As an anthropological experiment, I listened to two whole episodes of the London Calling podcast, and I actually quite enjoyed myself.
I have now listened to two episodes of London Calling, the Toby Young and James Delingpole podcast, where the two culture warriors “describe and explain British and European politics and culture for their American audience”, and it is very funny.
Now, it seems very optimistic for these guys to believe that they have a significant US audience, but let me tell you, this podcast is incredible. There are moments of such jaw dropping lack of self awareness that it enters an ambivalent, liminal area of posting that seems to be governed by Poe’s Law, where you cannot tell if it’s serious or satire. Sadly, it’s not satire, but if it was it would be good satire.
The first time I listened to this incredible social artefact, Toby Young, or ‘Tobes’, as James Delingpole calls him, and which I shall too, had Covid. Neither of them claims to have been vaccinated. James likes to refer to the vaccine as the ‘Clot Shot’, and affects such a wonderful performance of paranoia about everything that it’s hard to tell if he really believes it or if it’s a reactionary affectation which he thinks makes him seem edgy.
Delingpole reels off conspiracy theories about: ”The creeping biosecurity state, fascism that’s been going on in Australia… they’ve been having quarantine camps for the unvaccinated, and most of the world has been uninterested.” They then half seriously discuss how worried they were that Jeremy Corbyn would have had them put in a gulag if he’d become Prime Minister, with Tobes saying he considered fleeing to Israel. James replies that Israel is too pro-Vax for him, and he might have to go to Belarus instead.
Tobes, however, is “hoping for the invite to Peter Thiel’s private island which he’s just bought off the coast of Costa Rica, but I think you probably have to be a billionaire to get the invite’
Given that Tobes was in Jeffrey Epstein’s little black book, it doesn’t seem that improbable that he could get himself an invite to a billionaire’s private island, so perhaps he’s just being self-effacing.
One of their favourite topics is woke culture. At the end of the show, there’s a segment called ‘culture corner’, where they talk about what they watched on TV that week. A couple of weeks ago it was Don’t Look Up, which they liked, despite its woke message.
“I find quite often with these things I can filter out the wokeness, so there was that film Get Out a couple of years ago, and I didn’t care that it was an attack on white people by a black activist… people like us have to filter out the wokeness otherwise we’d never be able to watch anything”, Delingpole laments.
“Yeah, and a lot of the higher quality stuff is fairly woke and if you don’t filter it out you’d be missing out on a lot of good stuff”, Tobes replies.
Like a rubbernecker passing a car crash, I had to tune in again. This week, the double act had been on a shooting trip, because guys like this love to kill animals in the countryside.
“I half love shooting and half get a bit upset by it because the birds are so pretty and when you see them dead I do kinda feel sorry for it”, James says, as if noone is listening. “The only way I feel I can make amends is by, at the end when they say ‘anybody want some feathered game?’… I always say yes, so I came home with 6 partridges and 2 brace of pheasant which the wife heroically debreasted.”
How are you storing it? Asks Tobes. “We’ve got one of those old country houses which has hooks on the ceiling where you hang game, and reputedly where one of the previous occupants of the house hanged himself”.
God, I love this podcast. James Delingpole has elements of Alan Partridge and Fast Show characters, but he’s so strange you couldn’t make him up. Local legend relates that he used to live near where I grew up in South London, but moved to the countryside because it was too ‘urban’. Everyone felt sorry for his wife.
“It was a great day out and I enjoyed seeing you in the flesh”, Tobes says. “And I enjoyed eating that Chinese water deer for lunch”, James replies. “Yes, that was delicious wasn’t it? Even though it was slightly overcooked, because one of the guns complained about the 3rd drive not being up to the usual standard so we got an extra drive shoehorned in before lunch, so the Chinese water deer was slightly overcooked by the time we got to it, but still delicious.”
James has a flash of self-awareness: “We’re sounding like Luxury Problem Day, our Chinese water deer was slightly overcooked because we had an extra drive. If this doesn’t get rid of our chippier listeners I don’t know what will”.
I do not know who this content is for, but it is fascinating from a cultural anthropology point of view.
“Whenever I mention my love of foxhunting, I lose people”, says James. “There’s sod all to do in the country in winter apart from shoot things and chase after them on horseback and I think we should be allowed to carry on doing that”.
After 9 minutes of talking about murdering animals in the countryside, but then they get to the Sue Gray report. “It looks like the greased piglet has wriggled free to gambol in the field another day”, says Toby. James has come up with a portmanteau for their double act – Team Jobes. “Partygate is cooked up by the faction that wants to get rid of Boris, Team Rishi might have something to do with it”, James adds, conspiratorially.
They then move on to Joe Rogan, concerned that own attitude towards vaccines might result in them getting banned from Spotify.
“Stuff like Joe Rogan’s podcast, that’ll have a trigger warning attached… amongst the rules, the things you’re not allowed to do are promoting or suggesting that vaccines are designed to cause death, so if you persist in describing them as clot shots or death jabs we will end up banned from Spotify”, Tobes warns.
James clarifies that “‘It can’t necessarily be inferred that I mean they were designed to do so, it’s just an accidental consequence of their existence that they happen to kill”.
“So you’ve rowed back slightly on it being part of some eugenic plan to depopulate the earth by climate obsessed nutjobs”, Tobes replies.
‘I still think that but i’m not going to say it now, for the purposes of Spotify. I do not believe this Spotify, I’ve got my fingers crossed begins my back”, James smirks, like a naughty child.
“Let’s hope we’re below the radar James… I suppose someone could complain about it, particularly now that I’ve brought it up and that could be the end of us”.
You get the impression that the edgelords of Team Jobes are just saying this stuff because they want to be banned. Oooo, ban me, ban me so I can claim to be victimised by big tech, haha death jabs.. Haha!
“Never trust a hippie”, James says about Neil Young, launching into a rant about how the counterculture of the 1960s “was just a psyop, the whole of the counterculture was designed to weaken us and do the establishment’s bidding”.
‘Shall we hear from the sponsor whose bidding we happily do in exchange for almost nothing?’ Tobes says, launching into an advert for X Chair.
Sublime. Top marks. Absolutely perfect. Never change, lads.
John Lubbock leads on the Right-Watch project at Left Foot Forward
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