Back in the Noughties, pop culture was hard and nasty. The internet was corroding the mystique of fame, and the public wanted to read — in the words of Jessica Callan, one of The Mirror’s original 3AM Girl gossip columnists …
Elon Musk hasn’t betrayed Ukraine
It was September 2022, and Kyiv was determined to attack the Russian naval fleet at the Crimean port of Sevastopol. Their plan was straightforward: guided by SpaceX’s Starlink satellite system, six drone submarines would sneak through Russia’s defences and detonate …
My night out with the Proud Boys
When I first met the leader of the Proud Boys, he was relaxing over a burger and chicken wings in an Irish bar, wearing his trademark mirror shades and a T-shirt emblazoned with the words: “Democrats eat and fuck children.” …
Russell Brand’s sexual apocalypse
What a tremendous shock the weekend’s revelations about Russell Brand’s treatment of women must have been to the bosses of Channel 4, the BBC, and any number of newspaper executives. I mean, who would have thought it? Sure, this was …
Peter Thiel has launched a class war
“We’re building a city,” Dryden Brown declared last June, with the air of a man unfazed by the enormity of his words. “We’re building a city from scratch. Somewhere in the Mediterranean.” Brown, who has spent years explaining to investors …
Peep Show is a national humiliation
The history of British comedy is a history of ever-increasing male humiliation. Let’s start in the Seventies, the decade of declinism and brown suits. Forced to bear witness to both is Basil Fawlty, the supreme specimen of self-righteous control-freakery who, …
Incels are the new jihadis
It is hard to know exactly when it happened, but, at some point over the last three years, the word “jihad” vanished from the news. Did anyone notice? There was a time, not so long ago, when jihadists seemed to …
The paranoia behind China’s spy war
The revelation that a parliamentary researcher was arrested in March on suspicion of being a Chinese spy has sent Westminster “reeling” and left the British political establishment in “shock”. Or that, at least, is the impression offered by London’s news …
The Centrist Dads won’t save Britain
The Centrists are back, baby, and this time they are bringing with them the solution for our polarised times. Such seems to be the theme of the past week, what with former MP and would-be Prime Minister Rory Stewart talking …
The problem with beautiful women
A group of little girls sit in a circle and play a game called “Honestly”. It’s a sort of crowdsourced truth-or-dare, except it’s only “truth”, and there’s only one question: Am I beautiful?
The asker closes her eyes, and the …
How Kim Jong Un became Prince Charming
When a reclusive North Korean dictator makes his lumbering way to Russia on a luxurious armour-plated train, the world cannot help but watch. And Kim Jong Un’s trip to visit Vladimir Putin in the Russian Far East was no exception. …
Why America’s elderly elite won’t quit
You don’t have to be old to be confused. Years ago, when I was still a walk-over-hot-coals BBC reporter — or so I thought — I finished an interview, made a dash for the exit, and ended up in a …
What does Angela Rayner really want?
Listening to Angela Rayner this week has felt like real-time evidence for Karl Marx’s quip about the past weighing “like a nightmare on the brains of the living”. Even before she had addressed the TUC conference, Rayner was fending off …
Punk’s spirit is broken
Turns out I’m still hated in Liverpool, even though I’m actually a fan of the Scouse. Wandering around Blue Dot Festival a month ago, I stopped to poach a fag off of a gaggle of Liverpudlians sat around the main …
The Russian invasion was a rational act
It is widely believed in the West that Russian president Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine was not a rational act. On the eve of the invasion, then British prime minister Boris Johnson suggested that perhaps the United States and …