in spiked 12/6/2009

Mitchell and Webb: third time unlucky

The third series of the comedy duo’s sketch show is too self-referential and knowing to be funny

in spiked 5/6/2009

Hey, let's all have a laugh at the past!

BBC4’s Meet the British showed us how the UK saw itself in the past, but only to snigger at our forebears’ misplaced optimism

in spiked 28/5/2009

Freud: not such a moody bastard

The Radio 4 tribute to Clement Freud showed that the BBC at least still does good radio

in spiked 22/5/2009

Why are so many people blank about verse?

BBC One’s Why Poetry Matters was a noble idea, but it proved to be more patronising than inspiring.

In Culture Wars, October 23, 2008

It is a cliché that today we live in a culture obsessed by ‘celebrity’, with the lumpen proletariat forever fawning over the minutiae of talentless non-entities who are famous merely for being famous. The popularity and power wielded by Hello!magazine, the profusion of famous nobodies spawned from and spewed out by Channel Four’s Big Brother and other reality television programmes, are often cited as proof of this cultural phenomenon. Perhaps the most visible evidence of our celebrity culture can be witnessed at local newsagents, which now sell a cornucopia of cheap magazine titles devoted entirely to the inexplicably famous.

in spiked 15/5/2009

Picking fights is just as human as taking flight

This week’s Horizon programme on violence showed that even pacifists can get a kick out of a punch-up

in spiked 1/5/2009

How the bottle gets the Best of you

BBC2’s Best: His Mother’s Son was a poignant tale about how alcoholism can ruin the lives of the most unlikely people