrid smell of burnt fur now polluting Britain’s hitherto gloriously carbon-free air? Why it is all the kittens that Nigel Farage and his evil henchmen are tossing on to beacons from John O’Groats to Land’s End in order to

Thursday

Steerpike

Confirmed: Inside the Commons will reveal ‘rift’ between John Bercow and Robert Rogers

Speculation has been rife that John Bercow’s decision to let cameras into the commons for a BBC documentary will backfire on him. Reports have claimed that the Speaker of the Commons is to be depicted in a negative light in the series, Inside the Commons. Given this, Bercow has so far got off remarkably lightly in the first two episodes. However, Mr S hears that this should all change by next week, with the documentary maker Michael Cockerell confirming that Bercow’s ‘rift’ with Sir Robert Rogers will be explored in depth. ‘You will have to watch the series, but you wouldn’t expect me as a journalist not to deal with a fascinating story that happened on our watch. We

Sinclair McKay

EastEnders wanted to show Thatcher’s Britain. These days it would make Maggie proud

Albert Square full of Thatcherites? You ’avin a larf? No, it’s true. EastEnders, conceived 30 years ago partly as a means of enraging the Conservative party, has blossomed into a Tory commercial. Iain Duncan-Smith could watch all the wealth-creating activity in Albert Square with a syrupy smile; George Osborne could visit Phil Mitchell’s garage in a hi-vis jacket and look perfectly at home (Boris Johnson has already had a cameo pint at the Queen Vic). EastEnders portrays small businesses built up through hard work; it implies that turning to the state won’t get you anywhere; they even sent swotty teenager Libby Fox to Oxford. Never mind the affairs and addictions,

Wednesday

Steerpike

Wolf Hall upsets horticulturists with its ‘historical plant inaccuracies’

First, Wolf Hall upset a number of members of the Catholic faith with its depiction of St Thomas More. The Bishop of Shrewsbury went so far as to claim that it inaccurately depicted More as a villain. Now, the show has managed to anger ardent gardeners too. In today’s letters page in The Telegraph, a reader writes in to point out a discrepancy in one of the plants used on set. ‘Those worrying about historical inaccuracies in Wolf Hall need to get out more: there’s plenty to entertain them outside. The best example was in last week’s episode, when Anne Boleyn went gliding past a mature specimen of Wisteria sinensis, a

Tuesday

Douglas Murray

Assad is hoping Isis will make his regime look moderate. This is no accident

Jeremy Bowen’s half-hour long interview with Bashar al-Assad is being heavily trailed by the BBC this morning.  And while it has little that is new it does provide an interesting insight into the Syrian President’s current situation. The main story from it is Assad’s confirmation that there is some line of communication between the Syrian regime and the Americans. Bowen put to Assad that there are American planes over Syria all the time engaged in the fight against Isis and that there must be some contact between them. While confirming that they do not speak directly, Assad did confirm that Iraq and other countries act as intermediaries.  But it was the

Thursday

James Delingpole

Arabian Motorcycle Adventures review: enthralling and constantly surprising

There were great numbers of young men who had never been in a war and were consequently far from unwilling to join in this one.(Thucydides, 5th century BC) I love that quote, inscribed on the walls of the Imperial War Museum, because it tells you so much both about the reason wars happen and about the nature of men. Most of us go through a phase where we think it would be terribly exciting to ‘see the elephant’. And for a lucky few, it’s everything they hoped it would be and more. One of those lucky few is an extraordinarily jammy sod called Matthew VanDyke. By rights this young American

Kate Chisholm

Why BBC Arabic is booming

Last weekend BBC Arabic celebrated 77 years since John Reith (as he then was) launched the first foreign-language service of the fledgling BBC Empire Service with an announcement (in English) in which he declared that the programmes would always be ‘reliable, accurate and interesting’, values that have become virtually cast in stone as the Reithian model of broadcasting. ‘You have to remember the BBC was very, very young at this time, but there was no limit to its ambition,’ says Tarik Kafala, the current head of BBC Arabic, which now broadcasts on radio and (since 2008) on TV also, 24 hours each and every day. Reith’s statement was ‘a fabulous

Wednesday

Steerpike

Is Ian Lavender not keeping up with who Catherine Zeta-Jones is?

As the last surviving member of Dad’s Army‘s main cast, Ian Lavender will be the only actor to appear in both the BBC series and the upcoming film adaptation. Although Mr S hears a whisper that Lavender failed to recognise his co-star Catherine Zeta-Jones on the set of the film, he does think that the movie could be onto something with its addition of female leads. ‘That collection of ladies, Sarah Lancashire, Annette Crosbie, Alison Steadman and Catherine Zeta-Jones, is wonderful,’ the 68-year-old actor tells Steerpike at the Oldie of the Year awards. ‘When you think of Dad’s Army, the lady parts are tiny parts and now you’ve got this terrific cast, perhaps we should have