Bbc

Friday

Camilla Swift

Spectator Play: Spectator Play: The highs and the lows of what’s going on in arts this week

Wadjda is the first feature-length film to come out of Saudi Arabia, and was shot by the country’s first female director – but those aren’t the only things that are great about it, says Deborah Ross. It’s also ‘fascinating, involving, moving, and an entirely excellent film in its own right’. The story might be simple, but it’s the glimpses of how life might be for a woman living in Saudi Arabia make it ‘wonderful’. Deborah’s second film this week is the The World’s End, an attempt to be humorous that despite its cast (which includes Martin Freeman, Rosamund Pike and Simon Pegg) is completely unfunny, and ‘just boring’. Even the zombies

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: The Met Office answers Rupert Darwall, and a defence of Bolívar

Wild weather Sir: Weather and climate science is not an emotional or political issue — even though emotions and politics run high around it, as illustrated in Rupert Darwall’s article (‘Bad weather’, 13 July). However, it is important that opinions are rooted in evidence, and the article contains numerous errors and misrepresentations about the Met Office and its science. Here are a couple of points. The assertion of the Met Office’s ‘forecast failure’ is just wrong. The Met Office is beating all of its forecast accuracy targets. We are consistently recognised by the World Meteorological Organization as one of the top two most accurate operational forecasters in the world. While no

Kate Chisholm

Radio review: At last! A proper Book at Bedtime

It had begun to look as if Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime had been taken over by the zealous publicity-hungry PRs of publishing. For the past few months we’ve had nothing but the latest John le Carré, Neil Gaiman, Mohsin Hamid and Jami Attenberg. Books that would sit better in the morning Radio 4 slot as Book of the Week have been foisted upon us at 10.45 p.m., just when we want to start winding down from the hectic day, to escape from the traffic and fumes of the internet-bound life into which most of us have sunk. What we need post washing-up, dog walk, news, last texts, tweets and

Monday

Steerpike

Alan Yentob laments as austerity reaches Aunty

Troubled times at the BBC. There has been shock at the spectacular amounts of money that have been poured down the drain, and the row over executive pay-offs grows more vicious. And now new boss Sir Tony Hall is said to be limiting Aunty’s credit card. Some of the Beeb’s biggest spenders are up in arms as the age of austerity finally hits home. Fresh from having his £1,000 taxi bill exposed, Alan Yentob has been humiliated by his bosses. I hear that upon arriving at Glastonbury recently, the Beeb’s Creative Director had an almighty tantrum on discovering that he was staying in a Travelodge. Fellow travellers tell me that he spent the whole festival in a

Thursday

James Delingpole

Brainwashed from birth: the cult of the BBC

Last week I was on holiday with my family on the Algarve. The good news was that, thanks to the BBC’s widespread availability in Portugal, we didn’t miss out on Murray at Wimbledon. The bad news was that, for the same reason, we couldn’t escape The Apprentice. But this isn’t an anti-Apprentice column. It’s an anti-BBC column prompted in part by something annoying somebody said to me on Twitter the other day. I’d written, not for the first time, that I considered the BBC ‘a total waste of money’. And the tweeter replied primly, ‘The BBC is a total waste of money or actually you quite like Today, Proms, Glasto,

Tuesday

Douglas Murray

There are upsides to live TV, but being spanked by David Dimbleby is not one of them

Belated thanks to readers who wrote in about the BBC’s Question Time last week (still viewable here). It was a slightly odd edition, I thought. The panel – Margaret Hodge, Danny Alexander, Sarah Woollaston, Tony Robinson and me – found ourselves in agreement on more things than is usual on the show. On party-funding we agreed that the parties are all in a mess – albeit in slightly different ways. Likewise we thought that although there may be an argument for it, this isn’t a great moment to raise MPs pay. We all wanted the NHS to remain solvent, though disagreed on the priorities. And everyone was concerned about the coup

Tuesday

Rod Liddle

Down with the Glasto smugfest

I suppose this will seem churlish, but I’d just like to add my support to the grime rapper Wiley who, upon arriving at the Glastonbury festival, tweeted to Michael Eavis: ‘Fuck you and your farm.’ I’m not sure what motivated this annoyance but credit where it’s due, it’s roughly what I’ve felt about this bloated middle class smugfest for the last fifteen years. If it persuades the badger-strangling but otherwise impeccably PC post-hippy Eavis to call it a day, so much the better. Why in Christ’s name would anyone wish to attend a music festival in which the headline acts are almost double the ages of the cabinet (and slightly

Thursday

Rod Liddle

Do you agree with the Tories’ Alternative Queen’s Speech?

