Bbc

Fellow saddoes rejoice: BBC4 has made a comedy-drama about metal detecting

Detectorists (BBC4) is a sad git’s niche comedy that would never have been commissioned if it hadn’t been written and directed by Mackenzie Crook (who sort of counts as a Hollywood star, now, because after making his name in The Office he went on to appear in the Pirates of the Caribbean series). But I’m glad it was because I’m one of the sad gits it’s targeting: desperate blokes who spend their every spare weekend at this time of year scouring ploughed fields for non-existent treasure. We’re a fairly eclectic bunch, we detectorists. Simon Heffer is one; Rolling Stone Bill Wyman is another; so, too, is Mackenzie Crook himself, which

Mary Beard vs Jeremy Paxman

‘Did you find it a good read?’ asked Harrriett Gilbert. An incredibly long drawn-out sigh from Mr Paxman. ‘I think it’s really unsatisfactory,’ he at last replied. ‘But Jeremy,’ retorted Professor Beard, ‘I don’t think you’ve read it carefully enough.’ The eminent classicist from Cambridge is not afraid of conflict. She must eat her students for breakfast, loving an argument, which she of course will always win. Mary Beard didn’t just disagree with Paxman but insisted that her way of seeing, her interpretation, was the right one. She and Paxman were Gilbert’s guests on the first of a new series of A Good Read (Radio 4), in which the guests

In praise of #WorldBalletDay, Ivan Vasiliev and beautiful butts

The Twittersphere never fails to surprise but it’s still hard to believe that last week #WorldBalletDay actually beat #HongKong and #Windows10 in the Twitter popularity stakes, on a day of barricades in the Chinese territory and Microsoft’s announcement of a new operating system. Twitter is a solid barometer of a vast and assertively ‘engaged’ segment of society whose demand to be noticed can sometimes be quite serious (see #HongKong). At other times, it’s merely incredible, as it was last Wednesday when some 5,000,000 tweets were sent by viewers of an internet love-in by the Royal Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Canadian, Australian and San Francisco ballet companies, who mustered with phenomenal geopolitical

Hunting is history – so why would the BBC pretend otherwise?

Of all the BBC’s output, the Antiques Roadshow is one of the programmes least likely to cause a row. Alright, so you might disagree with the odd estimate, or argue that some of the ‘treasures’ unearthed from attics aren’t bona fide antiques. But on the whole, it tends to be pretty inoffensive. Well it was, at least, until the Earl of Lonsdale claimed that programme makers had banned him from showing off his family’s collection of hunting memorabilia when filming at his home in Cumbria. So what happened here then? The Earl suspects that the decision was made due to the Beeb’s fears of offending animal rights campaigners; the BBC, on the

Could the Kenyan mall atrocities happen here?

So you’ve just popped down to the supermarket for the weekly shop, toddlers in tow, when the grenades start to fly, the air lights up with tracer bullets and you realise to your horror that unless you find a suitable hiding place in a matter of seconds these are the last moments you’ll spend with your kids on earth. This was the awful crisis that faced Amber Prior and her children, who were among the numerous innocents caught up in the al-Shabaab suicide attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, last year. Their tale was told in the BBC2 documentary Terror at the Mall, and I make no

Marriage and foreplay Sharia-style

Needless to say, it’s not uncommon to hear single British women in their thirties and forties saying that all the good men are married. But in The Men with Many Wives (Channel 4, Wednesday) this came with a twist: it turned out to be precisely the reason why you should marry them too. Polygamy may be illegal in Britain, but it’s permitted under the Sharia law that many Muslims here apparently live by — and, as several of the programme’s participants told us, there’s no better guide to whether a man is husband material than the fact that he’s a husband already. Take Nabilah, who came to Britain from Malaysia

Paxo to Channel 4

Poor Jon Snow. The veteran presenter has some serious competition from the latest BBC defection to Channel 4; it’s the big one. After months of speculation about his future, and a dire sojourn into stand up comedy, Jeremy Paxman has joined the channel to front their general election coverage, but there is a full ego damage limitation operation underway: ‘A source at the channel insisted broadcaster Jon Snow would remain the “main man” in terms of its overall news coverage, after fronting Channel 4 news for years.’ Mr S does wonder just who that source may have been. Anyway, we at The Spectator are big fans of Jon Snow –

Are Syria air strikes legal? Perhaps not, but why should we care?

