The transport experience in London is, I believe, more educational and markedly more enjoyable than other parts of the country/world. The City itself is rammed full of side streets, constantly being reworked, so between your journey home yesterday and this morning, a new gyratory has appeared, and the one-way system has reversed direction entirely. It has never been a particularly sensible place to drive through, and the way the roads change like the castle now excised to Room 101, Hogwarts’ staircases, is the only testament as such. The thinking is not, I can assure you, as pedestrian exemplar, to make the city safer for people. There are decisions made that mean that the road is now 2 roads, one for cyclists, one for cars. If you have to reach the other side of the road, only one of the two of those modes of transport will think to stop for you.

But, as a resident, I do attest that a weekend in the city is glorious. The city streets are tranquil, the public transport is much more bearable, often with much more seating available thanks to the commuting masses staying at home in the country, I imagine, staring at their new hedge for 48 hours, because what else is there to do out in the sticks? And the only bicycles are with tourists on. Two varieties: the fleeting lycra amateur pelotons that pass by in an instant, and the tourists trying to figure out how to hire an e-bike and failing miserably. These things combined make pedestrian life a breeze.

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Relaxed Weekend Ramble

One lovely experience to have in London is, on a weekend in the city, wandering around the pretty deserted roads freely as a pedestrian and, on occasion, you’ll get a compliment from an electric cab driver as you get back onto the pavement, “in your own time, mate.” How pleasant to have this working man, probably picking up his only fare of the day thanks to the intermittent services to Fenchurch Street, being so relaxed as not in any way be vexed by a foot passenger, with noise-cancelling headphones, wandering casually down the middle of the yellow box by the taxi rank.

I have to say I only vaguely overheard this. Noise-cancelling aside, the electric cabs are silent as is. We were both, it seems, creeping at a relaxed pace down the middle of the road. I think we would both be impressed by how unfazed we were by the pressures that normally come with urban living. But we were outside of these. I, naturally, said in a slightly raised voice, as I couldn’t gauge properly with headphones on how loud I was talking, “Likewise!” and popped down the stairs towards Tower Hill.

Priority Benches

Boarding the tube, I had a slightly less pleasant experience, and I’m sure the cab driver would have been right in my corner here as well.

It was busier than I was expecting, but seats were still available. At the other end of the seating section, it appeared to me to have a group of 2-3 elderly passengers rotating the one priority seat they had laid claim to. They were doing it rather loudly, looking with disdain at ‘the young men’. In their minds, it seems, invisible disabilities do not exist. There may well be several political positions that they are sympathetic towards, that would cause friction if anyone spoke up. Further evidence of their political slant was provided when they snorted dismissively when the renamed Overground lines were announced; “Suffragette,” “Lioness,” “Windrush,” I think, were too much for this group.

A couple of chairs right by them did become available after… one stop. The other standing travellers made gestures to offer the seats to the complainant and his crew. As you would expect, they refused to take the seats on principle. They hadn’t been offered seats before, so why should they sit down now that there are free seats? I’m sure it was the philosophical ranting in his mind. They were so principled, they were adamant they would go so far as to die on this hill, not worth dying on. An ant hill.

They stood in the main aisle, blocking the exits. On principle.

Wheels within wheels

The weekend continued to provide as I exited, and a litter of lime bikes tried to take on the same task as the elderly gang. Block every conceivable path to your next destination. It feels as if they’ve been designed in such a way as to collect themselves, so you have to sign up and hire one just to get past. They tessellated all along the pavement. Maybe this is part of the instructions of the user’s terms and conditions. I wouldn’t know. It seems plausible that one of the obligations is ‘to end your reservation, you must ensure that the kick stand or pedal is inserted into the wheel of another Lime bike.’ They are also encouraged to encapsulate any competition, so Forest, Bolt, and Dott will be inaccessible.

It certainly seemed to be true based on the guy who had just pulled up. Oblivious to the difference between pavement and road, cycle lane and pedestrianised cobbles, his Ralph Lauren polo shirt flapping against his satchel, the chinos barely creased because this city professional uses every piece of technology to make his life as easy as possible… in this case, the e-bike needs to do the pedalling so he can check his phone.

Concluding my experience, I reflected, sipping an incredibly small coffee as I watched seagulls ride the Thames. A judgment on your personality is warranted based on the way you use transport in the city. The true benefit of the London experience is that, through the medium of the transport device, one can instantly give verdicts of people’s character based purely on their mode of choice. These snap judgments ensure you’re always prepared with the social interaction that inevitably follows.

The City of London watches on as the population expands and contracts throughout the day. From this, you can garner a pretty accurate CV. The files are sparse in detail. They have enough information based on your vehicular decision.

What kind of Londoner are you?

We will throw aside tourists for now. They do not know any better. The lift systems in the majority of the tube network will, granted, allow step-free access from platform to street. The reality that this requires a lute-playing wizard’s assistant with a high-vis to navigate the exact combination of lifts and corridors so you don’t end up in the Dragon’s lair under Soho is something they will not find in their guidebook, and the real reason why people claim London is not safe.

The regular Londoners can be thrust into various camps, and more besides, to truly get underneath their character:

Cab passenger/Black cab

Not working from home. Not working from the office. Zoom calls in traffic are my vibe.

Uber

Not brave enough to hire a Lime bike yet. But they will one day. When drunk.

Tube passenger (over 60s travel pass)

I should not take that priority seat. I should not have left the house today.

Tube (oyster)

Efficiency beyond reason. Just as they always board at the same door of the carriage, so anything out of the ordinary will ruin their week. Like their usual busker at Angel tube playing the wrong genre today.

Tube (ticket)

Easily lost.

Tube (contactless card)

Easily found.

Tube (device)

Easily missed.

Bus

Abnormal working hours. Their phone alarm app is a list of times you didn’t know existed.

Lime bike user

Fearless over fitness.

Santander

Fitness over safety.

Bicycle

Every journey is race conditions

Folding bicycle

Every journey is a hybrid triathlon

Folding e-bike

Every journey is a hybrid triathlon and it’s ok to cheat

Unicycle

Every day is a performance

Penny-Farthing

Every morning is spent on cobble stones through the filthy streets of Whitechapel to their work as a cobblers apprentice.

Scooter

Not yet a grown-up.

E-scooter

Never a grown-up

Hoverboard

Every commute is at risk of being derailed by a DMC DeLorean. Not worried too much about their future. It could be changed at any moment by a misplaced magazine.

Thames Clipper

Very poor at diplomacy. Does not understand why people build bridges.

Walking

Pedestrian.

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I am not against getting to know people. People are important. It’s unfair to rank anyone from one to seven billion, so we should just assume it’s a tie before we go any further. As part of my job, I have to meet new people fairly frequently, and that is exhausting. Worse than eating salad. Sometimes, the conscientious facilitator of a workshop likes to do a bit of ‘get up out of your seats and away from your screens’ stuff to make it feel like work isn’t so bad after all. To be honest, I was fine with sitting with my laptop closed. Think about that, will you, Stefan?

Let’s call him Stefan.

