Most-read in 2023: The Octopus, the Plot, and Other Unwanted Johnsons
As we crawl to the end of another year, it's time for yet another list. Here are the editions that got the most attention in 2023....
This year, I wrote a total of 153 editions of this newsletter, an average of 12.75 monthly emails with an average open rate of 42.5%. You’re one of 10,533 subscribers — up 3632 since January 1st — of whom 759 are paid subscribers (up 276 this year). I’d love to get back to a 10:1 free to paid subscriber ratio. If you’ve not yet taken the leap, consider hitting the button below…
… but now, on with the most-read editions of 2023:
January: I, Columnist
Emperor Claudius was a columnist; he issued up to twenty edicts a day on a range of topics, regardless of whether he knew what he was talking about. Suetonius — the Dominic Sandbrook of his era — claims that one of those commandments was on the subject of public flatulence but it’s likely that he was just repeating a dinner party joke, 80 years after the fact.
In our era, the public flatulence of columnists is presented to us every day in the press and on the airwaves; the soggy, stuttering evacuation of half-digested ideas and stinking assumptions Jackson Pollocked all over public debate. Columnists praise each other loudly on social media for the brilliance of their farts; they receive awards for their volume and stench; and even in disgrace they are protected and lauded.
February: Mapped out.
After New York magazine — a product of Comcast (where the hereditary CEO, Brian L. Roberts, is the son of the company’s founder Ralph J. Roberts) — published a series of articles about Hollywood 'nepo babies'1, the British media leapt on the idea. Features and comment pieces considered entertainment, the legal profession, (some) corporate bosses, and politics, but there was the elephant in the room whose stamping and defecating went unacknowledged: The British media itself.
March: Savaged.
‘National treasure’ is a status bestowed upon people when the time has come to file down their teeth and water down their beliefs. In death, someone with that unwanted status can have their sharp edges smoothed away. O’Grady, equally astute and acidic in drag as Lily Savage as he was in what passed for civvies, is diminished to only the soft-hearted lover of dogs and doer of good works in establishment obits.
April: The Scorpion’s scoop
In theory, ‘journalists’ should care deeply about words; in practice, many treat meaning with the same contempt they offer such trifling concepts as facts and nuance. In today’s Telegraph, numerous words, including the common terms “leaked” and “investigation”, get roughed up real nice by that publication’s gang of goons. Matt Hancock’s ghostwriter, Isabel Oakeshott, becomes Matt Hancock’s deeply self-interested Deep Throat.
May: Obliteration of the Self
Adrian Chiles’ latest column is a heartfelt piece about ADHD and the myths around it. Self’s latest is a misogynist screed about a woman being so dickblind that she gives her husband a column in the newspaper she edits; it’s a ‘theory’ (that’s a big word for shock tactics from a has-been) that ignores that Chiles was famous before he got the column and met Viner because of it rather than getting the gig because of his relationship with her.
June: Yawn on the Fourth of July
Has Boris Johnson made his secret daughter a peer? No. Is there a secret super-injunction to stop the press from mentioning his secret daughter? No.
The truth about the elevation of 30-year-old Charlotte Owen to the peerage is that Boris Johnson valued her loyalty (and perhaps more), and wanted to put an ally in the House of Lords for a very, very long time.
Owen’s ennoblement stinks but it stinks no more pungently than the placing of the equally unqualified Ross Kempsel, a journalist-turned-Johnson-turd-catcher. Kempsell is 32 and a former News UK employee.
So why does Owen’s honour get the most heat? She’s a woman and she shares a surname with Boris Johnson’s first wife. That’s it.
July: Nine questions that The Sun should answer about its dodgy 'BBC presenter' story
Last night, the solicitors representing the younger individual at the heart of the ‘BBC presenter’ story issued a statement saying that The Sun’s story — which used the 20-year-old’s estranged mother and step-father as its source — was “total rubbish” and that the paper had been told as much on Friday evening. But The Sun and News UK — its parent company — have continued to double down.
On Saturday, The Sun published an article featuring what it claimed were “nine questions that the BBC refused to answer”. Good format; I’m nicking it. Here are nine questions that The Sun should (but won’t) answer…
August: Fear and loathing in Lancashire…
The town was full of punks; more mohicans than a radical hairdressing convention; more black leather jackets than Lemmy’s wardrobe. It was like a computer game about the late 70s had been clumsily programmed and now characters – all variations on the theme of punk rock, anarchy, and being quite annoyed off with your dad – were spawning like crazy in the centre of a broken-down seaside town. Blackpool is great because it knows what it is and what it was and what it might be next. It’s all faded and very little glamour, but it has charm, the kind of charm that can borrow a £5 off you and get let off because the chat was good…
September: In the shadow of 'The Nude Statesman'
In the promo for Russell Brand’s guest stint as New Statesman editor, the magazine’s actual editor, Jason Cowley, hovers in the background, out-of-focus but chuckling. The essay by Brand which dominated the issue — a lengthy burble about ‘revolution’ and the pointlessness of voting — was described by the magazine in its publicity as “a 4,500-word tour de force”. Meanwhile, in a press release, Brand promised his first act would be to rename the magazine to The Nude Statesman.
October: Ohwellism
If there is “whataboutery” this is “ohwellism”, the hands-in-the-air, this-is-how-it-is pose of the cold columnist. Oh well, “sadly the innocent do die”. Oh well, it’s “time to tear down”. Oh well, “no one wants a single innocent life lost,” but…
At around the time Baker’s column was published on the Times website, the IDF told all civilians in Gaza City to evacuate “for their safety and protection”, calling on around a million Palestinians to move south ‘for [their] own safety and the safety of [their] families”. This is ohwellism at its most extreme: The UN has called on Israel to take a different course, warning that the forced evacuation “could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation”.
November: Review — Dorries and the Plot against Reality
Imagine State of Play described to you by someone on strong painkillers or watching a remake of The Manchurian Candidate scripted by a group of distracted toddlers. Either of those options would be better than Nadine Dorries’ theoretically non-fiction title The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson.
December: Waving a Johnson around in public
There are few phrases so beloved of Telegraph columnists than “the establishment”. It doesn’t matter how long they’ve been on their privileged perch — Pearson has been a national newspaper columnist for more than 30 years — or that the Telegraph itself is a foghorn for capitalism’s most callous and their political wing, the Conservative Party, they are never “the establishment”. No, that’s some left-wing, vegan, civil servants in North London — nudge nudge — townhouses as well as students, UberEats riders, the trade unions, and anyone who doesn’t tremendously object to Doctor Who.
Thanks for reading this edition and for reading this year. The final part of The 23 Worst Columns of 2023 will be out on Christmas Day for paid subscribers and unlocked for everyone on New Year’s Eve.
Please consider sharing this edition if you enjoyed it:
Savaged is very good, one of your best. The anger at some of national treasure nonsense is perfectly pitched. It is a moving tribute to Paul.