Pretence is an offence
It was the question on everybody’s lips. Their ripe, almost too full lips. Can actors play somebody whom they’re not? Thankfully we all know the answer to that one and can quickly erase any trace that it was ever in doubt, and have a quiet, private shiver of disgust about the very private, quiet fact that we might ever have thought otherwise. When we were young and foolish and didn’t know any better. And maybe, just occasionally, we can meet up with like-minded people who think otherwise. I mean, have thought otherwise. Consensually, in private, doing no-one else any harm but still feeling very guilty about those thoughts as they jolly well ought to.

Russell T Davies, the Bafta-winning screenwriter for Doctor Who, has said gay roles should be reserved for gay actors to ensure that their performance is authentic. No doubt Russell feels almost deliciously guilty about the three lead roles in his breakout show, Queer as Folk, being played by straight men – the programme will obviously now be re-cast to weed out any hetrosexuals. Rigorous testing will be employed. Anyone whose opinion about the five worst Oscar night frocks will be … no, wait, that can’t be right. Wait, science! Science will come to the recuse. Anyone who doesn’t have Russel T Davies-verified gay DNA will be … no, wait, that can’t be it either. And we can’t just let them self-identify – the crafty swine are actors: they like dressing up and might pretend to be something they’re not.

As so often, Russel T Davies is a pioneer. But despite his good work, so many dramas still carry the whiff of appropriation, since we can’t be sure actors are playing out their actual lived experience. I saw a Russian Grand Duchess on screen the other evening and when I looked up the actor playing her, could I find her in the Alamanc de Gotha? No I could not. The only non-suspect genre will soon be BBC news and a handful of culturally sensitive reality TV shows which are vetted by Davies for authenticity. Method actors will be shot for hate crime.

BBC’s Vegan ideology
The right-wing grifters at the ‘Defund the BBC’, sitting on their pile of Kremlin gold, probably haven’t taken time to read this excellent article on the topic of whether you can be vegan and still love fashion, because they would have realised that Charli Howard’s investigative journalism is worth the full amount. Of course, the answer to the question is ‘yes’ and this week Howard interviews Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter who delivers this knock-out blow to animal murderers: “I just found out I agreed… with vegan ideology. I found at heart I am vegan, I was vegan, I just didn’t have the practice… It’s annoying that the default is you’re raised to eat meat and animal products and to believe that that’s normal”. It’s such a stunning argument that no response is required in the article from so-called doctors who might claim it’s difficult to stay healthy on such a diet, or Big Farmer who claim that their animals wouldn’t exist if they didn’t raise them to be slaughtered. Why the BBC can’t run more bravely affirming pieces like this, which courageously only put the right side of the argument is beyond me. It’s sometimes as if they’re not really trying.

It’s just not Cricket
As the Government is showing fascist signs of acting against statue-topplers, of late it seems a concerning new trend has emerged. Institutions seeking to rename buildings have taken to finding equally problematic individuals on which to bestow the honour of namehood. After Merchant Taylors’ school in Hertfordshire stripped evil old-boy Clive of India’s name from one of their houses, many of us rejoiced. But it turns out Clive House will be named after the equally problematic Surrey cricketer John Raphael who represented England in international rugby when it was part of the British Empire. Not content to flaunt his toxic masculinity by rugby-tackling colonials, in 1917 he picked up a gun and actually died fighting against increased European cooperation.

Orange Man never existed
He may have been cancelled by Twitter but it seems former President ████████████ can still spread his facist bile via the little-known medium of film cameos. He famously made a short appearance in the 1992 film Home Alone 2 when lead character Kevin asks █████  for directions to the lobby of the Plaza hotel, which █████ owned at the time. But now Kevin actor Macaulay Culkin has endorsed a call to digitally remove █████ from the film altogether and replace him with an older version of Culkin. It will only be possible to fully rid ourselves of █████’s evilness when we totally and completely erase ███████████ from history. That’s the only true way to learn a good lesson. And it’ll teach other world leaders, and socially frustrated outer borough property developers, not to repeat █████’s mistakes. Right now countries all over the world are stopping the genocide of Uyghur Muslims in China by writing them out of the TV news each and every evening. Foolproof. You have to want to try.