A bunch of back bench Conservative MPs have won the right to present to parliament, via the almost pointless conduit of private members bills, a sort of alternative manifesto. A fairly uncameroonie alternative Queen’s Speech. The MPs in question include Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone, both of whom sound a little as though they had stepped out of a Mervyn Peake novel and both of whom represent constituencies comprised largely of orcs and goblins in Northamptonshire. That being said, they are both rather good fun and have been principled thorns in the side of the current party leadership. If you can have a principled thorn. I suppose you can’t. Anyway,

Thursday

Kate Chisholm

Radio review: Recording voices of loved ones

At 17.05 on the afternoon of 18 September 2010, Sebastiane Hegarty made what was to be the last recording of his mother’s voice (she died in April 2011). As he says, the digital tape ‘invented our last moment’; a moment of no great significance, nothing meaningful was said, except that it now marks an ending. She talks to him while looking through her drawers for her purse that she’s mislaid. She mutters about no longer being able to get out to the bank because she can’t walk there. Hegarty had been recording their conversations since he was seven. Not for any specific purpose usually, but out of habit, inspired by

Sunday

Sebastian Payne

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones goes mad on BBC Sunday Politics

Everyone enjoys a good conspiracy theory, particularly Alex Jones. His Infowars.com site can explain every single problem in the world through his theories on the rise of the ‘New World Order’. I only discovered Jones a few weeks ago and wrote him off as a wacko on the fringe American media. Today, he’s arrived on a mainstream BBC programme. In the above video clip, David Aaronovitch of The Times and Andrew Neil try to figure out Jones’ big theory on the Bilderberg conference. Instead of explaining, he ranted on topics including ‘the SS office Prince Bernard’, ‘the Nazi German plan’ behind the EU to ‘hydroflourons in the water’. It makes

Saturday

Rod Liddle

Turkey redux

It must be boring for you too, returning to the same complaint, over and over again. Report on the BBC’s 10 O’Clock News about the trouble in Turkey. Not a single mention, in the three minutes, of the words Islam, or Muslim, or Islamification. You had to infer everything. Without prior knowledge of what was going on, you would have been utterly mystified as to why people were unhappy. You noted that all of the protestors were young, middle class, educated and the women fashionably unveiled; well spoken, good English and so on. And you would have wondered then who the alleged ‘50 per cent’ who support the Prime Minister

Thursday

Alexander Chancellor

Long life: I just get grumpier with age

My irritability grows with age and tends to attach itself to things that surprise even me — for example, to the widely popular sight of people riding horses on country roads. The smug, self-righteous look on their faces makes my blood simmer dangerously. And another thing that particularly grates with me at the moment is the ubiquitous use of the expression ‘no problem’. Until recently the normal response to a ‘thank you’ would be ‘that’s quite all right’ or ‘my pleasure’ or maybe even, in the American manner, ‘you’re welcome’. But now, in Northamptonshire at any rate, it is always ‘no problem’; and while this is presumably meant to be

Kate Chisholm

Radio review: Coronation Day Across the Globe

Coronation Day 1953 could have marked the end of radio as we know it. No one wanted to listen to the commentary from Westminster Abbey. Everyone wanted to see what was going on. Hearing could not, it was thought, be as effective an act of witness as viewing the glittering diamonds, the gleaming satin, the pageantry, the pomp and the extraordinary sight of the weight of royalty, both physical and metaphysical, being bestowed on so slight a young woman. Those who had the money rushed out to buy a Regentone table TV or a Baird Townsman. Those who couldn’t afford to buy or rent a TV begged a neighbour to

