James Delingpole reviews television for The Spectator.
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
The last — and only — time I had sex with a whore she was so impressed by my performance that she begged me to do it all over again. I thank the drugs. Before popping out in my stolen car for my rendezvous with my skanky ho, I had smoked a couple of fat
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
This week I wanted to tell you about my amazing dad. He hasn’t died or anything. I just thought I’d get in there with my panegyric quick while he’s still got most of his marbles and before he’s lying in a coffin quite deaf to all the nice stuff I’m about to say about him.
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
‘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
Where is Jessica Hyde? If those words mean nothing to you then I have some excellent news. If not, then you’ll already be aware that I have failed you totally. And not for the first time, either. I was about a series (sorry, ‘season’) late to Game of Thrones; not much quicker into Breaking Bad;
For my 49th birthday treat, I went to see Shakespeare in Love at the Noël Coward theatre in London. Expensive but worth it: spry, funny, uplifting and moving but also, for all the surface froth, quite a deep meditation on the creative process and the enduring power of art. What everyone secretly loves best about
Gomorrah (Sky Atlantic, Monday), the new, must-see Mafioso series, started promisingly. We met two hoods — one young, shaven-headed, good-looking; one weary, brow-beaten, middle-aged — filling up at a petrol station in Naples, an unfamiliar (to me anyway) setting that looks promisingly like a cross between Vegas and downtown Gaza. Clearly they were up to
This has been a terrible year for horseflies. It’s bad enough if you’re human: often by the time you swat them off the damage has already been wrought by their revolting, cutting mandibles and it’s not till 24 hours later, I find, that the bite reaches peak unpleasantness, swelling into a huge itchy dome which
If there’s one thing everyone knows about BBC comedy it’s that it’s going downhill. According to Danny Cohen, now Director of BBC Television, it’s too white and middle class; according to producer John ‘Blackadder’ Lloyd, it’s run by idiots like the bureaucrats in the BBC satire W1A who don’t understand what comedy is; according to
Great God, Vegas is an awful place. I realised this the moment I arrived. My cab driver — who’d been perfectly agreeable en route from the airport — mistook my post-flight sluggishness for reluctance to give him a tip, and drove off angrily cursing me as I fumbled in my pockets. The line just for
‘Fingers on buzzers!’ says Jeremy Paxman on University Challenge. But technically this is inaccurate. Only one of the teams actually has buzzers. The other side has push-button bells, instead. I’ve been watching the programme religiously for God knows how many years without ever consciously noticing this. But, once you’ve been told, it’s obvious — in
‘Charlie. E. Powder,’ said the friendly, helpful man working his way through the crowd during the mindblowing Friday-night headline set by the American dubstep DJ Skrillex. I looked wistfully at his man-bag of chemical enhancers. Skrillex was good. Maybe the best electronic act I’ve seen in 24 years of Glastonburies. (‘Slivers of mutant dancehall, booty
‘Why did you leave us?’ said the old Sudanese man in Omdurman market. ‘Things were so much better when you were here.’ He was talking about the British empire, of course, and apologies if I’ve told the story before, as I know I have. It’s just that it’s such a fantastically satisfying way of winding
In his latest Spectator column, James Delingpole looks at a gigantic scare that lasts for decades because the experts are too embarrassed to back down… Though I’m not generally big on banning stuff, there’s one substance I would prohibit without a moment’s hesitation — probably on pain of death if that’s what it took because clearly, where
Did you know that the 8th-century Kingdom of Northumbria was the epicentre of an international exotic reptile trade? I only discovered this myself from watching episode six of Vikings (History Channel, Tuesday) and being introduced to the snake-pit maintained by King Aelle. What particularly impressed me were not just the variety of pythons and boas
Though I’m not generally big on banning stuff, there’s one substance I would prohibit without a moment’s hesitation — probably on pain of death if that’s what it took because clearly, where vanquishing monstrous evil is concerned, no sanction is too extreme. I’m talking, of course, about the devil’s semen: semi-skimmed milk. And about its unholier
The Spectator’s latest debate – Stop Whining Young People: You’ve Never Had It So Good – was most disgracefully skewed in favour of the proposition. Not only did the epically relaxed moderator Toby Young flagrantly and self-confessedly side with the proposers but so too did the event sponsor, Alan Warner of Duncan Lawrie private banking.
You know what the world needs most right now? What it needs is five good-looking-ish, talented-ish blokes dressed in a mélange of artfully deconstructed dove-grey suits singing one of the songs out of Les Misérables, like a boy band but one that does numbers from musicals rather than original compositions, oh, and preferably with the
