Damian Reilly

In May, Sky News asked Lord Mandelson, Britain's Ambassador to the United States of America, if it was true that he’d stayed at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse in June 2009, when the financier was in jail for soliciting prostitution from a minor. He replied flatly that he refused to answer any questions about Epstein. "I wish I’d never met him in the first place," was all he would say on the subject.  No doubt Mandelson would rather forget – and that we all now ignore – how he used to lavish praise on Epstein. “Wherever he is in the world, he remains my best pal!

The official rationale for closing the FBI investigation into Jeffrey Epstein stinks and President Trump must know it – even if he can manage to feign incredulity that anyone should still want to talk about the disgraced financier. "Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years," he responded testily on Tuesday to a reporter’s question at a cabinet meeting about whether Epstein had ever been an intelligence agency asset. "Are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time? I mean I can’t believe you’re asking a question on Epstein." Crucially, Trump didn’t deny Epstein was a spook, and neither did Attorney General Pam Bondi to whom he passed the question.

Jeffrey Epstein killed himself, he did his sex crimes in private and no one who associated with him – much less visited his properties, including his Little Saint James private island, need be investigated or charged. That’s the FBI’s latest version of events, announced this morning, after an apparently lengthy investigation of the dead financier’s belongings.  “This systematic review revealed no incriminating ‘client list.’ There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,” the FBI statement said.

The problem with the future is it is very obviously no longer being created by cool people. Instead, it belongs to autistic nerds who want nothing more than to be a computer. Cool people invent things like surfboards, Ray-Bans and Triumph Spitfires. Nerds make profoundly uncool things like cars that drive themselves and the absurd Limitless Pendant device that I have been attempting to wear. The Pendant records everything you say, and everything anyone near you says Let me start this review by stating I hope the Pendant – yours for $199 – fails very hard. It is an awful and life-negating device that subjugates any human stupid enough to place one around their neck to an AI processing unit.

“I’ve been researching comedy,” CNN’s Elle Reeve announces grimly at the start of her hour-long interview with comedian Tim Dillon, released this week more than a month after it was recorded. What follows is an extended whine about the manner in which legacy broadcast media in America has ceded its status as the gatekeeper of the American cultural narrative to podcasters. Is it the most satisfying piece of television I've ever watched? Possibly, yes. The irony – and it’s almost too perfect to articulate – is that had Dillon not demanded, while appearing recently on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, that CNN release the interview in full rather than packaged into a tightly edited segment to fit a specific narrative, it probably would never have seen the light of day.

The British people adore Boris Johnson. That is unarguable. It’s why he doesn’t lose elections. It is therefore very funny – the way idiocy so often is – that the Conservative party even in this, its moment of greatest existential crisis, is not right now prostrating itself before the great man to beg for his return. Boris used his farewell speech in Downing Street to liken himself to the ancient Roman statesman Cincinnatus ‘We are profoundly sorry that we thought we knew better than you, and accept that all evidence since we deposed you has proved us entirely and unforgivably wrong,’ it should be snivelling.

What exactly is it that the Glazer family has done that makes Manchester United fans whine so endlessly? I ask only because I’ve just finished watching Gary Neville’s frequently ludicrous interview with British billionaire Jim Ratcliffe – who since purchasing a 27.7 per cent stake in the club in 2023 has overseen its football operations – and am none the wiser.  After hearing Ratcliffe, very patiently, it must be said, appraise Neville of the truly parlous state of the club’s finances – it seems obvious if the Glazers are guilty of anything, it is of being too trusting.

I’ve long liked to think that if I was a really big girl I would transition to compete in the men’s boxing heavyweight championship. Why not, ladies? Tyson Fury earns about £100 million every time he laces up his gloves. Why not get a slice of that pie? After all, for an extremely weird decade or so we’ve been enjoined to believe there are no physical advantages, at least not in terms of strength, speed or stamina, to being born male over female. It’s the foundational myth upon which all sorts of madness – hulking great former blokes taking on women at sports including rugby, swimming, cycling and football – has been predicated.  Why has it taken until now for someone to suggest this? If biological men can dominate women’s sport, then why not the other way around?

Hand back the Falklands. Why not? FedEx over the Elgin Marbles. What’s the point of any of it anymore? They have put a German in charge of the England football team. It’s over.  Can there be a more depressing, or more obvious, sign of national decline than this utterly abject capitulation at the sport we love most – the game we invented, for God’s sake – to our greatest rivals? From Munich to Frankfurt to Hamburg they today must be howling at the appointment of Thomas Tuchel as England manager from the start of next year. The humiliation is searing.  Ignore if you want to the fact that appointing a foreign coach to any national team is very obviously cheating. By definition, a national team is a national effort.

It’s hard to think of anything Rishi Sunak could have done that would cause greater offence to the British sensibility. You do not, not if you’re the British prime minister, sack off the D-Day commemorations in Normandy to return home early under any circumstances – least of all in order to do an ITV interview on tax. It’s not just disrespectful to the fallen. His early exit suggests that this is all just a game for Sunak. It seems to send a message that he stands for precisely nothing – beyond being prime minister.  Can you imagine Boris Johnson – whom Sunak knifed so expertly on his way to the top – doing the same thing? Of course not – it’s unthinkable.