Friday

Camilla Swift

Spectator Play: The highs and the lows of what’s going on in arts this week

Christopher Purves began his musical career playing doo-wop and rock and roll with the band Harvey and the Wallbangers . These days however, the stages of Glyndebourne and La Scala are his new stomping ground. In this week’s magazine, Julian Flanagan chats to the baritone about his transition from pop to opera, the pivotal events of his opera career, and the ambitions he has yet to fulfil. In his latest role, Purves plays Walt Disney in Philip Glass’s The Perfect American at the ENO, which has proved to be a physical challenge for the singer. But ‘I’ve never gone for the easy life’, he tells us. His career path so far

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 30 May 2013

Home Ten men were arrested in connection with the public, daylight murder of Drummer Lee Rigby near his barracks in Woolwich. The two chief suspects, Michael Adebolajo, 28, and Michael Adebowale, 22, Britons of Nigerian descent and converts to Islam, had waited in the street after the hacking to death of the soldier until armed police arrived, and were then shot. Adebolajo had made some statements recorded on a mobile phone. The two men were taken to different hospitals with wounds said not to be life-threatening, and Adebowale was discharged into police custody after six days. MI5 was said to have previously attempted to recruit Adebolajo, who was found to

Thursday

Stephen Glover

Why does the BBC so love lefty journalists?

My response to the appointment of Ian Katz, deputy editor of the Guardian, to the editorship of BBC2’s Newsnight has been one of disbelief and amusement. Of course there’s nothing new in the Beeb hiring a paid-up Guardian-ista. It’s what we have come to expect. But one might have expected its new director-general, Tony Hall, to tread a little more carefully. Newsnight has a long history of Tory-bashing, and it disgraced itself last November with an orgy of false accusations against Alistair McAlpine, claiming without any evidence that he was a paedophile. Can one doubt that the programme threw caution to the wind at least in part because Lord McAlpine

Monday

Steerpike

A point of order, Your Royal Highness

The Duke of Cambridge joined forces with Prince Harry this morning to open Tedworth House Recovery Centre, the military hospital run by Help for Heroes. All power to the duke’s elbow, but one line jarred. William, rather tellingly, told the assembled top brass and troops that ‘even journalists’ had helped to promote the organisation and fund-raise for this vital facility. He went on to crack a joke at the expense of the tabloids. The duke’s disdain for the media is well documented, and justifiable in some cases. But Help for Heroes has had huge assistance from those same tabloids at which William was sneering from the podium. Fundraising, publicity, coverage

Thursday

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 16 May 2013

The BBC loves nothing better than a narrative in which Tory anti-European eccentrics split their party, and a bewildered public votes Labour. It is certainly the case that some of the Tory sceptics are half-crazed by dislike of David Cameron. But the reason the subject keeps coming up is because it matters, and it remains unresolved. The Tory rebels understand this in straightforward electoral terms: the rise of Ukip threatens their seats, so they must do something about it. What is maddening is not so much Mr Cameron’s actual policy on Europe, but his patent longing to avoid the subject. His refusal to ‘bang on’ about Europe has brought about

Monday

Douglas Murray

CND cannot rewrite its own history

Last week I recorded an edition of Hardtalk for the BBC which has gone out today.  It is a discussion with Kate Hudson, the General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), on the future of nuclear weaponry. The discussion is available on iplayer here. A couple of observations. Firstly, I seem to have been responsible for a rare ‘corpsing’ during a Hardtalk recording. Kate Hudson took a comment by me about the ‘decades’ CND had been fighting a losing battle as an ungallant remark on her age. It was not meant as such, but did lead to a temporary break-down in discussions, for which apologies. On a more

Saturday

Rod Liddle

The Wright Way

Continuing the domestic bliss/ tv theme, one programme I have not watched so far is The Wright Way. This is a situation comedy about somebody called Wright, as you might have imagined. It is written by the 1980s comedian Ben Elton. The show has already received a slagging from a couple of critics, largely for not being funny. I have yet to read a good review. It is on BBC One – and this, I think, is the point. Who else, other than the BBC, would commission a show from Ben Elton? Just as who would put Jeremy Hardy and Sandi Toksvig on air? Nobody, I suspect. I don’t dislike