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He immediately attacks the carefully arranged conference room with his own, supposedly better, idea of collaboration. The facilities team will be in for a surprise later, and I make a mental note to take my coffee cups with me back to the communal kitchen, just in case something escalates and I need practical allies. He put a slide on the washed-out projector with a simple question and a few too many emojis.

Are you a 🌞morning🌅person⏰ or an 🌜evening🌆person🌛?

Putting it simply, he wanted us to arrange ourselves in order of the time we would wake up in the morning. I felt this prejudice heavily; what about bedtime? Why have you cast aside bedtime as if we are not complete human beings with a whole day to consider? Wake up is intrinsic to the previous day’s bedtime. There will be some who work backwards from the required wake-up, if, for example, one has an early flight. And when I started asking clarifying questions about what does he mean by typical day? Each one is unique, with its own challenges, each sunrise slightly different from the day before, commitments made and ensuring there is a level of variety in the work we do means a typical day is not one can simply agree on. I was told to shut up, obviously.

I started to talk to the people closest to me who had already started moving the office furniture. It wasn’t clear if this was part of the camaraderie building, as we were in a conference room where the desks were trying to be helpful by providing plug sockets for the laptops we weren’t supposed to be using. But this was also the kind of conference room where the placement of the plug sockets wasn’t designed for the laptop power supply to fit properly, and the temporal nature of all things used for more than six months in a hybrid collaboration space meant they were unlikely to work at the critical moment where you’re asked to present on behalf of your group.

I named the team I was in “the Signets,” but to myself. I wasn’t sure how that would fly. I’m not sure what the age of consent is in the HR policy for naming the team, but this wasn’t the time to push boundaries when we were already being subjected to involuntary collaboration. We successfully deconstructed the collection of desks and the very point of being in the office on a Monday, and then started interrogating each other about alarm clock choice. We discussed smart watches and devices that track sleep, to decide whether we should go with the aspirational, ideal, accurate, or honest wake-up time.

Accurate being the true reflection of the average between ideal and honest.

There was also a side debate about whether there would be any cross-referenced data between declared wake-up time, commuting distance, and badge scan at the office. The debate descended into the very definition of time and the fleetingness of being, but we Signets started getting strange looks, so we quickly settled on what time we would have liked to have woken up this morning based on how that would make others think about the kind of person we were.

It was definitely a wise choice to go on the ‘desired perception’ approach, rather than the honest approach. Somewhere it is written that we are supposed to reconstruct a sleep cycle and ultimately ‘wake up naturally.’ There is, we find, nothing that feels natural about waking up when the dream we have been trying to stave off involves a slightly stressful replay of an infinite and unsuccessful activity of filling the fridge correctly. It was when I blurted out “5am” that everyone took one step back and immediately judged my current appearance. They didn’t seem to align. I’m not sure what they thought someone who wakes up at 5am by choice looks like, but it wasn’t me.

People filed out along the whiteboard side wall. We should have been in a clock face formation, in my opinion, but I wasn’t the one who started it and wasn’t getting many of my suggestions listened to at this point, so I didn’t let on. I found myself alone, while others would be all the way at things like 8:30 or 9:15 (if work didn’t interfere with their choice). Fine. As is said across the cosmos these days without challenge, “You do you.”

But let me explain why I am waking up at 5am. And what I am not doing.

Firstly, the ‘not doing.’

I am not a CEO of any business trying to justify some obscene salary, which means I have to tell people I’m up at 3:30am to do online Pilates with some Australian fitness coach before I meet with the team down under. Partly because that’s a ridiculous and frivolous thing that 1) could be solved by speaking to my team at 3:30am so it’s not so late in their day, 2) I could do Pilates in UK hours in person with a fitness coach based locally. And I’m not working all the way through to 9pm trying to fit 2 work days into one.

Others congregating in these early hours also seemed to think it was only normal to start work much earlier than necessary. “I have breakfast and get on top of my emails around 7, check through my calendar and then might have a meeting before 8am.”

Another group didn’t align themselves with starting work in bed, but did share their morning routine included a military drill around a nearby park with other men, and I immediately stopped listening. I never plan to be ready for wartime.

I wake up early, make a hot drink regardless of external temperatures and sit in bed, sipping tea, reading and encouraging my cat to get onto my lap. I think this is critical. I am at rest post-rest. I cannot legitimately get up without my cat’s permission, which could be several hours. It’s great. I will do the Wordle, for some reason. And I will check the weather in a vague sort of way. The way you check anything that you know you can never really trust.

I might go on a run during this elongated time between waking up and working start, but the important thing is it is “me” time. I have plenty of time to be focusing on things that aren’t to do with my own life. So by the time I get to the working portion of the day, I’m already quite tired, actually.

It is the perfect way to make sure your world is properly prioritised.

With the wall fully complete, Stefan felt like he’d achieved what he wanted. I assume that from his point of view, personal insight into colleagues’ worlds outside of work is helpful and builds trust. From the feedback form, it is to create severe conflict between us as we disagree on how to make the best use of the hours we are awake in each day.

By the time we had poorly returned the conference room back to roughly how we sort of remembered it looking like so we could “engage with the content” of the remainder of the day, I was already zoning out as my 10:30am peak had passed and I was staring at the clock, hallucinating my colleagues on each of the hour markers, watching the hands drag themselves to lunch time.

It wasn’t just me. I think we were all exhausted after that emotional rollercoaster. “You do you” was very much adopted by the Signets, at the very least. Where “do” was nothing. The other flocks followed our lead.

At the end of the day, we were all handed a feedback form:

Q: Did the opening exercise build trust?

A: No

Q: What was your one key takeaway?

A: We do not know how to office furniture.

I folded it and put it in the stationery cupboard. Nobody looks in there anymore.

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In a padded room, on an industrial estate somewhere near Tower Hamlets cemetery, the world’s infinite audio commentary continues

In the last decade, the tectonic plate of the radio waves shifted. There are now dedicated podcast studios. Spaces for rent so that two blokes can remember their favourite crisp packet design from the early 90s. They can discuss it at length and sound intimately mixed in the same way as a radio journalist produces their work with dedication and deep research. And now it’s practically impossible to tell the difference.

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The early podcasts had a certain charm to them, though. There wasn’t the option to make use of the expensive studios used for radio, and the pirate radio that simplified broadcasting led to the point where the small door that led to high audiences, and the prestige of “The Studio” was suddenly undercut by people who had their own take and didn’t want to have to check with someone if they could say something about McDonald’s food without having a people go after them. Those early days of podcasting felt special. Anyone could do it from anywhere. All you needed was a hook.

A long, long time ago, as I left the comforting world of education while living in a world of zero responsibility, thanks to my legal age, meaning I didn’t have to be, I had already found a passion in the music world that meant I couldn’t find it within myself to turn the radio on anymore. I used to record songs on a cassette tape as they were broadcast to my bedroom. Admitting that now feels safe. It’s a commonly accepted moment in history, shared by only my peers. That time has passed. Anyone doing that today is in a definite minority.

The_Microphone_Won-2.png

As I entered the world of having to be responsible, something was bubbling that was going to forever change. I never dreamt of what it would become. The iPod demanded the ability to listen to the radio, but not in real-time. We dreamt of a world we didn’t know we would have. But, as with all dreams that become reality, we are in a future that may be an overshoot of what was intended.