‘Are Syria air strikes legal?’ asks the BBC as part of its lead story today. The answer is that nobody is very sure. But personally I do wonder: ‘Why should we even care?’ Is beheading people legal? Is crucifying people illegal? Probably not. But aside from some vague talk last month of international inspectors being sent in to Isis-controlled areas to try to collate evidence of war-crimes I have seen very little written about this. This debate over the ‘legality’ of hitting Isis reminds me of nothing so much as the conversation after Osama bin Laden was shot in the head. I recall back then being on an edition of Question Time where, rather than expressing

I love that people assume I’m gay

At a birthday dinner over the weekend I was introduced to this delightful party girl of a certain age whose diet for the evening consisted of chips and Grey Goose vodka on the rocks with lime. She launched straight into the praises of this marvellous gay couple she knew in the area who were mad keen on hunting, kept getting injured but didn’t care, and who she was sure I’d get on with like a house on fire. They did indeed sound like my kind of people. But it was only later, after my new friend had had a few more and she had expressed surprise at the existence of

Former Newsnight hack slams Beeb’s referendum ‘propaganda’

Former Newsnight correspondent Paul Mason seems rather happy to be free of Auntie, especially since the Scottish independence referendum campaign sent the establishment to panic stations: ‘Not since Iraq have I seen BBC News working at propaganda strength like this. So glad I’m out of there,’ he writes on his Facebook page, to the consternation of former colleagues. ‘It’s on my friends-only Facebook page so not meant as any great statement other than weariness,’ Mason tells Mr S, ‘it says what it says.’ Lucky, then that he is now at Channel Four News – that famed bastion of slant free news.

How independence will impoverish Scottish culture

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_11_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson, Tom Holland and Leah McLaren discuss how we can still save the Union” startat=50] Listen [/audioplayer]An explosion of confetti will greet the announcement of Scottish independence. This isn’t another one of Alex Salmond’s fanciful promises, but an installation by a visual artist named Ellie Harrison. She wants Scotland to become a socialist republic. She has placed four confetti cannons in Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice Gallery. They will only be fired in the event of a Yes vote. Most artists in Scotland favour independence. Harrison’s installation is typical of the pretentious agitprop they produce. This isn’t a uniquely Scottish problem. ‘Nationalist’ art is by definition functional: it promotes

We need more opinionated English eccentrics making documentaries like, ahem, me…

Is it just me or are almost all TV documentaries completely unwatchable these days? I remember when I first started this job I’d review one almost every fortnight. Always there’d be something worth watching: on the horrors of the Pacific or the Eastern Front, say; or castles; or Churchill; or medieval sword techniques. But now it’s all crap like The Hidden World of Georgian Needlecraft or In The Footsteps of Twelve Forgotten South American Civilisations Which All Look The Same or A Brooding, Long-Haired Scottish Geographer Shouts From Inside A Volcano Why Climate Change Is Worse Than Ever. The presenters have got more annoying too. I mean, I’m not saying

Martin Vander Weyer

Rona Fairhead will be good for the BBC – but who was so keen to nobble her rival?

Hats off to Rona Fairhead, the former Financial Times executive who will succeed Lord Patten as chairman of the BBC Trust. It requires a brave spirit to take on this poisonously politicised role — and Fairhead starts with the disadvantage that everyone thinks they know the roll call of candidates who might have been preferred but declined to apply, including her own former boss Dame Marjorie Scardino, for whose job as head of Pearson, the FT’s parent, Fairhead was passed over last year. But a mole tells me she’s ‘as steely as she’ll need to be’; and leading ladies of the non-executive circuit (she’s on the boards of HSBC and

