Gareth Roberts is a TV scriptwriter and novelist who has worked on Doctor Who and Coronation Street
In 1987, when I was 19, I started at my first ‘proper’ adult job. This was as a lowly civil service clerk, or administrative officer – filing, basically. It was a post within the Lord Chancellor’s Department – as it was known then – but which today is called the Ministry of Justice, which doesn’t
The first few days of a totally new government are disorientating. Nobody knows quite how to react. The electoral dust is still settling. We are still in the process of recalibrating well-worn reflexes: rolling your eyes and tutting about Jeremy Hunt and David Cameron is no longer a thing, for they are no longer things.
Sexy time at the cinema is becoming a thing of the past. That’s according to research on the prevalence of vices in top live-action films from film maven Stephen Follows. His study shows that drug taking and violence are as popular on screen as ever in the 21st century. Profanity has dipped only slightly, but
And now the end is near. Barring a polling error of galactic proportions, we are hours away from the final nemesis of the Tory government. It is 14 years since Cameron and Clegg invited the press into the Downing Street garden to reveal that the coalition would ‘give our country the strong, stable and decisive
We’re going to be lumbered with them for at least five years, so I think it’s time to have a good look at the incoming Labour cabinet. Not the ones we know and love of old – Thornberry, Lammy or Miliband – or Starmer and Rayner, who may still be fresh-ish, but are very well
How would you define ‘working people’? You’d think that ‘people who work’ would be a pretty safe bet. But Keir Starmer seems to have a different definition, telling LBC earlier this week that working people are ‘people who earn their living, rely on our services and don’t really have the ability to write a cheque
The ghost of 1997 haunts the 2024 election. The defining image of this year’s contest, barring any major upsets over the next fortnight, is already clear: Rishi Sunak drenched like a drowned chipmunk outside 10 Downing Street as he called the snap election. ‘Things Can Only Get Better’, Labour’s ’97 campaign anthem, was blasted out
We’re now about halfway through the election campaign. I don’t know how we’re going to keep our excitement from bubbling over if this level of stimulation keeps up in the second half. The staggering mediocrity and dullness of Sunak and Starmer has lent this contest – despite its inevitably very different final outcome – the
‘Elections are won from the centre ground,’ the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said. Perhaps he should have a word with his own party. The Conservatives have been in power for 14 years and, while they are nominally centre-right, many of the party’s policies and positions will hardly strike the average voter as sensible and centrist.
Unlike Brenda from Bristol, I usually love elections – but not this one. Theresa May’s self-destruction in 2017 was one of the most fascinating events I’ve ever seen. The high-stakes tension of Boris vs. Corbyn in 2019 had me gripped to the TV. Even as a child, I couldn’t get enough of the high drama
The American novelist Jodi Picoult has revealed that she thinks that Shakespeare’s plays were written by a woman, telling the Hay Literary Festival, ‘I think that, back then, people in theatre knew that William Shakespeare was a catch-all name for a lot of different types of authors. I think they expected it to be a joke that
Nicola Sturgeon has finally come clean: ‘I was part of the problem,’ Scotland’s former first minister has admitted, referring to the ‘trans rows’ that dogged the late stages of her time as First Minister. What’s this? Is this, at last, a frank admission of fallibility and regret from Sturgeon? A reflection on her own flaws? No,
Esther McVey is minister without portfolio in the current cabinet, but has been dubbed the ‘minister for common sense’. In this capacity she made a characteristically half-baked, half-thought-through address earlier this week. There is apparently to be no more spending on external equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) contracts without explicit sign-off from a minister, and
UK university courses on race and colonialism are facing the axe due to cuts. ‘There’s not very much about race and colonialism on the curriculum to start with,’ fumed Professor Hakim Adi at the report, which revealed that Kent university’s anthropology course and a music programme at Oxford Brookes is under threat. Adi, a former
Rebellious Tory MPs, expecting a trouncing in Thursday’s locals, are apparently mooting a ‘100 days to save Britain!’ emergency turnaround strategy. A new leader, a payrise for doctors, defence spending up to 3 per cent. Having four prime ministers in one parliamentary term would be good for future pub quizzes, but who is apparently choice
Does anyone else miss the nineties terribly? Everything seemed simpler in that pre-internet era of The Fast Show, the band Suede and heaving nightclubs. Twenty-five years ago today, one of the defining films of that decade – Notting Hill – held its premiere in London. In the years since, we’ve made progress, of sorts: technology
The BBC has struck upon a new wheeze to make the Proms accessible and inclusive: it has booked famously ‘non-binary’ singer Sam Smith. The pop star, best known for cavorting on stage in ill-fitting outfits, is joined in this year’s line up by Florence Welch. A disco prom will also take place, which for those of us of a certain age immediately
The few days since the publication of the Cass report – the probe into ‘gender identity’ services for young people – have been a revelation. The report, compiled by Dr Hilary Cass, has at long last, and so publicly it couldn’t be ignored, blown some of the gilt off the trans gingerbread, confirming that medical interventions on minors weren’t backed up by
The Telegraph reported at the weekend that the Conservative party appears to be attempting, in its selection process for parliamentary candidates, to weed out anybody who might just possibly be a conservative. This strategy – with all its ineptitude and wilful blindness – is a perfect capsule of the parliamentary party and its upper echelons. A
The 2024 Eurovision Song Contest – the final of which will be held in Malmö on 11 May – is the latest peculiar target of pompous virtue signallers. The hosts of the UK’s largest Eurovision screening have announced their decision to scrap the event. The reason? Israel, of course. ‘We have collectively decided not to