One of my early university projects was to reproduce a radio play in a studio and ensure that we used all the technology at our disposal for high production value. Of course, I couldn’t help but stamp a certain flavour on it by creating a version of it where one of the voice actors couldn’t pronounce “Mechano”, and we had to overdub it with another voice actor when it came up. And it came up frequently. I think our lecturer was not so encouraging of our ingenious use of overdubbing.

But with high production output came high-brow content. We have watched correlation hit an historical counterpoint. High production=high brow. Low production=no brow.

I think a big appeal to the podcast world over the decades, since those first few, was that I felt like it was something I was very much able to do anyway. Most days, lonely in the student house with four other 19-year-olds whose names I have since forgotten, I would be very much guilty of podcasting, live, to myself. And I wasn’t clever enough to have thought about recording those musings. What use are they anyway? I know that we find many a young man thinking their opinions are worth sponsoring and publishing, but back then, I think it was safe to assume you needed a few more years before people were allowed to listen to your thoughts.

It is certainly no surprise to suggest that the world was different and a degree or so less accepting then. 20 years ago, if you spent 3–4 hours talking passionately about the best biscuit and debating with an acquaintance about the inner-workings of the integrity test when it came to tea dunking, you would be quietly escorted away. Not so much for diagnosis, but just to hide the perceived problem.

We are at the inverse of that reality. A helpful diagnosis has been accompanied by the audience, who would happily listen for hours to this obsession.

Beyond that, it is now commonplace for a few friends, who have been making each other laugh every week in the pub since before anyone can properly remember, to have one pipe up in the height of excitement to say, “We should start a podcast!” How unfortunate for the rest of us how easy it is for them to have done that. It is a genuine accomplishment to discover a new podcast that isn’t that. Mates making each other laugh and thinking that other people want to listen. I think this should be a separate podcast category rather than polluting the ‘entertainment’ and ‘comedy’ genres. Especially because they are all just in each other’s podcasts anyway. Just get it over with, get into a big room so we can hear the general crowd noise of people talking, and we’ll use that ambient noise to relax our minds, and then you’re all done. The Final Podcast.

But wait, there’s more. Because another genre that should not be near our ears. And there are people who will proclaim that they can no longer fall asleep unless they have this type of entertainment lulling them to sleep. This genre: True Crime.

I like a true crime podcast. Apart from the “True” bit. And the “Crime” bit.

“True” because it’s not necessarily the truth. It’s a collected curation of ‘facts’ that can tell a certain story. And also, I’m not a big fan of any documentarian media. I do not want to be educated in my spare time. And the “crime” focus is basically involved in the same ad-supported, home-produced, poorly researched journalism that we’d find anyone else doing outside of this closed-loop world to be despicable. Profiting off the misfortune of the victims of said crime. No justice is being done by these people. They just skirt around the edges, picking up dropped treasures on both sides.

This has escalated in recent weeks after I discovered there is a “True Crime” Podcast that interviews people who have produced True Crime Podcasts. I imagine this is not the only one. I’m hoping that someone creates a guest collective, inviting all of the creators, locking them in a converted shipping container, and shipping that box to somewhere off the coast of Tristan da Cunha. Which can then be investigated by amateur journalists to create a True True True Crime Podcast that I would consume with pleasure.

Will Radio take back the airwaves? Big Radio may have an opportunity to fight back, but there is an uphill battle. Apparently, car stereos still have the functionality to tune into a radio broadcast. I don’t know where you would do that or why that is. But if Radio wants to get back what was lost, the only real option is to force car manufacturers around the world to stop adding the ability to use your own personal audio in car configurations. I do this, but I learned it from my parents. We rarely listened to the radio in the car. My mum would complain that radio DJs mostly just shout all the time. My dad would play classic FM, and then we would get annoyed, so quickly we had a tape catalogue in the car ready to go. This is the reason I hold deep cuts of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in my mind. Then I found out how to record my MP3s from the family computer to my own cassettes, and then I’d play them in the car.

I was no longer reliant on the radio, and I haven’t looked back since. I find the radio to be an odd thing to engage with. You can control all of the audio in your life, and you’re leaving it up to these people who, I now agree, shout all the time. I hope Big Radio don’t read this so that I can continue to have my personalised audio when driving or passengering.

Reading back over this makes me realise that this is absolutely suited to a podcast to properly dive deep into the subject matter, probably with some mates and fellow podcasters.

So… podcast producers: Get in touch.

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Due to the internet being what it is, I am completely allowed to offer my opinion publicly to the globe. 7 billion people, and 100 times that in AI bots and automations can find my opinions and could go fix everything. But I am insignificant, and that will not happen. Regardless, I have found something that I want to rant about this week that should never have made it past the idea stage before it was implemented on the very website on which I publish it.

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Of course, the internet is a dangerous and joyful place. Like a fridge. Or the inside of a Gail’s Bakery. Or Jesus. While the joy from the internet is self-explanatory: cats, the danger we could experience is why we need passwords: People. We might think that the global population are just trying their best and doing what they can to make the world a livable community to belong to. But we need passwords, so that can’t be all true. I know I am fine, and I can be trusted. But that’s where trust ends. I live in London and would never dream of leaving my front door even slightly ajar. That is to keep London out, but also to keep my cat in. Maybe behind all those passwords are cats.

Thanks to the continued technological advancement, speeding us towards a future only dreamt about in Minority Report starring Tom Cruise, our passwords are no longer enough. We have locked the door, but have we attached the chain and deadbolted the entrance before bed? No. And we are prompted to adopt what is known as 2-factor-authentication. Password is the first factor. The second factor could be anything else, but it is usually a code on a device that only you have access to. And most websites are now encouraging this.

One of which is where I do my writing. And I was asked to register for 2FA and immediately felt emotionally assaulted and wanted to go outside for a while and consider my life in the face of the vast nothingness of space. Various questions we are asked that we are supposed to be the sole knower of that information, but have become commonplace, like ‘street you grew up on’ or ‘first pet’s name.’

Obviously, we know that when a social media viral Q&A hits your feed, you can immediately take note of your networks’ answers to the questions of favourite food, colour, song and emoji so that you can gain access to their accounts in an emergency. The questions asked by normal people as a conversation starter by the socially inept will end up here. Emergency questions, if you will. In the past, designed to spark conversation. Today, designed to socially engineer a security breach.

But this particular list of registration questions became a spiral of despair as I went from one to the next, thinking, “I don’t know the answer to that question, maybe the next one… also nope.” Here’s a sample:

Who was your favourite artist, musician, or celebrity when you were a teenager? You mean that time in my life where my entire being is going through so many changes, I wouldn’t even have the same answer to that question from one week to the next? That stage of adolescence?

What was the first concert you attended? I need clarity. Concert where I was participating? Could be a primary school scenario. Concert where I had a ticket for? Honestly, no idea. Do bands seen during a weekend festival or conference count?

