London Calling

In this week’s episode Toby and James discuss the deep state’s determination to destroy Home Secretary Suella Braverman (MP for Fareham) and the finalization of Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, including his Tweet about the the conspiracy theory surrounding the Nancy Pelosi ‘home invader.’ In other news we talk about the victory of Lula over Bolsonaro in the Brazilian Presidential election... Source

This week our congenial hosts talk about Toby’s narrow escape from a volcanic eruption in Iceland. But more importantly, how's a journalist expected to take a family holiday without an expense account?

Toby also frets about his obsession with watering the lawn and how he’s going to cope with the hosepipe ban. And with James' proclivity for the occasional trip down the rabbit hole, is he nervous about Alex Jones being found guilty of defamation and having to pay millions of dollars to people he’s accused of being ‘crisis actors?’

Finally, they cover the increasing scepticism about the Covid vaccines and whether those responsible for creating and promoting them will ever face a reckoning.

In Culture Corner we offer up The Offer (Paramount+), The Sandman (Netflix) and Prey (Disney+ UK/Hulu in the US).

We start with the least controversial opinions to begin this week's show, namely, the return of the mullet is not a good idea. After dispensing with that we hit the news from the last week: the FBI raids Mar-a-Lago, Salman Rushdie is attacked in New York State, actress Ann Heche's fatal accident and the cancellation of comedian Jerry Sadowitz.

In Culture Corner the show returns to its roots with talk about the Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon (HBO in the US on August 21, the next day in the UK on Sky Atlantic and NOW.) James delves into A Hero of Our Time (Герой нашего времени) by Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov (1814-41).

This week James and Toby talk about Anthony Fauci’s retirement – is he stepping down to maximise his chances of winning a Nobel Prize? – the fact that neither of them have received any invitations to go grouse shooting this year, the role of the vaccines in the rise in excess deaths, Finland’s dancing Prime Minister, Michael Gove’s departure from frontline British politics (which Toby rather regrets), and, in Culture Corner, Brilliantly Difficult, the documentary about their favourite cartoonist Bob Moran, 13 Lives, which isn’t as good as the documentary on the same subject, and Dombey and Son.

A London Calling Tuesday can only mean one thing - Toby got a last-minute grouse shooting invitation - for Monday.

As the Johnson Premiership comes to a close this week (The final results of the race between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak are to be announced next Monday), we discuss the possibility that Tobes could end up in the House of Lords, which leads to a discussion of James' new book about "God and Stuff."

Perhaps he will have more time to write since James has decided to become the latest individual to remove himself from Twitter. And as Delingpole retreats we note the return of Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex. In fact, she has us rejoicing in the streets and partying like it was 1990.

In Culture Corner, there's House of Dragons, The Offer, Somerset Maugham and Black Bird (Apple TV).

If it's Tuesday it must be a day for the kissing of hands. Boris and Liz go to Balmoral and out goes one Prime Minister and in comes another. Toby and James disagree about whether Liz Truss is her own woman or controlled by the WEF and You-Know-Who.

For laughs the guys discuss the Chris Rock-Dave Chappelle gig which Toby took in on Sunday night and James enters the 21st Century of internet connections, all the while having had enough of the "old tossers and old farts" of Extinction Rebellion which also leads to testing James’s hypothesis that the bush tucker trials in I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here were designed to prepare us for our insect-eating future. (Pro Hint: Don't eat the Banana Slug!)

In Culture Corner, they share their joint surprise that the TV series of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Amazon Prime) is actually quite good, although Toby liked it more than James.

Of course the lead story this week is the death of Her Majesty the Queen. James is showing a bit of a republican streak at the beginning of the reign of Charles III and he's not the only one. Toby and the Free Speech Union are defending quite a few as tolerance of opposing views slowly fades away across the land.

Looking elsewhere they celebrate the election of Pierre Poilievre as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and, speaking of things fading, hope that Toby will be on Boris’s resignation honours list seems to on the downside as well.

In Culture Corner, James talks enthusiastically about the book of The Godfather, while Toby praises the final episode of season six of Better Call Saul.

On the day we laid our late Sovereign, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, to her eternal rest, we reflect on the last ten days of mourning. And so we have entered the Era of Charles III and with it, cricket riots in Leicester.

The rest of the world churns on and we discuss Ron DeSantis’s transport of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Toby’s dinner with Jordan Peterson, the trans teacher at a Canadian high school with huge prosthetic breasts and Graham Norton’s claim that BBC audiences don’t want to hear from right-wing people.

In Culture Corner, Rings of Power (Amazon Prime), House of Dragons (HBO Max) and Capture (BBC iPlayer in the UK, Peacock in the US), a paranoid conspiracy thriller.

This week Toby and James discuss Toby’s three-front war with PayPal, both personal, and with the accounts of the Free Speech Union and The Daily Sceptic.

Out in the wider world we touch on the victory of Meloni in the recent Italian elections, Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget, and whether the Canadian teacher who identifies as trans and turned up to class wearing huge fake breasts was, in fact, trolling the woke left.

In Culture Corner: The Capture, Crime and Punishment and Dr Thorne, the third novel in Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Chronicles.

Half of our intrepid duo comes to us this week from Birmingham, the site of the 2022 Conservative Party Conference as the PM and the Chancellor retreat from the higher-end tax cuts. Its a pugilistic edition of London Calling as James and Toby pick a fight and debate the proper strategy to win one.

In Culture Corner, James takes on The Old Man (FX/Hulu in the US, Disney+ in the UK) while Toby reviews This England, Sky Atlantic's regime-approved wet dream version of the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic (US release date and network TBA).