Multiple commenters on the latest Private Eye podcast taking issue with my description of the Tommy Robinson march and angrily pointing out that *actually*, it's not racist to be racist, so I feel I've done some good this week. youtu.be/z3px0sxEnkk?...

“Farq”.

I'm pretty sure you guys have made up this Chotiner person you're all suddenly banging on about. It's not even a half-way convincing name.

You could listen to this if you wanted to. I don't mind.

Hastings, Observer Building, this afternoon at 3.30. Be there if you can! www.hastingsbookfest.org/events/a-wal...

This is funniest possible headline for a song literally called "Song for Bob Dylan"

This Sunday: top tips from two hardened criminals (or at least those who create them). @william1shaw.bsky.social and I discuss how we both hopped the fence from fact to fiction at the Hastings Book Festival. Come along if you can! www.hastingsbookfest.org/events/a-wal...

Well, I'm sure that was what she was hoping you'd do with it, she'd be very pleased.

✊

Why? How has this situation come to pass? I'm afraid I'm going to have to know a great deal more before I even accept this stipulation, let alone make a choice.

Mandelson Crisis Starmer Acts! The new Private Eye is out now.

How's that metaverse working out?

This Sunday: top tips from two hardened criminals (or at least those who create them). @william1shaw.bsky.social and I discuss how we both hopped the fence from fact to fiction at the Hastings Book Festival. Come along if you can! www.hastingsbookfest.org/events/a-wal...

Top tip: if you're a racist doing racism, simply tell a media organisation you are not a racist. It never fails!

Can I just say, from the bottom of my heart, and because I think it's important right now, fuck racists?

I'll say one thing on their behalf This story Made Me Laugh www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I credited the artist of this as one of the terrifying influences on my collection of ghost stories (paperback coming next month, all good bookshops etc.) Still find the troll genuinely horrifying.

Are we underestimating Reform's talent? ➡️ Watch the latest episode of Page 94: The Private Eye Podcast on YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=euHn...

Writing about Peter Mandelson again - just as I used to when I first arrived at Private Eye as the tiniest of satirical twinks - I find I have also regressed to my late-90s habit of singing "Mandel Mandel-vision, Mm-Mandel-vision" to the theme tune of Chucklevision. Have my earworm. You're welcome.

There's a quite good book all about this, if you're interested. www.amazon.co.uk/King-Sunligh...

Am going to be appearing as the home team at the Hastings Book Festival with the brilliant @william1shaw.bsky.social (Brighton) on 21st Sept to talk all things criminal. Might reveal some clues to what Tommy Wildeblood is going to get up to next. Come along! www.hastingsbookfest.org/events/a-wal...

Have just remembered this, which I made for some reason in the late 1990s and recently rediscovered in a box in the garage. Guess I've got to take it down again now 😥

ice-cold assasin for hire.

In a development I can only apologise for, this fortnight you can look at us as well as listen to us on Page 94: The Private Eye podcast. www.youtube.com/watch?v=euHn...

I've had sub-editings like that.

Third time's the charm... www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cz...

Just in case it helps today - and for Justin Webb - here's a video of the time we made a train for our cats. www.instagram.com/reel/C4i_ngF...

Love the equivocation of this BBC headline. As if Harry's going to be "just popping in to collect my old Panini annuals, I'll head upstairs, don't bother disturbing dad if he's watching Pointless, I'll catch up with him some other time".

If this show is not about handy hints to scrimp on household budgets in Pill, Portishead and Clevedon then I'm not interested. www.youtube.com/@harrycolesa...

You can listen to this if you want to.

“Weirdie, meet Beardie.” www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Top tip: Beat the Tube strikes this week by not living in London

Amazing Optical Illusion: look at it one way and it's a naked lady, look at it another way and it's two sex offenders conspiring with each other.

Magnificent.

So that's unthinkable, unspeakable, unfeasible, unworkable, unwise.

The way @adammacqueen.bsky.social weaves real life events with fiction in such a masterful way leavee breathless, and with such reverence for gay history, one character speaks Polari. A must read, and I can't wait to pick up book two in the series.

Really confused. Does anyone know who this is about?

Please buy this one. Nick Newman and I made it.

Did my own research and discovered Alex is right: it is literally impossible to buy a loaf of normal bread in Starmer's Britain. It's becoming extinct.

Been out with the gays. They're not all that tbh. 🏳️‍🌈

This is an important, fascinating and massively overlooked thing because of lack of written records and a continuing patronising view of working class people as cutely bigoted (see also current Telegraph and elsewhere coverage). 1/2

Go on Don. Be dead. Be dead for the issue Ian's away and I'm editing.

I hope they don't get muddled and hang themselves by mistake.

It's good, this one. And it features different versions of me, from alternative points in my timeline. And the Master. And Rassilon.

[Subs: please check how everything worked out for Russia. Pretty sure it was broadly fine]

Lucky I'm not trying to cross with my brother in his wheelchair or my dad on his mobility scooter, isn't it?

*sighs in jiffy-bag

God it must be horrible being Sarah Vine.

The Times’s long-running toy boy obsession is now running at more than one feature a day.