What was your first computer or smartphone? Throwing ‘smartphone’ in there is very presumptuous. Why not just ask first, “phone?” Smartphones sound easy to define today, but I was on the cusp of the iPhone launch when I looked at the feature list and bought a Nokia with all the same features, just no touchscreen or high-status badge. In contrast, the first computer would only make me question if it’s the family Amstrad where I typed out my first short story, or the custom-built PC that was officially my own. PC already flags internally as a ridiculous answer, too easy to guess. But the real hurdle is it is only two characters. The answer box needs at least three. The very system technically mocked my childhood.

But I need to go deeper. Some of these questions are so traumatising, one might as well just hand out a free trial to Better Help on completion.

What was the make and model of your first car? Would it surprise you to know I’ve never bought a car? This sounds like an easy question for an American adult, where the mode of transport is either car or plane. They know what a bus is, but they don’t know why they know what a bus is. This isn’t the first car you've driven after passing your license. This would still be difficult as, by the time I’d passed my test, things had moved on and I wasn’t going to be put on my parents’ insurance to drive the Fiat Cinquecento anyway, and it would be a further 4 years before I apply to drive buses (remember them) without having driven since passing my test, and being asked to maybe practice a bit more before I apply to drive an HGV.

Where did you go on your first date? This, importantly, is not asked of a couple. It is asked of an individual. This is a profoundly absurd question to ask anyone, in private or public. What do you mean, “first date?” With my wife? Our first date? Or the first date that in retrospect you consider might have been a first date but at the time wasn’t and you didn’t even think it was until someone else asked you about it later and you’re trying to figure out how anyone would find having a drink while trying to watch Back to the Future II on the multiple screens through your peripheral vision in a retro sci-fi themed bar in Leeds is in any way romantic. Or the ‘first date’ at school when I sat next to some bins while we played POG in year eight? The answer I gave didn’t fit in the response box either, and I have no way of remembering it.

What was your first favourite band? Right, I think you’re setting a challenge that goes beyond the reasonable. In this question, the definition of ‘favourite’ is being entirely unravelled. You have got to give them credit that tastes change, despite them not acknowledging the situation we would find ourselves in as teenagers, mentioned above. Tastes do change. But also, FIRST is a very specific thing that, if I try to remember, is going to be poorly answered at best. By the time I had really gotten into music, I would have already laughed in the face of anyone who would ask about a favourite song. That’s not possible. It’s like asking what’s your favourite ingredient. Favourite band is still pretty poor as a question, but what if my earliest ‘favourite’ wasn’t a band but a solo artist like Jarvis Cocker?

However, the core problem with this question is it entirely fails to honour the definition of favourite, and then applies it to a taste spectrum of music that is really not straightforward to choose a favourite, even as a ‘latest.’ This question required me to embark on a musical research mission in Wikipedia, before realising that I was discovering bands that I would have liked at the time, but their music was being released well before I was born. So I remained clueless as to the timeline of my own tastes forming.

What is your least favourite colour? This is the jackpot question. You don’t see it coming, and you’re not ready for it. Favourite colour is pretty commonplace and an easy selection if required when playing a board game, for example. But least favourite colour is not an easy thing. Especially when, in theory, this is also a free text field. So, is it colours of the rainbow? If it’s one of seven colours, give me a drop-down so I spell ‘orange’ correctly. But it’s free text. Should I be giving you a Pantone shade or an Adobe hex code of my least favourite hue? Should I be describing to you Retributor Armour, Rakarth Flesh, Zandri Dust as my least favourite Games Workshop colours to paint figures with? I don’t do this; it is tedious and pointless. But I am advocating for those with opinions from all walks of hobby life.

This whole ordeal meant that, by the time I’d started to enter an option, the website had timed out, and I couldn’t be bothered to do it again. The process made me realise I’m not that good at keeping a diary, actually, and whoever built this section of the registration process was clearly going through some pretty interesting sections of their school days and just assumed everyone can, in an instant, remember their first teacher’s last name or… their first memory. I mean, last name, you can probably just make a guess at some common name like Smith. But first memory? How can I fit that into 100 characters? And then, at some security checkpoint in the future, I’m supposed to remember that again when I’m forgetting things all the time, and one day my first memory might be the thing to go, so the answer will be different? Have you factored for that? No, you haven’t. I don’t care anymore. I can’t even remember my password anyway.

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I have been sitting with this experience and formulated two reflections:

* The questions are written for a writing platform, so whoever came up with them, must assume that the particular people using their site must be the kind of person who is introspective and instinctively knows those things about themselves. It is a flaw in itself as no doubt the answer to these questions will be found in their own publications.

* If I ever wanted to start a podcast with guests, I have the 6 questions I would explore and deconstruct to the point of absurdity written for me. And then we would choose an account to try to hack into.

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It’s not that I’m against pink. As a millennial male, I was brought up with coaching to avoid the shades of lighter red. Thinking back, no reason was given. And today, in London, with all of its diversity and the pushing of boundaries, I am only accepting of this archaic attitude because I am in a ‘safe space.’ Not that it feels massively safe, when the number of electric vehicles intensifies on the streets, and I am now at the mercy of a legion of e-scooters when I try to make my way to the post office to return some ill-fitting running shorts.

Therefore, it is no surprise that a chain of coffee and smoothie bars cropped up in the last decade with a distinct pink branding, inside and out. They certainly have a vibe. The vibe makes me ill. The coffee is fine.

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Joe and the Juice stings a little on entry. From afar, the decor is somewhat warm and welcoming, the name is verging on playful, and living in London for any amount of time inoculates you to the idea that trying another chain’s attempt at coffee is anything but an ok thing to do.

Getting closer, you can see their pale pink a-boards beckoning the savvy city worker with slogans like, “COFFEE COSTS LESS THAN THERAPY,” and “THIS WEEK BEEN SO ROUGH MY COFFEE NEEDS COFFEE.” It is frowned upon to wander in and point out the poor grammar and contradictory messages sent by these boards. A critic might even start a petition to boycott Joe and the Juice for their lack of sensitivity in a mental health crisis. But I digress.

It is at the point you are within reading distance of these signs’ small print (Large: BE STRONG, Small print: I WHISPERED TO MY COFFEE) that your ears will start to pick up the ambience that breaks the assumption that one could pop in for a relaxing smoothie on a warm summer morning. It’s not that you read the menu and immediately realise that coffee, while from the outside seems to be the only thing they’re going to serve based on the outside signs that lured you here, is only around a quarter of what’s on offer. It’s not even that you have to spend the first few minutes rethinking your plans as you deprioritise the instructions to have a “COOL. CALM. CAFFEINATED” coffee and wonder if this might be a place to have a sandwich as well.

These are all visual and appetite-driven.

No.

Your ears will tell you very swiftly that you do not belong here. It is not for you. Just look at the other people in the queue, enjoying the beats. The music that is just slightly too loud to talk normally, so everyone is shouting conversations at each other, and the queue is shouting above that to make their order intelligible. The ordering process is unintelligible anyway, because it’s hard to know if, and this is a perfect illustration of the kind of clientele you will collide with in this place. “IRON MAN” is an order or something they were doing on the weekend before their drive in the country in “JOE’s AMG”.

