Guest edit: The Tao of Trash
One of the most successful TV shows I ever produced was pure, throwaway trash of the highest order – and all the better for it. It was the first series of The Graham Norton Show, and it’s still going today, over 25 years later. The reason? Back in that first season in 1998, no […]
Orlando: from the West End to Magdalen gardens
I didn’t like the West End adaptation of Orlando when I saw it in January 2023. I was convinced the concept was all wrong, and Neil Bartlett, the play’s adaptor, was the guilty man behind the crime. I spent the entire journey home on the Central Line ranting to my mum about how goddamn [&
At what cost do we perform the ‘Cool Girl’ aesthetic?
Images: Me, in my best moments of performance. “The mob wife… is a little more grown up. It’s right there in the name: She’s a wife! She’s not a girl; she’s a woman” claims Harper’s Bazaar. Amazing news for anyone stuck living like it’s the 1950s. Because, as we all know, th
In conversation with: Oxford Action 4 Palestine Encampment
I walk into the Oxford Action (OA4P) for Palestine encampment at Pitt Rivers Museum; the path is littered with boards to keep the boggy ground at bay; a Palestinian flag greets me along the way with two massive whiteboards; one for the schedule of the day, and one for the list of chores to [&
BEST BEFORE: Mock-the-Week of an election
Last week’s announcement of a general election, given by Rishi Sunak in the pouring rain, will likely have put a damper on some people’s evenings (yes that is a water pun, yes I think I’m funny, yes there will be more). A week in, we’ve already had enough memorable moments to fill a scrapboo
Top G Diffusion Filter
Andrew Tate. Dostoyevsky. Subterranean Homesick Blues. Couperin. Turbo-folk. Durex. Henry Fielding. Capital (by Kenneth Goldsmith not Karl Marx). Žižek. Ode to Joy. Dichtung. und Wahrheit. Zoom virtual backgrounds. Deloitte. Jean Luc Godard. Uwe Boll. Snapchat. 25mm Cooke S4 Lens. Gold diff
Icon of the Week: The jargon of ‘Summer Eights’
You’re a novice to rowing. No, not a Novice, just… a novice. Someone who has no clue, someone who hangs around Summer Eights for the Pimms and the occasional barbequed delicacy. The incessant rowing conversation from hall lunches has carved a space in your mind – Torpids; Tech suits
Tradition at a cost: Three Oxford Colleges and their choir schools
When the University of Oxford released its 2020 Admissions Statistics Report, it should not have made particularly positive reading for Magdalen College. Of all undergraduate colleges, Magdalen had admitted the lowest proportion of state-educated pupils in the preceding three years. The Colle
Back in the USSR
Kolya Vasin, one week before his death (Courtesy of Igor Vereshchagin) I used to think I loved the Beatles, until I heard about Kolya Vasin. Only then did I see what loving the Beatles really means. For an essay competition a number of years ago, I wrote on how the Beatles’ influence had ri