The BBC has announced a successor to Gary Lineker

In a series of further announcements, the BBC...

We all paid for this, thanks to the unique way the BBC is funded...

My son has just introduced me to Mark Kermode's Radio 5 film reviews with Simon Mayo... they're great!

I think the last time I watched a proper Hollywood comedy was 2009's Funny People, starring Adam Sandler and Seth Rogan. It made me want to throw up. Repeatedly. I used it as part of a general attack on what passes for modern American comedy in the 2011 post 'Laugh? I thought I’d never start! America’s horrible stand-up “comedians”'.  I've avoided new American comedy films (and most TV shows) aimed at the teenage and young adult market - apart from animated films - ever since, because they make me feel unclean, and depressed by what a life-hating, nihilistic, self-loathing, moral cesspit Hollywood has turned into: if they aren't signalling how "woke"and morally superior they are to all those dumbass Trump-supporting flagwavers in flyover country, they're teaching young Americans that giving way to one's most depraved impulses is, like, fun and cool, right, dooood?...

Tracey Ullman's support group for people who are too "woke" to have fun...

If you can't "see" the video below, click the title above and go into the post - it'll be worth it:

When you so woke, you asleep. 😜 pic.twitter.com/USEgKWPExM

— BBC Comedy (@bbccomedy) June 22, 2018

Here, on the second anniversary of The Glorious Revolution, is an earlier sketch...

Of course Monty Python wouldn't have been commissioned by today's BBC - far too original, anarchic and off-message

Launching the BBC's ribtickling new comedy season, the corporation's head of comedy Shane Allen boasted that the Monty Python team wouldn't have got a look-in today: "If we were going to assemble a team now it's not going to be six Oxbridge white blokes, it's going to be a diverse range of people who reflect the modern world and have got something to say that's different and we haven't seen before." John Cleese responded:

As an example of what Mr Allen would like to spend our money on, he cited Famalam, a current BBC Three sketch show featuring an all-black "Crazy Gang" style cast...

Gender-neutral bogs in every BBC building - yet another victory for cultural Marxists!

Rejoice! I can't be certain, of course, but I suspect that the vast majority of us aren't totally relaxed about using unisex loos - ...

Andrew Neil and Michael Portillo beat up a befuddled old man (AC Grayling) on live TV - why did no one call 999?

The elderly philosopher somewhat redeemed himself...

The BBC's adaptation of "A Very English Scandal" is everything I'd hoped for - but why did Hugh Grant agree to play Thorpe?

Blake Harrison as the spectacularly useless hit-man

I read A Very English Scandal, John Preston's wonderfully entertaining blackly comedic account of the bizarre Jeremy Thorpe/Norman Scott scandal, earlier this year, and wrote about it here. It wasn't until I'd finished the book that I learned the BBC was filming a three-part series based on it, starring Ben Whishaw as Scott and Hugh Grant as Thorpe. If you've missed the first two parts, I can't recommend them highly enough - the adaptation is as funny and sinister as Preston's book (which is still worth reading for all the subplots the inevitably streamlined TV version had to leave out). The 1960s' background was well-handled, and the horrible '70s - the crap hair, the stupid clothes, the shitty cars - is beautifully evoked, and Blake Harrison as Andrew Newton, the blithering idiot hired to kill Scott,...

Happy 10th. Birthday, Nigel! (a day late - sorry)

And it gives me an excuse to post some cute dog pictures courtesy of Pinterest:

Complicated tax rules just seem to create a lot of well-paid work for middle-men

When I began doing occasional daily shifts as a researcher on BBC Radio 2's The John Dunn Show 34 years ago, I had to sign individual one-page contracts for each day I worked in order to receive the miserable pittance I'd been offered. When the money eventually arrived in my bank account, it had been taxed at source. I hunted down the admin bod responsible for freelance contracts and asked him why the BBC hadn't paid me the full contracted amount and left me to take care of the tax as as part of my annual self-employed tax bill. The Inland Revenue insisted on it, he explained. But, I...

The latest BBC Agatha Christie adaptation, "Ordeal by Innocence" turned out to be an "Ordeal by Incoherence"

Viewers have apparently been demanding that the BBC follows the modern media trend by making all three episodes of Ordeal By Innocence available right now. God alone knows why: I watched the first one, and it was a a real shocker, but for all the wrong reasons. Here are ten to be getting on with:

1. There's an adult character, supposedly adopted as a child, who speaks and acts like a Cockney gangster, despite having been brought up in a mega-posh family. I haven't read the book, so this may  or may not be in it - but it was confusing...

