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.

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.

This morning in the House, the Prime Minister announced the re-imposition of the lockdown rules in England to avoid what he says is a looming second wave of Covid-19. Now, Toby and James wonder where it all went wrong with Boris and curse themselves for ever having invested any hope in him.

Also, leading up to the big grouse hunt James discovers a better way to shoot and in a chilling anecdote we learn Toby almost fell into the hands of Britain’s most notorious serial killer.

Everyone is back at their home base this week (barely) and James braves his way through the podcast, ignoring the terrific pain from the torn muscle in his shoulder. Toby wraps up his trip and recounts the procedure of getting the family home from Italy.

Then it’s on to the news of the day and the implementation of the mask requirements in England. James tested the waters and then conducted a Twitter poll on his status on the Shagability Meter. Needless to say he got mixed results on both endeavors.