London Calling

Uriah Heep Sycophants

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Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

This week James and Toby are naming names. James Corden, Graham Norton, Natascha McElhone, Peter Hitchens and, of course, Harry & Meghan. Could a couples therapy be in the offing between our hosts and Oprah?

We continue weaving our way through the Bernard Cornwell oeuvre, talk a little French television (including Marseille with Gérard Depardieu) and Toby flips his wig – literally.

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London Calling

A Roadmap to Where?

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Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

Congratulations to us. We have a podcast! Last week, due to some technical problems on Toby’s end we lost not one, but two attempts at production. This week we pulled out all the stops, put several redundant systems in place and, of course, none of it was needed. Go figure.

After lamenting that which could have been, we’re on to the matter at hand: Monday was D-Day for the Johnson Government. The Prime Minister has unveiled his roadmap to reopening UK society. Are you getting the jab for a Covid Passport?

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London Calling

Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot?

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Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

This week James “Scorched Earth” Delingpole and Toby “Forgive and Forget” Young square off about attacking all of James’ former allies (including Dan Hannan and Chris Snowdon) and in this week’s pandemic news, is “Zero Covid” really a workable idea?

Culturally we cover The Dig (Netflix), the story of the UK’s greatest archeological find at Sutton Hoo, the Israeli series Losing Alice (AppleTV+), and because Toby is a member of Bafta (Have we ever mentioned that?) the Tom Hanks movie News of the World.

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London Calling

Winning The Virtual Debate

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Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

This week James and Toby recount their doings in support of The Great Reopening… and the deeds of others, too. (Protests have erupted here, here and here.) Delingpole goes walkabout in his area of the country and comes away a bit disappointed, but others are fighting such as this Edinburgh shopkeeper or this salon owner in Oakenshaw who has racked up £27,000 ($36,888 US) in fines so far.

Toby, on the other hand, has an unqualified win in the Cambridge Union debate: “The Lockdown Was a Mistake.” Evidently that sort of thing will happen when you stay sober for the entire month.

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London Calling

The Great Reset

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Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

Oh, to be in England now that snow has come… as it wreaks havoc on the Delingpole household.

Otherwise, everything is going “Great…” as in The Great Reset, The Great Reopening… The Great Revolt. There seems to be two kind of people in the world right now, the compliant and the rebellious. You can guess where our intrepid duo slots in. And it’s not in Davos.

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London Calling

Everybody Hates James and Toby

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James and Toby open with a discussion of Christopher Snowden’s Quillette article on Lockdown Scepticism and the mauling the lockdown sceptic Lord Sumption has received since his appearance on The Big Questions, and Toby’s censure by the press regulator, Ipso.

A special welcome to Conservative MP Neil O’Brien (or his researcher) who is now listening to London Calling and quoting things our men have said to try and discredit the lockdown sceptics’ cause (and blaming Toby for things that James said on past episodes.) Maybe this is a 77th Brigade op?

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London Calling

On Thin Ice

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Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

The show takes a decidedly different tone this week as Toby and James seek to find common ground… er… a common sheet of ice in a cold, raging river of politics.

There is a bit of talk of the news of the day, namely the disappearing act the Big Tech giants have pulled on Parler, but mostly it’s dinner parties in New York, seats in the House of Lords, and the ever-burning, sure-t0-divide question, “What’s in your downstairs loo?”

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London Calling

Poison Pen

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Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

Disagreement over the lockdown has taken a decidedly different turn in the New Year. This past weekend Toby received a death threat in one of his email accounts and it was deemed that it was serious enough to warrant a police visit. He also got into a very public row with Conservative MP Neil O’Brien (Harborough, Oadby & Wigston).

On the culture front, we find James watching (*gasp*) the BBC and he recommends The Serpent, the story of serial killer Charles Sobhraj. (It’s a BBC/Netflix co-production so American listeners will presumably get it shortly after the Beeb is done with its run.) Toby is so disgusted with this year’s Bafta offerings (Have we ever mentioned that Toby is a Bafta member?) that he’s gone back to revisiting older films such as SPECTRE and Star Trek: Beyond.

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London Calling

Control Every Jot and Tittle

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Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

After upsetting the base last week our intrepid duo has called a holiday truce. We’re out of the trenches and playing footy in no man’s land. And speaking of desolate, deadly landscapes, the Government has announced an exit deal with the European Union.

Britons are now free! (We know you’ll want to read all 1,255 pages for yourself…) Of course, you’re not allowed to leave your homes, but you’re free! Is this enough to judge Boris Johnson a success or will his response to the pandemic find him wanting in the judgment of history?

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London Calling

And so, in God’s Mercy, A Happy Christmas to You All

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Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

What’s the old joke? Oh, yes. “How can you tell when a politician is lying?”

