This week on The Critic podcast we spoke to John Whittingdale MP, 24 hours before he was made a Minister of State in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Reports have claimed that he has been tasked with a demolition job on the BBC, including axing the licence fee.

But while he was critical of the current “regressive” method of collection, John Whittingdale made clear to us that he believes there is no credible alternative except being funded from general taxation – an idea he is not fond of because of the increase in power it might give to the state.

Also on the podcast this week we spoke to writer Alexander Larman on the recent Academy Awards: giving his verdict on whether the Oscars are going to stay woke – a subject he has written about here – and Graham caught up with Adam Dant on a pub crawl of SW1 for some serious tavern-based research on the division bells of Westminster.

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