Before the internet police tell me I can’t judge things based on their name, you are right. This has been happening since the days of cocktails. An Old Fashioned in no way describes what it is. Neither a Martini, nor a Piña Colada, nor a Screwdriver or Dark and Stormy give any suggestion as to what’s in them. There is, certainly, a vibe that is captured. Of course, if you were to say that when the early cocktails were being produced, they would give you a sideways head tilted look at the use of the term “vibe.”

But between the overly loud foreground music and the menu that, in tiny words, gives you the actual description of the menu item, it is not a place I can endure more than the few seconds it takes to walk past, cementing my confident decision not to venture in.

I did go in once.

You occasionally get trapped in an obligatory friendly moment around lunch time and end up saying, “yes let’s grab lunch” and then realise your dilemma as you have engaged in a verbal contract with this individual that means you are grabbing lunch together and there’s no way out. Being the coward I am, I won’t even express my preference, let alone say, “I’ve changed my mind. I want to be alone for 35 minutes.” The fallout would be too severe. So I ended up in Joe and the Juice with, let’s call them, Joe and Joyce. It was actually Terry, but that doesn’t have the same poetry.

As soon as we entered, my day was ruined. I had been right from a distance. And now I was up close and personal with the need to raise my voice towards someone who was immune to the beats. I ordered, among other things, the wrong coffee, the wrong smoothie and the wrong sandwich. I could tell by the way Terry was looking at me, wondering why I’d ordered so many items. This is another reason why I like to lunch alone. No judgment on my appetite. Terry had ordered his regular lunchtime “GREEN TONIC” (Kale, Cucumber, Celery).

Somehow, I was the one being judged.

We sat down, inside, to my chagrin. And talked, apparently. All I could hear was syncopated shuffles through the speakers and the staff shouting the menu in some kind of poorly matching rap to the soundtrack.

I don’t know how Terry made it back to the office when he hadn’t yet eaten anything except a small blended salad. But it did make sense why he got the lift to the first floor. That takes a special kind of confidence to look at all the other lift members, stare them directly in the eyes and press “1” when you’ve already walked past the stairs.

I got back to my desk, had a quick chat with my manager and we agreed I could have the rest of the day off.

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All the tables and chairs were the kinds of collections that almost matched each other. Each weave that made up the chair backs was slightly different, as if they had been worked on in a large church hall during a charity drive for chairs. The church, in this scenario, had a very localised world, and thought the greatest challenge that needed to be addressed was outdoor furniture shortages on the row of shops by the multi-story car park. No one wanted to tell the priest where the bus stop was, just in case his head exploded.

We were sitting around the table, with the battery-powered flickering candle (a fire precaution due to the nervousness of Stanley the waiter), trying to decipher the menu. This was definitely a local, independent, privately owned venture. You could tell, because the menus were all laminated slightly differently, corrections made with permanent marker, and the font choice was, to put it kindly, insane. Anyone would forgive them for writing the menu in Wingdings to make it clearer. The point was made by whoever had been given the job of printing out the menus, because underneath each collection of letters, they had been rewritten in crayon underneath, as if it was the English translation for tourists, explaining what a burger was. This person didn’t fully understand burgers, though, so it was mainly various descriptions of salad stuff. Everything, apparently, was garnished with fresh cress.

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It would transpire later that the printing was done with the best intentions by the 9-year-old daughter of Stanley, who had been there one Saturday afternoon and was the most experienced in the printing endeavour.

The food, on the whole, was adequate, and the company was the right mix, making the main courses fulfil the intention of the evening overall. I will not dwell on these details. Pasta is Pasta.

I am always one to opt for a pudding. I make the “joke” that I should “at least read the dessert options.” As if I have full self-control over this part. Maybe I think it a bit playful and removing pressure from those who I’m dining with, but, on reflection, I’m certainly being selfish and putting everyone else in the awkward position of having to at least order a coffee or herbal tea so I’m not crunching meringues to an audience.

Only, on this occasion, we had already read through the whole thing. And we were chuckling, as one does, when one is from a middle-class education, and spelling and grammar is our only super power, that they had spelled ‘dessert’ as “DESERT.” Underneath was the crayon, “changes daily, ask your waiter.”

Laughing away, when Stanley fumbled over and asked if we wanted anything else, I, in agreement with the table, don’t worry, boldly said, “We’ll all have the desert!”

He looked a little bit non-plussed, as if about to volunteer the ‘desert of the day’ but my forthright order, and obviously pronouncing dessert incorrectly, silenced him and he simply said, “very good. I’ll be back shortly.”

He brought over four desert spoons. Thought it was a typo. It wasn’t. They came with a tiny cactus attached. Absolutely useless for eating. Though I suppose if you’re having soup in the Sahara, it’s technically accurate.

And then, my absolute nightmare, he placed in the centre of the table a silver platter, covered by a cloche. With a flourish, he lifted it up, and a sand dune collapsed all over us.

“Your desert, ladies and gentlemen. Today’s desert is the Namib.”

And this whole episode made me think of how often we expect life to be all sweet and with a double “S”, but it's mainly dry and sand in literally everything, and it’s really irritating. And sometimes there’s a camel.

Maybe the sand dunes of life are worth exploring, but walking on sand is really quite hard, so I suggest just taking the next weekend off, if you can. Sort things out, and make sure to check unexpected places for more sand.

I hate sand.

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It has been hot in London. The question “why is it so hot?” has been uttered so frequently in recent weeks that it is taken as rhetorical. The answer is clear: humanity. We cannot ignore how this has changed the summer from the expected barbecue weather that always falls outside of a weekend, and never when one is planned. Historically, a British barbecue is very much a last-minute affair. The weather is barbecue weather right now; seize the day. If one were invited to a barbecue “this weekend” 5 years ago, one would bring an umbrella and extra layers.

No longer.

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If one is invited to a barbecue in London in 2026, one immediately sends them a pamphlet on the prevention of wildfires.

A couple of weekends ago, we decided to have a stroll around in the summer heat, hoping for some shady moments in Epping Forest. And it was a pleasant time, apart from someone standing in a pile of kindling with a cigarette nearby. Perhaps he was a magician… But he wasn’t in the right attire.

London has endured these heat waves for the last few years, and the idea that this is the new norm creeps in, like the odd behaviours we accepted during the Covid-19 pandemic. Everyone referring to these things as the “new normal” entirely hides our obligation to do something about the situation. The common parlance wants us to accept that we are too late. This is the reality we must move forward from. We cannot change the world; it is already changed. It is too big. Too hard. Too annoying and inconvenient. And we have air conditioning in all of our cars now, anyway.

Wandering past some open spaces in the city where there are signs that read, “Keep off the grass.” It hasn’t rained since May. What grass? I ask you. It is a mound that looks like it comprises digestive biscuits. “Keep off the biscuits” would be acceptable, but also bring the droves and ruin things for me.

If we are to properly make people fully aware of what is happening in the cosmos of Greater London and the South East, we must be ready to abandon the traditional place names that exist in the street atlas, as if they are going to maintain their lush appearance in these summer months in the future.

I am proposing seasonal names for the following locations and landmarks to make it clear to the world that something is really wrong.

* Bethnal Green will now be known as Bethnal Brown.

* Parson’s Green, Parson’s Brown.

