Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator.
Each Boxing Day my mother would take out her pen and pad, And estimate the cost price of those Christmas gifts we’d had, From relatives and family friends. And when the sum fell short, Of the monetary value for the various gifts she’d bought, She’d write it in her ledger. Underlined in red. So, Aunty
We’re closing 2017 by republishing our twelve most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 8: Rod Liddle on the bungled snap election. His piece was published 12 days before Theresa May blew her majority: I am trying to remember if there was ever a worse Conservative election campaign than this current dog’s breakfast — and failing.
Having thoroughly enjoyed Graham Norton’s recent forensic cross-examination of Hillary Clinton on BBC1, I’m thrilled that the corporation intends to use Graham for yet further heavyweight political interviews. Here’s an exclusive preview of one coming up soon: GN: ‘Halllllllo! How lovely to see you all! I hope you’ve been behaving yourselves. [Audience titters.] Well, do
This has not been an appalling year for pop music — it was better than 1984, for example, and 1961. Simply put, it was a year in search of a direction, one foot planted in 1980s cheese or bombast, the other still dipping its toe into the now mind-sapping boredom of EDM, with the occasional
I don’t like having a go at a colleague. Especially not one as talented as the Sunday Times‘ Emma Barnett, one of the best interviewers around. But a certain detachment escaped Emma yesterday while interviewing a woman called Jackie Teale on her Radio 5 Live show (which is usually very good). Teale was there because
I first viewed pornography at the age of 12, when a school friend showed me a magazine called, I think, Razzle. The centrefold was a naked lady with what appeared to be a large and potentially ferocious rodent between her legs — a coypu, perhaps, or a capybara. I had never seen anything like that
Away from politics for a few moments. Football. What about Manchester City? The pundits and experts were euphuistic in their praise for City’s late-achieved win over the vermin, West Ham. And we were told that winning late is the mark of a good team and that it engenders positivity and confidence among the squad. Maybe
Not a good year for my small sector of the political sphere, Blue Labour. I say small because politically, at the moment, that is what it is: indeed, nigh on non-existent. And yet its basics – socially conservative, fiscally radical, mindful of tradition, patriotic – strikes a chord with so many voters outside London. Blue
The deaf are beginning to annoy me. They seem, paradoxically, more voluble than the blind. Perhaps this is because, understandably, deaf people suspect that their voices are not being heard. Which of course they are not, literally, by other deaf people — and in some cases this must lead to a state of suffocating paranoia.
Grade: A A dimbo pop reviewer for one of our national newspapers suggested that on this album, her ninth, Björk was ‘continuing her exploration of structurelessness’. It doesn’t sound wildly enticing, does it? Do go on, etc. It is true that on Utopia there is nothing that has the glorious, simple, pop sheen, and hook,
I went to Relate once, the counselling service formerly known as the National Marriage Guidance Council. I wasn’t married at the time — this was about 25 years ago — but in a long-term relationship. Or at least it was long-term for me at the time. My girlfriend went with me and I rather hoped
There are many wonderful scenes in the film version of David Mamet’s play Glengarry Glen Ross, but my favourite comes towards the end, between the broken and desperate real estate salesman Shelley ‘The Machine’ Levene, played by Jack Lemmon, and his vile manager John Williamson, played by Kevin Spacey. Levene, facing not merely the sack
Grade: D+ I was suckered in by the brio of Taylor Swift’s first big single, ‘Love Story’, despite the clunking lyrics, which one forgave because of her youth. Just a nice slice of maybe overproduced FM country rock with a simple, but effective, chorus. Forgive me. I did not see the monster she would become.
News programmes are as interesting, these days, for what they don’t tell you as for what they do. So, the ten o’clock news on the BBC on Monday night reported the horrible murder of 18-month-old Elsie Scully-Hicks by her adoptive father, without mentioning that the baby had been adopted by a gay couple. There was
So, let me get this right. Priti Patel should resign because, while on a private holiday, she did some work – i.e. meeting foreign politicians. BBC PM’s Eddie Mair says she is in serious trouble. Only with arseholes like you, sunshine. The real reason for leftie anguish is that Patel suggested that Israel could possibly
Grade: C+ There was a certain thrill to be had from that first Oasis album, Definitely Maybe. Liam’s yob howl and Noel’s magnificent pillaging of T. Rex, the New Seekers, the Pistols, Zep and, of course, the Beatles. By the time the second one came along, you could count me out, what with the asinine,
Somewhere towards the end of the 1980s I was suddenly promoted three grades upwards in my job at the BBC; a bit like going from the middle of the old fourth division to the top of the Championship. Yay. The immediate consequences were more money, more power and almost endless opportunities for sexual intercourse. Women
Now that the Scots have banned people from smacking kids — both their own and, presumably, those that belong to other people — I suppose we will dutifully follow suit and another one of life’s harmless little pleasures will have bitten the dust. Fair enough, we can still say horrible, frightening things to them in
Anyone subscribe to Private Eye? I do, and have done for almost forty years. But I am beginning to wonder why. The cackle quotient declines on an almost weekly basis and this week I couldn’t find a single thing to laugh at. One can usually depend upon Craig Brown’s piece and ‘From The Message Boards’,
Very good piece from Giles Coren (as usual) on the intrusive and aggressive act of putting ‘xx’ at the end of emails. I had been thinking pretty much the same thing. I suppose one could quote Derrida and the structuralists and insist that there is no one-to-one relationship between the signifier (the ‘xx’) and the thing
