London Calling

James and Toby start out with their own Brideshead Revisited moment as they look back on their days as students at Oxford before getting into the news of the day, including the introduction of mandatory jabs in Austria, the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse, the forthcoming trial of Ghislaine Maxwell and the Prime Minister losing his place in a speech to the Confederation of British Industry. Source

We open the week with Toby and the terrible winter cold he’s got – which he tells us is far worse than his bout of Covid-19 last year. While he’s on the road and sounds a bit subdued, we throw our best sniffle filter into the mix and the show must go on. Leading the news is the scuppering of the COP26 coal deal by India and China and the slim prospect of Greta Thunberg now turning her fire on the... Source

First up this week is a bevy of Covid stories including David Starkey’s assertion that vaccines should be compulsory; the new head of NHS England’s misleading claim that there are currently 14 times as many Covid patients in hospital as there were this time last year (when, in fact, there are fewer) and former Health Minister Matt “I Snogged at the Office” Hancock’s Telegraph comment piece saying... Source

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer somewhere “near” COP26. The world has gathered in Glasgow or, in CNN’s case, Edinburgh. (At 76 kilometers it’s as close as CNN comes to being right these days…) This week is a COP26 special in which we discuss our Glorious Leader’s speech, the bizarreness of Greta and her loud army of protestors and a hypocrite-of-the-week contest. In Culture Corner, we discuss Dune... Source

Cartoonist Michael Leunig has been sacked by The Age over this image. Source: Instagram/leunigstudio Ladies and Gentlemen, place your bets. After our intrepid duo review Toby’s great success in shooting, the conversation turns to the case of Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig who was dismissed from The Age for comparing resisting mandatory vaccination to the fight for democracy in Tiananmen... Source

The murder of Sir David Amess, MP casts a large shadow over the proceedings this week. After assessing the implications for the future we take on happier topics, starting with James’ Delingpod adventure with Laurence Fox. Speaking of Lozza, we also drop a zed and cover the rapper Loza Alexander and his new song, Let’s Go, Brandon. We also cover the billionaire race, the dancing Greta... Source

It’s a Battle of Team James v Team Toby as we open up this week’s episode with Toby’s participation in the The Battle of Ideas Festival in London this past weekend. We cover Rotten Tomatoes disabling the ‘Audience Score’ button for the new Disney+/National Geographic documentary Fauci, Toby’s encounter with fellow journalist Lynn Barber, the introduction of vaccine passports in Wales following a... Source

James and Toby spend more time on the road than Hope and Crosby but unfortunately it’s not together. This week we’re all about James’s return to grey old England after his glorious week in Croatia and Toby’s trip to Scotland (in which he fails, spectacularly, to shoot a deer). After the personal preliminaries we touch on the redaction of the emails from Sir Patrick Vallance (the UK’s version of... Source

A midweek release for this episode as James has been on the “last holiday” with his family and comes to us from Croatia and the shores of the Adriatic. The big story this week is Britain’s fuel “crisis” and the PM’s decision to “bring in the army.” The blame, of course, is directed at Brexiteers, justified or not. London Calling fans greet Toby as he participated in a lockdown debate this week and... Source

The announced easing of travel restrictions between the US and citizens of the UK get us going – but our producer, “Evil Brian,” isn’t sweating it because James will still need the double-jab to show up at his front door. On the international front they cover (or stumble through) the Canadian Parliamentary election, the AUKUS security deal, and whether James is contaminating Toby’s “brand” by... Source