The task for political leadership now is not just to tell the truth, but to make people care about what is true and what is not.

Got myself some discount Yeti (please don’t tell the NCA)

First haircut of 2026

My GP just made a statement that you *really* don’t want to hear when he’s in the middle of examining you: “Huh. You learn something new every day.”

Living in Rome itself under Caligula must have been fucking terrifying, but at least people living in the most distant provinces of the empire didn't get minute-by-minute updates on exactly how insane, unpredictable and evil he was being.

I don’t want to do it, but I may seriously have to tell America to pack it in.

was briefly so excited reading this until I realised he meant Davos

America, could you give it a rest, eh?

Watching the Graham Williams documentary on Doctor Who S15 box set and, God, I wish he were still with us. I’d want to tell him how much his 3x seasons of Who meant to me. The humour, the ideas, the joy. I wouldn’t have become a writer without those stories.

I’ve long been baffled by the meandering 1960s comedy Rocket to the Moon, so thank God for @drmatthewsweet.bsky.social’s excellent explanation of it on the StudioCanal blu-ray. Much more entertaining than the film itself!

Regaining access to my Twitter/X account (after 2+ years of not using it) took me the best part of 24 hours. Deactivating my account forever took me less than 24 seconds. It's the social media platform for bots, paedophiles, and the politicians who want to reach them. They're welcome to it.

Hard to believe I know, but we’re only one week into 2026.

In other news, a wonderful TV project I worked on for much of last year just got cancelled mid-production because of “corporate restructuring” Happy New Year 🫩

Watching Battleship Potemkin with the Pet Shop Boys score tonight, lads

All it takes for evil to thrive is for mediocre world leaders to say “I’d rather not say”

Some men will literally order airstrikes and the kidnap of a sovereign head of state rather than admit to being a massive paedophile.

"He's not going to win a Nobel Peace Prize doing that"

The FIFA Peace Prize doesn't mean what it used to

Found William Hartnell’s Doctor Who in our old pack of Happy Families

Jesus, can you hear me? Good, the comms are working. Now, you're gonna need to run if you want to evade those Roman soldiers. Hold down A to sprint. Go ahead and try it. ... Good work! You just might be the savior yet. Now pick up that AR-15 and let's do some target practice.

We saw you across the bar and really fucking hate your vibe.

For my birthday yesterday I got myself a Nintendo Switch 2, because you’re only as old as you feel (I feel 38)

They should want this, right? Because then everyone would know who made it and can see for themselves how good their output is.

Genuinely surprised by that. I’d have put money on Muppet Christmas Carol!

Darwinian Christmas

Geoffrey Bayldon has turned up in this morning’s episode of Doctor Who and already made the day 300% better

i’m setting you free. i’m releasing you from the discourse

Even at a ripe old age with zero left to prove, devastating. *The* Guy. Foundational. All us little playwrights are twigs growing off his branches.

Tom Stoppard possibly wrote a lot of your fave movie lines 👇

I don’t know who still needs convincing, but damn it Season 17 is the high point of Doctor Who. City of Death / Creature from the Pit / Nightmare of Eden = my favourite run of stories from any era Pure invention and energy and joy

Being self-employed in your late 30s is watching an old Leslie Phillips film on a Tuesday morning and thinking “I’m not really enjoying this but I’ll see it through.” * (*Experience may not be relatable)

Got through 15 minutes of Predator: Badlands before I had to duck out with a headache. It was so loud! Never had that with a movie before. Going to assume the cinema had the volume up too high, unless everyone else who’s seen it can’t hear either

Unfortunately Kamala Harris wasn't responsible for a similar, balancing insurgency. I'm sure if she had been, the BBC would have dedicated a programme to it. Christ this Prescott guy is a moron.

Gary Lineker: "This is the mistake the BBC makes. The BBC tries to appease the people that hate the BBC, rather than worrying about the people that love the BBC."

Panorama made a stupid error, but imploding the top of the BBC is mad. Especially when it concerned a US President who actually did incite a riot and then got re-elected afterwards. “Institutional bias” my foot. We’re being taken for mugs.

Was having lunch in Highgate this afternoon when the actual Prime Minister walked past. He didn’t recognise me though. Yours, Outraged of Holloway Road

And you wanna know why society is so polarised? This fucker, going about, reversing it all over the shop.

- I'm going to analyse the Welsh by-election result - Caerphilly? - Nah, I'll probably just fire off some hot-takes

Now AI is coming for Tom Baker’s teeth! I’ve adored the Doctor Who Collection sets so far, but this sort of overzealous AI can get in a bin. Hope they’ll learn their lesson and scale it back. Leave Tom’s teeth alone!

A lovely production team, making excellent audio drama! It’s terrific to see that the appetite for AD is demonstrably there. It’s still one of the best routes for fresh talent in the arts - support audio drama today!

Diane Keaton 💔

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

Hey kids! Remember when the pandemic struck and eventually the (Tory) government told everyone to stay at home, and the arts and entertainment industries were one of the few things keeping everyone from pulling our own eyes out of our skulls from abject fear and boredom? Remember that?

Dad’s books are full of empathy, common sense, and a healthy suspicion of the powerful. But at its heart his work is also about how systems keep people poor while pretending it’s their own fault. So I hope Kemi’s taking notes as well as reading the jokes.

If I were in charge, every scene on television would begin exactly like this

Hades II is a wee bit fiddly to begin with, but after playing it for a few hours I can tell that I’ll be doing nothing else for the rest of the year.

The David K. Barnes series hides a large heart behind its acidic exterior. www.avclub.com/podcast-cano...

Feeling very proud about this write-up on Wooden Overcoats in the AV Club. We've just celebrated our 10th anniversary and it seems incredible to us that the show is still picking up new listeners! www.avclub.com/podcast-cano...