Answer: “His lips are moving.”

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London Calling

Fighting our Dystopian Future

8 6
Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

Toby is a busy, busy man. Hence it’s a London Calling Tuesday.

We start this week with “The Great Reset,” aka, “Build Back Better.” Will the Technocracy have its way with us? Does the name Klaus Schwab ring any bells? James sees a dystopian future and Toby wonders why anyone would just want to destroy it all.

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London Calling

Talk a Little Conspiracy

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Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

James has something he needs to get off his chest and opens the show by taking Toby, as the Americans would say, to the woodshed. As far as James is concerned journalistic curiosity is dead.

Then it’s on to the major news of the day, the UK has become the first nation to give regulatory approval for one of the new Covid-19 vaccinations. Because of fast tracking, this vaccination has seen limited clinical trials. If it all goes wrong who will be held liable?

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London Calling

The Petri Dish of History

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Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

This week, James and Toby reflect on what it’s been like to live through a year of such enormous historical importance and whether their sense of humour has helped them get through it. Who’s really on the “right side of history?”

Cancel culture arrived at Eton College, Britain’s poshest school, last week when a popular teacher was sacked for a video he refused to remove from YouTube that dared to go against the current political orthodoxy. It’s a case that has reverberations for lovers of free speech everywhere – including the campus of the University of Chicago.

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London Calling

Argy Bargy

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Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

This week on the UK’s Fastest Growing Podcast™ Messrs. Delingpole and Young get a little contentious. After reviewing the week’s Covid news they turn their attention to the US Presidential election and words fly. Words such as “Tesla,” “shotgun,” “fragging” and the “C-word.”

Things get so heated the bleep machine gets pulled out. Crikey.

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London Calling

On a Short Lead

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Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

There’s been a shakeup at No. 10. Adviser Dom Cummings is out, as is communications director Lee Cain. So who’s calling the shots? Boris? Carrie Symonds? Klaus Schwab? And who’s that measuring drapes?

The Young house is getting a rewire (and we hope renovations go better than it did in Chelsea) and the world seems to be getting a “Great Reset” much to the dismay of James and Toby. Every element of society seems to be lining up to criminalise dissent.

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London Calling

Britain’s Best: The Deling Poll

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Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

James and Toby react to the PM’s presser from late Monday afternoon as Pfizer announces a 90% success rate in their Covid-19 vaccine and ask the musical question, “Why Can’t an Englishman be More Like a German?”

And then, like everyone else, our intrepid duo has a take on the US Presidential election. One thinks it may be time for a tactical retreat while the other proclaims, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” (We’ll let you guess which is which.) So exactly who was Donald Trump referencing as “Britain’s Best?” We have an idea.

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London Calling

Place Your Bets

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Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

It’s Election Day in the United States (kinda) and Toby and James discuss the bets they’ve placed on a Trump victory. On the domestic front they decry Boris Johnson’s decision to impose a second national lockdown and ridicule the idea that the UK is looking at 4,000 Covid deaths a day.

Our intrepid duo then draw up plans for James’s book about his Oxford contemporaries: My Generation: The Worst in History.

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London Calling

Strangers on a Train

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Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

This week our show has a bit of Hitchcockian opening as James recounts his time with Strangers on a Train. That encounter leads us to the recent Dutch study on the effectiveness of masks that seems to have been left homeless – because “science.” Nobody will touch it.

With the Presidential election just around the corner everybody gets a call to place their bets, a call that delivers a disturbing memory in Toby’s gambling life. And somehow along the way our gentlemen take time to appreciate their wives – and the total indifference they show in their professional lives.

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London Calling

Boris’ Nookie Ban

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Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

Tuesday evening the PM announced that the greater Manchester area would be given the Third Tier Lockdown treatment. And for Toby and James the one thing this situation has done is highlight the divide between England and the devolved nations of the “United” Kingdom.

It has also highlighted the power struggle between the elected and the unelected in government, namely S.A.G.E. (the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies), which at this point should probably be renamed C.Y.A.. In the end it has made James and Toby relieved to be married (although not to each other,) especially given that Boris’s new lockdown rules mean couples that live apart can only meet outside.

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London Calling

Do Not Pass “Go”

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Hosted by James Delingpole & Toby Young

On this week’s episode James and Toby react to the PM’s announcement of a second round of restrictions in the fight against Covid-19. There are now three levels of restrictions and – spoiler alert – there are no levels that are free from restrictions.

So, we have more lockdowns and at what cost? Cancer specialist Angus Dalgleish recounted the suicide – of not one but two – of his colleagues in an article in the Daily Mail over the weekend. There is hope in the Great Barrington Declaration, that is, if Big Tech decides not to find a reason to squash it.

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