BY ROGER WATSON A few years ago, I had dinner in Hong Kong with an Australian sheep farmer who had sold his property for hundreds of millions of Australian dollars. By then, he was living in a prime Sydney Harbour apartment, married to a colleague of mine—a glamorous former Australian Olympic athlete and recipient of the prestigious Order of Australia. His daughter flew for Cathay … Continue reading Territory
BY ROGER WATSON I have been to many Edinburgh Military Tattoos. It became ‘Royal’ in 2010. Over the years, since childhood, during my own military service when I took part and subsequently when I continued to live in Edinburgh, I went regularly. I had not been back for nearly 25 years but my youngest son, who is a regular, persuaded me to attend this year. … Continue reading The Edinburgh Tattoo
BY PAUL T HORGAN In a way, Jimmy Savile was responsible for Top of the Pop‘s persistence and success in its heyday, which I suggest to be the 1970s and 1980s. In an era of three-channel analogue television, it was strange to me that ITV never produced a competing peak-time programme in those decades using the same formula of bands miming along to their charting … Continue reading Virginia Plain Ain’t Big Enough For Moonwalking
BY GARY MCGHEE The 2nd series of this brilliant show aired recently. Like the first series it exposes the ridiculous bureaucracy that is blighting British farming, but with added insights into the appalling petty-minded jobsworthery and nimbyism of local West Oxfordshire officialdom. The bone of contention is a modest restaurant building plan concocted by Jeremy Clarkson on his land to provide a market for his … Continue reading Diddly Squat II Soon to be III
BY GARY MCGHEE There have been a lot of dramas made for TV and film in recent times that have Gay love stories at their centre. They raise important issues about the way these kinds of stories are now presented and what they mean in terms of young Gay identities and lives. I’ve focused on those that I think have much to commend them, but … Continue reading The Limitations of Wokery
BY DANIEL JUPP It’s actually heart-warming to read through the comments on an Amazon Prime ad for their Lord of the Rings (The Rings of Power) series. People are ripping the piss out of it. The ad features what I suppose is meant to be either a wizard or a hobbit, maybe Gandalf, maybe Bilbo’s great grandfather. It’s hard to tell because the actor is … Continue reading Tolkien Reduced to Woke
BY FRANK HAVILAND It’s in the blood of any decent charlatan to solve problems that don’t exist, rather than face the full horror of their in-tray. Sadiq Khan (no stranger to blood) wants to outlaw misogyny – wolf-whistling you understand, not FGM, Sharia courts or segregation. Health Secretary Sajid Javid wants blood donations to be more inclusive (because worrying about HIV is just silly). Keir … Continue reading Homo Supermens
BY ANDREW MOODY Aleister Crowley, the Great Beast, dictated nearly forty years after preparatory school at the Plymouth Brethren: “I had been the butt of every bully in school. My whole life seemed at times to be one slimy subterfuge to cozen death.” While perusing the National Portrait Gallery some years back, I noted Crowley’s magical portrait (it did not represent his image but worked … Continue reading Crowley Demystified
BY TARQUIN SUTHERLAND It was a bloodletting like no other witnessed in recent times – if ever, in the modern age. For seven and a half minutes, the great and the good of Hollywood sat transfixed and slack-jawed at the sight of Ricky Gervais; treating the entire Hollywood construct – the studios, stars and execs, and in a wider sense the whole of the Liberal … Continue reading The Hollywood Massacre
BY ANDREW MOODY Spike Lee’s Oscar speech was as politically charged as possible: “Make the moral choice between love versus hate. Let’s do the right thing!” He was of course referring to the 2020 presidential election around the corner and Hollywood’s desperate desire to dethrone Trump. This is no doubt why Lee – a mediocre filmmaker at best but political dynamite nonetheless – won a … Continue reading Oscars Devalued
BY LDH POWELL So, an article by Matt Kilcoyne in The Telegraph came out in favour of ‘Love Island’, decrying the intellectual “snobbery” of quite possibly (and most likely) its own readers, and the “Twitter storm” surrounding this latest hyped-up TV offering. The premise being that ‘Love Island’ contestant applications were higher than that of applications for Oxbridge. What’s that I hear? carefully manicured and … Continue reading Love Islands
BY BEN PENSANT From inventing a racism epidemic by pretending hate crime reports are the same as convictions to demanding heads roll because a researcher claims an MP once leered at her while she ate a Pepperami, modern progressives love nothing more than taking a huge dump on due process. Luckily, while our legal system stubbornly refuses to imprison people just because Twitter tells them … Continue reading Woody Allen – Guilty!
BY JON ALEXANDER For decades, Hollywood has been a symbol for many as the ideal lifestyle. Whether it’s the young girl next door fulfilling her dreams of acting alongside the guy she had a poster of on her bedroom wall. Or a young boy wanting to fly the Millennium Falcon into a battle in space. Hollywood could accommodate everybody. It oozed class, style and drama … Continue reading Hollywood Fallen
