Telegraph: This Christmas, there's only one way to save humanity - Keir Starmer must commit harakiri live on GB News.

Craig Brown spends a whole page parodying the Telegraph in the current Private Eye but even he can't invent headlines as mad as the real ones.

Really enjoyed Nouvelle Vague. Much more than I enjoyed A bout de souffle, in fact.

Why can't immigrants who come to the UK integrate as well as this?

Morons on X are salivating over the prospect of Trump destroying the BBC so that its role as state broadcaster can be taken over by - yes, GB News. That would be the GB News that produces such great documentaries, drama, comedy, light entertainment, local radio, national radio ...

And now I find out that The Salt Path wasn't even published by a real penguin.

LAST ORDERS PLEASE! You’ve got until Wednesday 17 December to order small prints, cards, wrap and slipmats for Christmas delivery. www.gailmyerscough.co.uk

I did love the adventures of Jupiter Jones and friends. ???

Me talking about books in The Guardian. As usual, the piece is a bit more nuanced than the headline.

Word.

Hard to think of anywhere that shaped my musical and literary personality more strongly than Birmingham Central Library in the 1970s. Designed by John Madin in the Brutalist style, now sadly demolished. Great to see it being celebrated in these Christmas cards by @gailmyerscough.co.uk

Lots of resonances for me in this long essay on (mainly) British comedy. Very much looking forward to the novel itself.

Fancy a bit of Greek sunshine in your life this December? Cheaper than flying to Crete, the e-book of my novel Mr Wilder and Me is currently 99p on both Amazon and @bookshop.org. Here's the Bookshop link (buying from them gives support to indie booksellers.).

I only ever had one Rupert annual - this one. (I was five.) Extraordinary to see this again - one of the key visual memories of my childhood.

The calls from America this weekend to "abolish the EU" are for one simple reason: the EU is the only thing that can keep European nation-states from becoming Russian or American vassals.

I assumed that by now I knew all the good music from my formative years, but I was alerted to this song yesterday by this must-follow account, and it turns out to have one of the all-time great riffs.

The EU discourse is perfect because there's something in it for everyone. First of all, the European Union genuinely does have a lot of problems. But more importantly, a lot of people hate it for largely unrelated and often contradictory reasons. It's a great enemy

Une certaine idée de l'Angleterre #MartinParr 🖤 @stationsimone.bsky.social @thierrychanu.bsky.social @jonathancoe.bsky.social

RIP the great Martin Parr

Happy to see a character in The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe agreeing with me on “cosy crime.” @jonathancoe.bsky.social

Don't think I can remember a Bafta awards season where so many of the films are adaptations of recent British literary sources. There's a Deborah Levy, a Jim Crace, a Maggie O'Farrell, a Kazuo Ishiguro, an Adam Mars-Jones, a Helen MacDonald (@hjm.bsky.social) and two (!) Max Porters.

This is brilliant. An amazing - if confusing - album begets an amazing - if confusing - review.

Anyone enjoying the current re-runs of vintage Call My Bluff on BBC Four might like to check out the show's cameo appearance ten minutes into this barking mad NF Simpson parody. I remember watching this in 1973 and being flabbergasted.

The excellent @birminghamdispatch.bsky.social (which has done such great reporting on the flag epidemic over the last few months) delivers the goods again today with this deep dive into the Midlands mythology of Penda's Fen.

Is the Telegraph finally acknowledging that Thatcher wrecked British society?

Congratulations to the fabulous composer Mike Gibbs who today, aged 89, received an honorary degree from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. On display, delighted to see artefacts from his collaboration with Bill Forsyth on Housekeeping, plus the score of a tune that is very close to my heart.

Not a half-baked gesture at all. Tidal has much better quality and pays artists four times as much as Spotify.

This is such a graceful post, from someone I worked with forty years ago (before she was a published poet or I was a published novelist) and whose work I admire very much.

This does an excellent job of summarising a novel which (in my recent experience at book events) is very hard to summarise.

Kindle edition is £1.99 today until midnight. www.amazon.co.uk/Proof-My-Inn...

The Proof of My Innocence by @jonathancoe.bsky.social is a bargain £1.99 on Kindle today #affiliatelink amzn.to/4oUrfuV

Thank you Apple, but the file I’ve just downloaded is a text file so ideally I’d like you to find a way for me to read it, not ‘use it as my ring tone’.

Unfortunately, 'ideology over sense and pragmatism' has been the credo of the British right since 2016.

10/29/70: Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes Considered his most personal project More: @jonathancoe.bsky.social [AU of Mr. Wilder & Me]: theguardian.com/theobserver/... @cineoutsider.bsky.social: www.cineoutsider.com/reviews/blur... @aadowd.bsky.social: avclub.com/forty-years-...

Finally caught up with One Battle After Another and those have to be 165 of the most enjoyable and exciting minutes I've ever spent in the cinema. Thought it played at times like a mash-up of Running On Empty and Midnight Run, two of my favourite films of the 1980s.

AI “art” is boring because it can do anything, but means nothing. It’s as tedious as other people’s dreams or drug experiences. There’s no art without human connection and shared feeling.

This is a great film, well worth recording. Naunton Wayne (minus Basil Radford) especially good as the laconic detective. Surprised to learn it must be at least twenty years since I've seen it!

I've had a few new followers today so if you're already starting to regret it and looking for an excuse to unfollow, here's some shameless self-promotion to make it easier for you.

Pete Townsend and Prince in this ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ show from the great Arthur Jafa at Sadie Coles HQ and Karma Ashadu at Camden Arts Centre...loved these shows @theobserveruk.bsky.social @timadamswrites.bsky.social observer.co.uk/culture/art/...

My 14-year-old self would never have guessed that, in 50 years' time, all the world's music would be available at the click of a button, you'd navigate the globe by carrying a tiny computer around in your pocket, and the US President would post a video of himself shitting over American citizens.

X is incredible these days. We all know social media erases nuance, but X has taken this much further. It's not enough to express a loud opinion there now: to get heard, you have to couch everything in terms of riot, civil war, societal collapse, the end of civilisation, apocalypse. It's exhausting.

I've had a few new followers today so if you're already starting to regret it and looking for an excuse to unfollow, here's some shameless self-promotion to make it easier for you.

I've had the pleasure of being interviewed by Mishal Husain three times. One of the most intelligent and accomplished people I've ever met. Here's Nigel Farage trying to shut her down with the words "Listen, love ..." like it was still the 1970s. I'd say it was unbelievable, only it isn't.

A bleak dystopia where Sharia law predominates, while economic and cultural divisions mean that the different communities live parallel, segregated lives. Oh, wait, that’s Dubai …

A Vintage Obscura track from the Obscure Records label. Beautiful setting of James Joyce (from an artist namechecked in my Rotters’ Club).

a truly amazing song

It's not out until Boxing Day, but last night I was lucky enough to see Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value. An amazingly moving, near-perfect family drama: up there with the best of Bergman. And just when I thought it couldn't get any better, this absolute beauty comes up over the end credits ...

I am once again begging you to boycott Tesla

Very interesting piece on why ‘free speech’ might have become the stick the American right has chosen to beat the British left with.

They also need better subs. Surely ‘European Union’ in this headline is a typo for ‘Daily Telegraph’?