Last Autumn it was ‘100% not true’. This Spring it was ‘absolute nonsense’. On Tuesday the BBC announced that Chris Evans had signed up for a three year stint as Top Gear presenter. Like conkers and daffodils in Summertime, the veracity of past statements becomes irrelevant in the time-space continuum of our mediascape. Evans, the…
“You’ll forgive me if I’m not really focussing on the share price at the moment” said Nick Varney, shooting down Kay Burley’s ambulance chasing questioning. It is the Sky News interviewer, not the Merlin Entertainment CEO, who is now feeling the heat. More interrogation than interview, Burley’s aggressive approach has generated more than 1,000 complaints…
Twin US and Swiss investigations. A fall out with UEFA‘s chief. Excoriating editorials. Calls to resign from Prince William to Rod Stewart. Major brands threatening to withdraw their sponsorship. But what really convinced Blatter to call time on his FIFA presidency? Last week it seemed like he’d managed to pull one over on America’s long-armed…
My thoughts in today’s Independent on how the brand of Vanity Fair and the Khardashians have the power to break the Internet
For Thomas Cook accepting responsibility was a last resort– but it will survive If tackling the greatest ecological catastrophe of recent times with golf balls failed to reassure the US public the pronouncement by BP’s aloof chief exec Tony Hayward that he wanted his life back is the definition of insult to injury. This moment…
Pondering the 1980s Stewart Lee observed that culture itself seemed to hate Thatcher. Musicians hated Thatcher. Comedians hated Thatcher. Writers hated Thatcher. There were even aliens from the future in 2000AD comic strips who hated Thatcher. And yet she still managed to get elected. Three times. On May 8th the left were again confronted by…
If tweets were votes, Miliband would be installing his 8 ft monolith into the Rose Garden this afternoon. Even as they were haemorrhaging seats in Scotland, Labour were adding followers on twitter and making friends on facebook. In the last two weeks Miliband was averaging almost 2,000 new fans per day. His (over-)hyped interview with…
As seen on The Guardian Who said juggernaut brands can’t self-reflex their muscles? On Wednesday McDonald’s supersized on nostalgia with the re-launch of the Hamburglar. It went viral. Twitter exploded with shares comparing the new fast food bandit to celebrities ranging from wrestlers to politicians. A far cry from the cheeky childish earlier incarnation –last…
The more metaphors that are pinned to Labour’s 8ft pledge slab the more the original meaning of the limestone monolith has sunk into the bog of Baldrick ideas. The only positive that can be spun out of Ed’s stone is that it marks a rare moment of consensus across the political divide: on the right…
Last night Question Time dissolved its usual audience of flustered halfwits and elected another to give Cameron, Miliband and Clegg a proper grilling. As the Guardian’s Owen Jones tweeted this was set up to make the politicians “fear the people”. For what felt like the first time in the election, the slick, tinted-windowed campaign machines…