Martin Durkin and James Delingpole in the most stimulating podcast of the year - red meat for right-wingers

I didn't mean to spend an hour this morning listening to James Delingpole interviewing the maker of the hugely influential online film, The Brexit Movie. But I made the mistake of listening to the first few minutes of the podcast...

Labour MP Dawn Butler on PM yesterday, being asked how Labour will make Britain "fairer". Oh dear.

I'll freely admit that, until yesterday...

Britain's left-wing comedians quake as they realise "the men are coming up the drive"

Delightful news: the arrogant, lazy bigotry of left-wing metropolitan BBC comics like Marcus Brigstocke and Stewart Lee has led to some members of their audiences outside London booing and walking out of their otherwise rib-tickling stand-up "comedy" gigs, disgusted by the performers' anti-Brexit material. For some reason, the comedians' bewildered bleatings recalled the moment when, during a televised public speech, the vile Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu realised that the vast crowd listening to him in the square below were booing, not cheering, him. But that seemed a bit silly, given that the wretched tyrant in question spent decades murdering and torturing his people, rather than - as in the case of Brigstocke and Lee - using allegedly comic material on a platform provided by left-wing broadcasters to shame, browbeat, bully and embarrass anyone who doesn't share their achingly PC view of the world. So I searched for another analogy...

What the BBC's Home Editor said about Anjem Choudary in a news report in May 2015

“It's one thing to ban someone for inciting hatred or violence, but quite another to pass a law that silences anyone who challenges established values.

“I was in Parliament Square today – a statue of Gandhi looking down at me who was jailed for being extremist; Mandela who was jailed for being an extremist.

“History tells us that extreme views are sometimes needed to challenge a very established values that people at the time hold so dear.”

Oh really, Mark Easton? And what "established values" that people "hold so dear" (you can hear the sneering contempt in those phrases) was...

The BBC goes full Peter Simple with one utterly deranged tweet

My first reaction was "What are they smoking at Radio Ulster these days?" My second reaction was...

BBC Radio 5 Live host: Muslim rape gangs didn't rape white girls in Rotherham, and to suggest otherwise is "offensive"

I wrote recently that listening to the BBC (and to EU officials) is often like hearing broadcasts from a parallel universe where the facts are the same as in ours, but the conclusions drawn are the diametric opposite (here). Now, though, it seems that even the facts are different. In the following clip from Up All Night the caller appears to live in our world, while the presenter, Dotun Adeboyo, appears to inhabit a universe with a different history, because in the land where Otun dwells, rape gangs comprised of Pakistani Muslims didn't sexually abuse white girls in Rotherham, and to suggest that they did gets you thrown off his show:

Katie Hopkins talks sense about the threat posed by Muslim immigrants - Iain Dale throws a petulant hissy fit during their LBC clash

The LBC talk show host, publisher, and former Conservative candidate Iain Dale tweeted this yesterday evening:

Well the Katie Hopkins fan club is out in force tonight. Bunch of islamophobic bigots. I'd be very worried if I attracted support like that.

Turned out they'd had a bit of a set-to during a phone interview on his radio show. Iain was jolly annoyed by comments the gobby epileptic right-wing shit-stirrer had made regarding the threat to western culture posed by what amounts to an invasion in recent years by millions of Muslim immigrants, a disproportionately large number of whom are young, unattached men.

"River" and "Unforgotten" both perpetuate the myth that white-on-black violence is the real problem - and that Britons are innately racist

DI Swedish Nutter

Early on in the fourth episode of BBC One’s big new detective series, River, a member of my family assured me that the dead female police detective whose murder is being investigated by her former partner, and who appears to have been up to some form of sinister jiggery-pokery with a Somali migrant now suspected of killing her, would turn out to have been trying to help the migrant out of sheer compassion. The Somali would, of course, turn out to be innocent of her murder, and to be a thoroughly honourable man and a fine, upstanding citizen.

Stan & Ollie's "Brokeback Mountain" was funnier than the life's work of all the BBC's other pet comedians combined

If you need an antidote to Radio 4's current crop of ghastly pseudo--comedy programmes, try Chris Morris's "On the Hour" from 1991/92

An astonishing thing I've just discovered about the greatest satire series ever to appear on British TV - The Day Today (1994), obviously - is that it consisted of only six half-hour episodes. That's it - no second series. Three hours' worth. I am genuinely amazed. Of course, I knew there had a predecessor on radio a few years' earlier, but, until my son handed me a CD containing some of the best episodes of On the Hour, I'd only heard a few snatches of it - mainly because I was busy producing actual news programmes at the time. My wife was a fan of the radio show, but there was no easy way of recording it for later consumption, and, of course, no iPlayer or YouTube.

BBC Radio's The Now Show doesn’t appear to have realised that Dubya is no longer President

Please stop before my sides split, Rich!

The topical “comedy” programme, The Now Show, isn’t the worst or the smuggest pile of left-wing crap regularly dumped on us by the BBC – that accolade belongs, of course, to The News Quiz, the unfunniest programme in the history of British radio (and that's really saying something). Nevertheless TNS (as I expect it’s referred to within the BBC) is undoubtedly a smug pile of left-wing crap. Hosted by Punt and Dennis (I’m already chuckling at the very thought of them) it this week featured a monologue from alleged comic and professional American Rich Hall. Guess what his subject was? Yup – the sheer awfulness of George W. Bush! How incredibly "now" is that!