* Islington Green, Islington Brown.

* Everyman Screen on the Green, Screen on the Brown.

* The Fox on the Green pub overlooking Islington Green Brown, Fox on the Brown.

* Hither Green, Hither Brown.

* Kennington Green, Kennington Brown.

* Wood Green, Wood Brown (which is actually more accurate, so could remain the name indefinitely).

* Green Street, Brown Street.

* Green Park, Brown Park.

* Greenwich, Brownwich.

The only thing that remains is font choice.

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For all the groundbreaking work that Steve Jobs has done for the Western world, his aesthetic is one that has surpassed his technological prowess. It reaches far beyond Silicon Valley, far beyond the tech bros of LinkedIn, and into the aspiration of marketing fiends, who are so specific they have lost themselves believing they are also a new Einstein, not wasting any cognitive capacity on the choice of sock.

Steven Bartlett is the mascot for this herd. His black turtleneck is a pointer to the wardrobe that is inevitably filled with colourless similarity to save him from needing to make a choice each morning. He has time-maxed himself into a perception that makes you wonder how one could possibly find the justification to smile, knowing that it is a waste of valuable muscle energy, and relationships are all but transactions in maximising one’s own scant existence.

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He portrays himself as the person solely focused on finding every nugget of success and applying these things to himself to be the pied piper of success for his subscribers to follow him, not realising that he is leading them blindly into the devil’s pool atop Victoria Falls. And the elephants are coming. And if there’s a species that really doesn’t care about any of that stuff, it’s elephants.

Recently, I was intrigued by, perhaps, getting a new card wallet. Not that I need one. I am a millennial on the cusp of those digital natives, and every opportunity to digitise things I will take. If I can buy things online and have them delivered to my door within 24 hours, I will do that. I do not need to present my card to anyone as I already place my trust fully in PayPal. If I find myself in a position in the real world where I need to pay for something, I use my phone to pay for most things. Small sidebar: my experience when travelling in the US has been ultimately disappointing on this front, which is the contributing factor to this card wallet business. But in general, I really don’t need to be carrying debit and credit cards around.

Thanks to the cashless world post-Covid, which I still smash up against with laconic confusion when a piece of paper with Word Art proclaiming “Cash Only” causes my entire body to freeze as if I’ve seen something that proves ghosts are real, or perhaps a white rhino out in the wild while on foot and the ranger tells you to stop and breathe slowly, the modern accessory for a western male is a card wallet. One does not need a thick leather folder squeezed into a pocket to store credit, debit, ID, loyalty, and business cards. These are all on-the-whole digitised. Receipts? Also digital or environmentally irresponsible to ask for one.

I feel the creep of Bartlett efficiency upon me at this moment. My attitude has created a “why am I carrying all this stuff I don’t need around?” And the answer is mostly, “tradition.” I put things in my pockets so that I know I have things. Keys, phone, wallet. The Manly Trinity. This would also include loose change, but I have since lost my way, and this is just an annoyance.

But I am finding my way towards being unencumbered, and a card wallet is the first step. And after some googling and YouTubing and Black Friday marketing, I found a suitable candidate. A metal sandwich with something that isn’t elastic bands, but is basically elastic bands, pulling those two plates together, and you pop cards in between so they all stay together. And it’s ‘modular,’ so you can add things like a key thingy to stop them being all loose and jangly and on a key ring. And a tracker in case you lose it. And a cash bit, which you can fold into a card shape. And a little coin drawer, which makes no sense at all, but they’ve done that anyway. And then a MagSafe add-on so it can sit on the back of your phone. So by the end of your menu selection, you end up with something the size of a Rubik's cube in your pocket, and somehow that’s better. Everything all together and then you have to choose which pocket to use and which pocket to abandon forever and accept that if it falls out or someone tried to grab an item from your pocket they grab your entire world so you cannot call the police for help, cannot pay for a bus fare back to your home, and cannot open your front door because everything is gone.

And then… an advert popped up. And it was the black turtleneck of Steven Bartlett, with his sycophantic attitude, smarmy side eyes, holding up this exact wallet, saying that it had revolutionised his entire life and he was an entirely different person because he’s now able to keep track of things and because he’s got a metal sandwich in his pocket. One of his close business pals was even more impressed with him because of his newfound way to pocket-max and decided that they would give him some more money for something or other and make him more successful. Wow. All of that from a wallet. He was able to be fully present because he had all his cards in one place. Reading between the lines, this confession to be a disorganised wretch until the Friday before this arrived, exposes him as the kind of individual who would just throw his various loyalty cards into the bottom of his bag and that meant that this ‘business meeting’ would have normally been a disaster because he knew he had a full Nero loyalty card somewhere and it was eating away at him so he couldn’t concentrate on the important topic of whatever it is Steven does.

And I’ve seen more of these. Any time Steven Bartlett becomes a brand ambassador for any product, I will immediately blacklist that company. Nope. You’ve decided that you fit with Steven’s little uninformed and foolish attitude to life, and therefore, you cannot fit with mine.

His usual spiel is perfectly in line with someone who set the internet on fire when he had two glasses of wine, and they ruined his life. His definition of a “life ruined” is unique and almost inconceivable to any other normal person who has ever opened a bag of crisps. According to the man whose self-care routine portrays someone who is a brick wall of a human being, standing strong, tall, and unfazed by the struggles of daily life, it turns out his Kryptonite is a Chardonnay. Slip that secretly into his diet, and suddenly, he is unable to properly function for three days. But just to be clear, ‘properly function’ surmounts to having a bad night’s sleep, eating nice things (probably), not going to the gym for 24-36 hours and having a day at work that wasn’t quite as nice as the other days.

This man is trying to share a struggle, and the world is watching a man fail to understand how he had a bad day at work once. Something that 99.9% of the population ‘suffer’ from 20% of their week at minimum. He is an anomaly, and this is not a good thing. He literally describes this moment as,

“I podcasted worse.”

Three words that would never be uttered by anyone else in history.

“To podcast” is a new verb that seems to encapsulate, in his own bubble, “being Steven Bartlett.”

He wasn’t specific on what he ate, possibly so he wasn’t disloyal to his brand partnerships with Huel and Zoe. The very nature of these two brand partnerships are, on the surface, a modern man trying to optimise his health piggybacking off others’ research. Fair enough. But these two brands are in a juxtaposition to one another, in effect cancelling each other out. On the one hand, Huel is peak Bartlett; treating our digestive system as if we are merely needing to take on fuel at a service station before we continue for another 600 miles up the M6, because we do not have time for a leisurely or enjoyable brunch in the tiny spaces we have given ourselves to break from another Zoom meeting. We are all, in this reality, grounded astronauts. Solving a challenge we didn’t know we had, taking into our systems the ultra-processed foodstuff in a ready-to-drink format with a shelf-life of eternity.

Flipping the branded DOAC coin over, we find an entirely different endorsement in the form of micronutritionist intervention, where Zoe is the lead in taking measurements of your chemical make-up and telling you you’re about to have an energy crash because you indulged in half a blueberry. The core product Zoe pushes is a pre-prepared supplement consisting of over 30 organic superfoods with little to no interference to bring your body back in line with some ideal that Zoe and the experts forthwith have decided is the baseline of human existence. Zoe is keen to eliminate ultra-processed foods (UPFs).