Watching the Boat Race on the BBC was like being being lectured by some aged, earnest, humourless left-wing aunt

I rarely watch the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, but my wife had it on when we sat down to a late lunch on Saturday, so I thought I might as well. After about quarter of an hour of the race build-up (races build-up, I should say, because the real thing is preceded by a female version) I decided I might as well not, because it was pissing me off quite severely. First, there was some guff about getting state schools involved in rowing (why?), then an interview where a black co-presenter interviewed two black kids, then a female interviewer interviewed some female rowers about how great it was that more women were rowing and what a battle it had been to get women's rowing established in the face of male... whatever, plus some tosh about how the boat race should be used to get the public more interested in rowing...

Live TV - "The old directing game? Hardest game in the world!" (h/t: Nick Clack)

It's the Eurovision Song Contest, it's the BBC, it's 1977, and we're listening to talkback. Clench your buttocks - we're in for a very bumpy ride:

The chap doing all the swearing and shouting during that was the legendary...

The year of the whores, the ship hit the fan - and tons of other live TV subtitling gaffes

When regular commenter Helen remarked on the amusement to be derived from error-strewn TV News subtitles, I realised...

"Collateral" - Six and a half years on, I ask the same question: "Why Is My Licence Fee Funding Rubbishy Propaganda by David Hare"

Carey Mulligan - what a waste of her talent

About 20 minutes into the first (and, for me, the final) episode of the BBC's new conspiracy thriller, Collateral, written by the revered left-wing playwright David Hare, a number of thoughts struck me simultaneously:...

Reginald D. Hunter on Madonna v. Mrs. Thatcher as role models

I don't know why this clip from a 2011 Live at the Apollo performance has been doing the social media rounds for the past 48 hours - but I'd never seen it, and it surprised me (in a good way):

I'm surprised he was ever allowed back on British television!

The Today Programme has lost 300,000 listeners - a mix of Brexit, John Humphrys, and its editor, I reckon

It was recently announced that the BBC Radio 4 flagship current affairs programme, Today, had shed 300,000 listeners over the past year. Not a disaster, as it still boasts an average audience of 7.15m - but embarrassing, given that Chris Evans's Radio 2 morning show added 200,000 listeners during the same period.  Before I expatiate on the possible reasons for Today's appeal becoming more "selective", I should admit that I haven't listened to it for several years. I'm rarely up early enough these days, I loathed it back when I was routinely conscious at that time of the day, and John Humphrys's personality brings me out in hives.  Having admitted all that, I'd be very surprised if the following three factors weren't playing a major role in driving listeners away:

Now I'm really looking forward to the BBC three-part Jeremy Thorpe miniseries, "A Very English Scandal"

Three nights ago, I downloaded John Preston's enthralling (and very funny) account of Liberal politician Jeremy Thorpe's disastrous relationship with the male model Norman Scott (née Josiffe),  A Very English Scandal: Sex, Lies and a Murder Plot at the Heart of the Establishment. I finished it last night. I'm not sure why I hadn't already read it, because - apart from the Watergate hearings - the Thorpe trial in 1979 was the most exciting political legal events of the '70s. Thorpe - quite ludicrously - got off, because the Establishment basically engineered the outcome of the trial (yes, I know that sounds a bit nutty, but it did): the jury found him  and his seedy co-defendants not guilty, but just about everybody else knew that the saturnine spiv was as guilty as sin...

Years from now, they'll be asking: "Where were you when ex-Labour minister Alan Milburn quit the social mobility board?"

Alan Milburn - a hugely significant figure

And here's the thing - you'll remember Milburn's resignation instantly, as if you were back there, re-experiencing that momentous event which had the whole of the British nation crowded around their TV sets and mobile phones and iPads and (Get on with it! ed)...Well, anyway, whether you were making a cup of tea when BBC Radio News cut into Farming Today, or were slouched in front of the TV set watching some Mancunian nonentity tellings wildly amusing anecdotes about their "Nan" on Breakfast TV, or popping round to the corner shop for a pint of milk when a distraught stranger ran up to you with tears in their eyes and sobbed "Oh my God! Have you heard? Alan Milburn has resigned from the social mobility board because of the government's lack of commitment to social justice! What's to become of us? Yes, I know he had served his time and was due to be replaced anyway - but, still, it's a terrible shock. How am I going to break the news to my kids? That's Christmas ruined!"

Okay, you might think that four members of the Great and the Good flouncing out of some...

Because transgenderism is obviously the single most important social issue facing Britain...

That ridiculous story from today's Mail on Sunday (which you can read here) reminded me that it's been a while since...