What kind of sick pervert listens to "Moneybox" at 9pm on Sunday?

I always do the washing up. This is to compensate for the fact that I rarely prepare  the food. Over the years, I've developed a touch of OCD about the ritual. I can't concentrate on anything else until the last plate has been stacked in the dishwasher, the last pot has been scoured, and the last spatula has been hung up in its place above the hob. Only then can I settle down to watch TV or have a bath or read a book or whatever. When I wash up I have to have the radio on. I don't really care what I listen to - I'm usually not concentrating on it: it's just a comforting noise, really. But on Sundays, no sooner do I start washing up than the presenter announces that the next programme is Moneybox and I have to dry my hands hurriedly and switch to another station.

Reprint of my Salisbury Review article "The BBC, Dressing to the Left"

There's a new issue of The Salisbury Review due out next week (you can take out a subscription here), so I reckon it's safe for me to reproduce my article from the current edition of the quarterly without being accused of harming sales (it can also be read - for the next few days at least - on the magazine's website, here). I used the article to try to explain why my former employers seem impervious to evidently justified charges of chronic left-wing bias. After all, I'm sure the BBC doesn't set out deliberately to annoy up to 40% of its licence-fee payers by dismissing their views, so why does it keep on doing it? I'm convinced it has something to do with malfunctioning feedback loops:  

If we promised to be ever so nice to Muslims and gays and to volunteer for assisted suicide, do you think Radio 4 would stop hectoring us?

So there I was reading a book earlier today with The World At One droning along earnestly in the background on Radio 4. Some guy was talking about the need to counter anti-Muslim prejudice in this country. That was followed by the homosexual former head of BP, John Browne, talking about the difficulties of being a gay businessman. Finally, there was a long interview (probably part of another programme) with some British doctor who is extremely enthusiastic about assisted suicide and plans to travel to Switzerland to be offed when the time comes: although there's nothing much wrong with him, he seemed to be relishing the prospect of no longer existing.

Right-wing warriors James Delingpole and Dan Hannan plus a rockabilly outro - podcast heaven!

James Delingpole produces a regular podcast ("Radio Free Delingpole - broadcasting to you from Occupied Europe") for the American conservative Ricochet website, consisting of a 40 minute telephone chat with another right-winger. The latest edition, which you can listen to here, features the Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan. If you don't read the Guardian and you're not a wet, pseudo-Conservative social democrat, it'll act as pick-me-up after six looooonnnnngggggg days (with even more to come) of uncritical, swivel-eyed, semi-mystical Mandela-worship.

Clegg, Welby and Cherie Blair on Monday morning are as welcome as three farts in a spacesuit

Now that I no longer work for a living, I rather enjoy Monday mornings. There’s something about lying in bed listening to front gates shutting, car doors slamming and wage slaves hurriedly clip-clopping along a wet pavement on their way to a day of battles and boredom that doesn’t half cheer me up – I know it shouldn’t but it does. But in order to go on enjoying the warm glow that realising I don't have to go to work always brings, I may have to eschew all forms of news media at the start of the week.

A handful of Tories scattered amongst 23.000 employees doesn’t mean the BBC isn’t screamingly biased

Prominent lefty journalist Kevin Maguire wrote a piece in the Mirror yesterday deriding the notion that the BBC is almost exclusively staffed by left-wingers (here). To support this patently ridiculous claim he dredged up the names of prominent Tories who once worked for the corporation, and two who still do. He mentioned, among others, the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, MP Charlotte Lesley and the BBC’s current Political Editor, Nick Robinson. Let’s look at each in turn.

That went well! Labour immigration spokesman Chris Bryant bids farewell to his career on Today

A few days ago, on this very blog (here), I eviscerated a ridiculous Telegraph article by Chris Bryant. As I did so, I was rather wishing I could put my points to the silly sausage in person. Having heard his bizarrely inept performance on the Today Programme this morning, I’m relieved I didn’t have the opportunity – it would have been the equivalent of kicking a hysterical puppy, and I am not a cruel man. Take a listen:

Johnny Depp, Ruth Wilson, The Lone Ranger, and the need to keep lefties off Test Match Special

Johnny Depp (the chap in the photo with a dead crow on his bonce) has told BBC News that US critics were upset that The Lone Ranger did not ‘really tank, really take a dive’. The truth is that the movie tanked like Erwin Rommell. In its opening weekend, it took $29m at the box office. Sounds good, but it cost $250m to make, and blockbusters are meant to earn back at least 50% of their costs come close of play on that first Sunday – which means it’ll probably wind up losing up around $125,000,000.

Lenny Henry says “get a grip” – or more black actors will flee abroad! Why are we supposed to care?

On a semi-regular basis, a black British actor will surface and complain about how the lack of roles for black actors in Britain is causing a mass exodus of talent to foreign parts. I last addressed this phenomenon two years ago, when Kwame Kwei-Armah (silly made-up “rootsy” name – he was born Ian Roberts in Hillingdon) and Paterson Joseph (a genuinely terrific actor) whined about Britain’s “failure to fully embrace multicultural casting” (read it here).