Maybe it wasn’t the wine, Steve.

Either way, these two philosophies have given him an unwritten rule that forbids having a burger, but he probably was just as on brand to be disappointed he had a salad from Pret rather than a packet meal to save time on chomping. He’d already lost 3 days, remember?

And the fact that he slept worse comes from the strange view that he may believe he has the ‘high-performance’ genetic mutation to only need 5-6 hours of sleep. In reality, he must need more, and we all like to have more.

This opens up an odd window into a man who is trying to Life-Max into the most effective version of himself, but shows us that he has no permission to enjoy life at any point. He isn’t allowed actual food, he isn’t allowed to sleep properly, and he isn’t allowed to have an occasional beer. That is the life he wants and thinks everyone else should want it too.

But now he has partnered with Uber and offshoots, Vodafone, Whoop and Wispr Flow, among others. Each time I see his face next to a logo, it shows me that this man endorses these products and brands. Wispr Flow records things and makes notes for you, which he claims he can finally be present, but it just comes across as bland and annoying. I’m just sick of seeing his face pop up against anything now. If he’s next to it, I have my decision made. Boycott the thing. I will not order an Uber, I will not even consider what a Whoop could do for me, and I cannot bring myself to even consider an Eight Sleep £3k mattress cover to regulate my temperature and help me sleep better. I already sleep fine, and I’m not a millionaire podcaster that could consider this a ‘must-have’ sleep accessory; 4 words that were never uttered before Steven Bartlett.

He’s always around CEOs and business people, travelling around doing the podcast circuit, and has launched a collaborative product with Ekster. It makes me feel ill just typing the thing for you: The 1% TravelPack Vacuum Kit Pro x The Diary of a CEO. Just in case you missed some of my early ravings about this phenomenon, the 1% mythology needs binning. It’s made its way into a product about a useful reusable bag and is ruining innovations I would otherwise be intrigued by.

I already purchased some of the vacuum seal travel kits, and now that I know about this ‘collaboration’, I feel dirty. Bartlett brand partnerships are contagious, and it’s a bad thing. Not to worry, though. I have also moved in the opposite direction with my pocket contents by carrying them around in a plastic bag.

Everything Bartlett touches immediately becomes unenjoyable, and he doesn’t seem to notice. He is why the Western world feels like the new and improved train seats on GWR.

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I’m not currently positioning myself for the leadership of any particular major or minor political party, but the people who are seem to be encroaching on my territory as a 40ish bloke who runs around in public. The self-help mantra that fades into view with remarkable irony is ‘stay in your lane.’ They have already been running for their political party and subsequently have probably just started running around for their own mental and physical health. Maybe, if I had been a contemporary of a certain class during the Second World War, and hadn’t been drafted into the troops, this piece would be bemoaning the way politicians are ruining the enjoyment of cigars.

But we are today. The war is behind us, at least in the way that military conflicts are no longer referred to as wars. Running is everywhere, and everyone is running. It’s a super-efficient workout for the city dweller. They are on the grind and time-maxxing. They don’t have time for a proper hobby. You really only need to make sure you have a decent pair of running shoes, and you’re good to go. The maintenance is, to borrow from the emerging generation, ‘low key’. These people are literally exercising themselves to work and then changing attire for suitable work clothes to do more work. I have had colleagues who have invested so much in cycling as a hobby; they are sinking their savings into a form of transport that doesn’t get them anywhere.

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When I was a teenager, my brothers and I would cycle for a few miles to a bike track or, for reasons we didn’t know we could question, a garden centre. Jumping on your bike and exploring the surroundings as a child is frivolous and joyful. For some reason, I remember our father joining us on this particular bicycle ride to the garden centre, but what I don’t remember is him being on a bike. Reflecting on that, I’m not quite sure how that even worked.

But I can only assume that he realised that cycling as an adult is absolutely not acceptable. There are pelotons of cyclists circling Regents’ Park at city dawn, getting their miles in before they have to work, all wearing matching Lycra, going literally nowhere, and screaming at the top of their lungs to each other as they round the corners of the Outer Circle. These cycling clubs are making every effort to drive a wedge between traffic and pedestrians, so that, although we shouldn’t, we all not-so-secretly hope for a collision to put a stop to all their joy. And just when you think you’ve escaped, they are all creating a barricade at one of the sparse coffee shops in the royal parks, making it impossible to find the door due to the pile of wheels blending with the hedges, and they are still speaking to each other with raised voices as they queue for their pastry and mint tea.

I am, and I’m sure you are thankful for this, dear reader, not going to join this throng. The cycling community can collectively pile into a ditch and become the hybrid mangled contraption that is their inevitable demise.

I took up running in lockdown when things had already gotten pretty bad, and I was forcing myself into clothes that could not cope with my figure. I was not at my ideal weight.

I will continue to run. I will push myself to go faster and further while I still can so that I can continue to enjoy a burger and chips. This is why I run. I track my stats and check my pace and enter the occasional official race conditions event, but I do not run to win anything except the battle my metabolism has with my diet.

Additionally, it is good for your mental health. You may be wondering how that is possible, but it really is. Urban life has an added speed that can create anxieties just by the nature of work and surrounding living activities. You find yourself in a rhythm that is alien to those out in the countryside, like Kingston-upon-Thames or Sheffield.

The way this works is pretty straightforward: You’re anxious about something coming up, whether it’s a meeting or some difficult people, or your friend has said they’d like to meet up for dinner and you don’t want to. This can pile onto one another if all three are happening in the same week, and you need your brain to sort things out. You could sit down and think about it, plan properly, feel prepared, and set about letting those things happen. OR you could head out on a run. On that run, your body is no longer in a sedentary mode. It is in a heightened state of stress, with consistently elevated heart rate and a focus on navigating streets to ensure your feet fall cleanly and you can complete your route; perhaps a pace target is also in the mix.

This host of battling priorities that fill your life are suddenly expelled from your system, because none of that is as important as running around. I used to think in my silly judgmental world pre-running that these people were either running from something or chasing something, and we just couldn’t see it, or they’d got a good head start. Now I realise we are all just running away from the stress of social engagements that, when we stop to think, realise we probably suggested in the first place, so it’s all our fault anyway.

All of that to say, running is good for you.

Top tips for running in the city

There are many experts out there that share their isolated wisdom as if it is useful and people want it, and this leads me to provide my own, very practical guide to running in urban environments. Don’t leave home in running shoes without checking this list off.

Before

* Always run in the morning. After that, you’ll annoy everyone and only smash into people. And, on a hot day, running at max temperature is just plain stupid. Also, saves on changing clothes multiple times.

* Stretch. But do this at home, please. Nobody wants to see a grown adult pogoing around outside a coffee shop.

* Pick an audio soundtrack. You must be oblivious to traffic and other people while running around.

* Have some water ready to leave on the side.

During your run

* Realise around the 3-minute mark you’ve forgotten your water.

* Have you music just a bit too loud? Double-check regularly that you are drowning out the city properly.