The real reason behind the BBC’s kicking of Nick Prettejohn

This is an extract from this week’s Spectator. Subscribe here: Hats off to Rona Fairhead, the former Financial Times executive who will succeed Lord Patten as chairman of the BBC Trust. It requires a brave spirit to take on this poisonously politicised role — and Fairhead starts with the disadvantage that everyone thinks they know the roll call of candidates who might have been preferred but declined to apply, including her own former boss Dame Marjorie Scardino, for whose job as head of Pearson, the FT’s parent, Fairhead was passed over last year. But a mole tells me she’s ‘as steely as she’ll need to be’; and leading ladies of

The false paradise of Metroland | 29 August 2014

Gaily into Ruislip Gardens runs the red electric train… Near the end of the Metropolitan Line, where London dwindles into woods and meadows, stands a Tudor manor house, built within the moat of a motte-and-bailey castle. Now a quaint museum, charting the history of the farms that once surrounded it, this modest landmark shares its name with the local Tube station, Ruislip Manor. A century after they built it, the railway that runs through here still feels out of place. There are fields on one side, suburban semis on the other. Welcome to Metroland, the bizarre no-man’s-land between town and country, created by the Metropolitan Railway, which celebrates its 150th

Who needs drugs when you have Radio 3?

I’m willing to bet it’s only on the BBC’s Radio 3 that you’ll find yourself listening to a programme quite like Words and Music (Sunday evenings). You might want to disagree. Surely, it’s just a few bits of music stuck together with some poems and other readings on a random theme dreamt up by the production team? How easy must that be to pull off? Seventy-five minutes (or sometimes even longer) of dirt-cheap radio, quick to make, very few overheads, involving just a few hours per programme of research (nowadays so easy on Google) and a dead-simple edit job splicing everything together. But name another station anywhere that could make

BBC2’s Hotel India: slums? What slums?

Viewers who like their TV journalism hard-hitting should probably avoid Hotel India, a new BBC2 series about the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai. The tone of Wednesday’s episode was set immediately when the narrator introduced us to ‘one of the oldest and grandest hotels in the world’, where ‘no detail is too small or demand too great’, and there’s ‘an army of staff dedicated to flawless service’. To prove it, head of housekeeping Indrani then strode fearsomely down a corridor like a more elegant version of Hattie Jacques’s matron in the Carry On films. After using a torch (in daylight) to make sure the sheets just back from the laundry

James Delingpole

Frankie Boyle is a cowardly bully, and I’m ashamed I ever stood up for him

‘Outspoken comic Frankie Boyle has called on the BBC to sack “cultural tumour” Jeremy Clarkson.’ Can anyone tell me what’s wrong with this opening sentence from a recent news report? Clue: it’s that first word. In order to qualify as ‘outspoken’, surely, you need to be the kind of person who fearlessly, frequently and vociferously sets himself in opposition to the clamour of the times. Does demanding that a public figure lose his job for some mildly sexist/racist/homophobic/ableist remark fit into that category? Hardly. In the current climate it’s about as heroically contentious as, say, a private school prospectus that promises ‘We believe in educating the whole person’; or a

The Village: Sunday-night TV at its most unsubtle and addictive

Proof that television has changed a bit since 1972 came with an archive clip shown on BBC4 on Sunday. ‘My first guest:’ Michael Parkinson announced matter-of-factly on his Saturday-night chat show, ‘W. H. Auden.’ Auden then made his way gingerly down the stairs, lit a fag and began by discussing the failure of the poetry of the 1930s to effect political change. ‘Nothing I wrote,’ he told Parky, ‘postponed war for five seconds or prevented one Jew from being gassed.’ The clip appeared in Great Poets in their Own Words, the first of a two-part series combining archive film with talking heads to provide a useful if workmanlike history of

Why is Radio 3 still leaderless?

It’s happened almost by stealth but the number of listeners to 6 Music has now overtaken Radio 3, creeping up to 1.89 million per week (just .05 million more than the classical-music station). Actually the margin between them is probably greater because 6 Music has no analogue signal and can only be heard digitally. Whereas 6 Music sounds cool and with its digital playlist capability and big-star DJs is just so on-trend, 3 is being left behind. Even more disturbing, there was no controller available to defend the station and remind us that the listening figures will bounce back in the next quarter because of the Proms effect — two