If the BBC is the cultural expression of the British state, then the omens are surely unfavourable. Its funding contested and overstretched, bogged down in interminable culture war disputes, the BBC does not know what it is for. Every few …
The conservative case for Strictly
In 1976, Angela Rippon was already well-known to Britain’s TV watchers — from the waist up — as Britain’s first female national newsreader. Then aged 38, she appeared on a Morecambe & Wise Christmas special, sitting behind her desk, only …