* Randomly race a stranger that is also running, but don’t tell them you’re doing that. That would be weird and probably difficult with all the breathing you need to do.

* Stop at landmarks or interesting things you might see around the city, and then realise you’ve also forgotten your phone, so you can’t take any pictures.

After

This is, I have to say, the weakest section (not to say the other sections were particularly strong). Mainly because, checking with other guides, you find a common list of things. If you’ve already followed my guide, you’ll know that you are returning while the day is still mostly before you. So basically, this last bit is just things you would do anyway.

* Wash and put clean clothes on.

* Have some food, i.e. breakfast

* Don’t just collapse, but keep doing stuff, for example, go to work instead of back to bed.

* Upload your run to Strava, check what other Strava connections have done and like all of their activities so they get notified and have to open their Strava app to see you’ve done one, and they have to like yours and so on…

* Mention in your first meeting that you went out on a 10k this morning and you’re doing great.

That’s it. Welcome to your healthier self.

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Introduction

And the season finale of the World Cup of Men’s football 2026 has finally been broadcast. The last episode of the series dropped Sunday night, but I’ll try not to spoil the ending for those of you who haven’t finished binge-watching it yet. I will, however, give you a review that might feature on IMDB.

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This anticipated season put the British pubs on high alert, ensuring they could accommodate the droves of punters who were determined to come together and watch England lose. I can only imagine their disappointment when they kept not doing that. The reaction at each of these cliffhangers would reach fever pitch as crowds would spill out onto the summer streets and process the latest confusing outcome, a bit like when we were all trying to get to grips with the first season of LOST.

The Narrative & Storytelling

Due to the timezone in which most of the matches were played, I personally didn’t watch as many minutes, but it did, especially with my brain being trained to concentrate on nothing for more than 3 minutes at a time, which meant I got the general gist of proceedings each morning, watching the highlights packages usefully prepared by BBC Sport and the iPlayer team. Consuming “highlights” felt like a very appropriate Generation Alpha form of taking in the World Cup. This would also facilitate their bedtime, which I live in solidarity with.

Overall, after the scene setting in the opening episodes, where most of the teams were playing with no real consequences, they all got a good go, and you mostly got familiar with the main groups and could have thought they would be regulars for the whole season, we had a shift in modes, and they started getting cut episode after episode. This became quite predictable and formulaic. To the point where you’d think they’d had a good idea for how to add a bit of tension halfway through and couldn’t think of anything better.

However, the Argentina conspiracy b-plot was something that got the YouTube-sphere really het up, pointing out all the hidden details that really make a viewer want to root for any team that isn’t Argentina. This is some of the genius of this production. You’d think, given that it is based on the rules of football, the best teams would win through fair play, but that is the appeal of this season. It does justify why there’s only one series every four years. Establishing a true villain that you think is obvious when the President of the US interferes with how red cards work, and then that has no bearing on the future outcome and the real bad guys have been quietly rising through the tournament. This theme has been really well done, leading the viewer down the wrong path and making the whole journey simultaneously predictable and surprising.

For all the well-laid-out through-story, there was plenty of improvisation, which is always welcome. A lot of it didn’t hit the mark and wasn’t very believable, but with a core cast of 1250 men, not including referees and coaching staff, you were going to have some duds in the mix. The commentators were doing the role you wanted because it is hard to keep track of all the characters, and I don’t think it would work at all without the voiceover, but they clearly had a very limited script to work with, which got very repetitive even if they delivered the lines with great passion. The show’s studio audience really played their role well, adding to the atmospheric cinematic nature of the show. The goal celebrations were well written, and I think they added to the flavour by each player having their own unique goal celebration written for them that could, in its own way, be surpassed at a climactic moment.

Production Critique

Some of the more disappointing elements: I think the VAR sequences, which I assume were supposed to add suspense to critical moments in each episode, felt overused and actually severely impacted the pacing of the show. Some of the product placement was excessive and frankly not believable or realistic in the slightest. At regular intervals throughout the episodes you would suddenly see an Hyundai Ioniq 9 driving up the pitch followed by an aeroplane. It took me a few double-takes before I realised this was just CGI. And if you were to look across the season arc, there are tonnes of continuity errors when it comes to the referees.

One thing I’m not sure everyone noticed is a small Easter Egg over the course of this year’s drama revealed something that I’m sure will be part of the ‘making of’ documentary coming around the Christmas period: The pre-match briefing in the changing rooms includes a similar safety demonstration as there is before you take off ensuring that if they ever lose their balance for any reason at any point they immediately ball up into the foetal position and roll as far as they can towards the nearest emergency exit.

Media Bias as Meta-Commentary

An odd aspect to this in comparison to other TV shows is the coverage was spread over two entirely different broadcasters, in the UK at least. BBC and ITV shared episodes out, which only exacerbated the pre- and post- episode reaction podcast glut which was already covered by independent content creators worldwide.

We like to pride ourselves, in the UK, with having impartial media, and the BBC is supposed to be unbiased in its programming. Politicians argue a lot about how the coverage of certain nationwide events is left-leaning or unsympathetic to certain groups of people with certain opinions. I do not believe this is the focus they should be wasting their energy on. You can spend hours arguing how Ian Hislop doesn’t present facts in a fair way on Have I Got News For You. You would be wrong, but you can argue it. But if they just focused on sports coverage, you would have a case right there. Unfortunately, it is likely that the people who dislike how Have I Got News For You covers current affairs, are actually very happy with the glut of sports coverage that has an overeager desire to discuss only one nation.

A perfect illustration is my morning viewing of the past month. Every highlights clip selection is 8-10 minutes covering the core aspects of the game, key shots and plays, interesting decisions and moments and rounding out the celebrations of one team of the two. When England beat Mexico in the last-16 knockout match, the 8-10 minutes rule was broken, and I felt betrayed. The same thing happened for the Norway quarter-final.

It was 26 minutes.

Every other one starts with the first chance; this one starts with highlights of the team wandering out onto the pitch, then both team layouts, then the kickoff. All of which are nothing but admin, not highlights. To be true to the journalistic bias, the highlights should really have left out the Mexico goal, but it didn’t. Mexico get their fair share as well.

13 minutes of actual play

13 minutes of watching the England supporters sing a song by Oasis. I was not aware this song was about football.

The BBC did get lucky, as the penultimate episode, as is often the case these days, far surpassed the season finale.

Conclusion: A Season Worth Celebrating

By now, to some of us, the World Cup of Men’s football 2026 will be a distant memory. I have no intention of rehashing old ground (apart from wanting to revise the minimum goals rule from 3 per match to at least 6; it seemed like matches with 6+ goals were the most enjoyable to catch up on.) Overall, we were treated to the absolute best men at kicking a ball towards a massive net with a measly success rate of 12.47%. This is inversely proportional to their earnings. About the same rate as ballot acceptances at the London marathon this year, and they didn’t even do anything. If I called the police requiring a firearms response and they were only hitting one in 10 of their targets, they would be derided for being specialists, yet they, right here, have a perfectly legitimate case to petition for massive pay increases.

Time to put the European spin-off series in the diary. Though I hear it will use a lot of the same cast and have a simpler story with little-to-no corruption.

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