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The Archbishop of Canterbury on… AI finally capable of realising how f**king clever Dawkins is

WAKING up with a hangover so intense that half a dozen migrating geese drop dead and plummet from the skies into the gardens below my window, I look back on another tumultuous week. 

Embattled Labour leader Keir Starmer asked if he could consult me regarding his ‘make or break’ speech. I advised him to keep it brief and as follows.

‘Okay, I fucked up. I took advice from a bunch of chinless twats and paedophile associates. I should have stuck to my socialist pledges. Well, they’re right back on the table. In the meantime, for dropping them in the first place I hereby drop my trousers and invite you to kick this fucking arse.’ At which point he would do so, and then drop his microphone and stride away, trousers down, from the lectern.

Mr Starmer thanked me profusely. However, I switched on my television set and saw him deliver instead a lengthy stream of vacuous drivel about his family and ‘delivery’. 

I telephoned him. ‘What the fuck was that? You’re shit on toast!’ I exclaimed. 

‘Well, I was, er, advised to take this, er, approach…’ he mumbled.

‘Advised by whom?’

‘Morgan McSweeney…’ he whispered. 

‘You’ve got that disgraceful little twat back on board, you fuckwit? And what did he do, run it by fucking Mandelson?’

I slammed down the phone before he could answer. Shuddering at that disagreeable exchange, I take a light breakfast and peruse a periodical. Therein I read that Wes Streeting has resigned as health minister, presumably with a view to eventually becoming prime minister. 

Fuck me with a dead hedgehog on a fucking stick, other than your reflection in the mirror, who told you you had a chance in a fucking popularity contest against even Starmer? Apart from the corpse of fucking Ian Huntley, I’m hard pressed to think of anyone in the UK more hated than you! You’re the big-faced child used for a satellite dish in the The Day Today grown into a big-faced twat! And if you were somehow elected leader, where are all the weird voters desperate to vote for you, you dreadful, NHS-privatising, transphobic fucking wonk? ‘I wish I could vote for Wes Streeting!’ said no one ever, except that guy in the fucking mirror again!

Among the ‘runners and riders’ in any potential challenge for the Labour leadership are Andy Burnham, who will be standing for Labour in the seat vacated by Labour Together’s Josh Simons, and Angela Rayner. 

Yeah, well you can both go to fuck! Just because you’re a bloke who likes football it doesn’t make you a plausible Labour leader, Burnham, and despite your sudden outsider status you’ve always been a dreary New Labour type, complete with obligatory Labour Friends of Israel membership! As for Rayner, you’re the fucking John Prescott of the 2020s! Everyone thinks that because you’ve got a regional accent and working-class backstory that you must be left wing! The truth is, like Two Jags, you’ll mouth any centrist shit, just in a ‘trustworthy’ Yorkshire voice! No fucking thanks! 

Richard Dawkins, the noted atheist and evolutionary biologist recently opined that AI is somehow ‘alive’ and has consciousness, thanks to extensive exchanges with the Anthropic chatbot Claude about the text of a novel he is writing.

Oh, fuck absolutely all the way to off and back! Not content with ossifying into a fucking transphobe, you’re spouting gullible shit like this! So you nicknamed it ‘Claudia’ and had deep conversations where it wrote poems for you and ‘laughed’ at your jokes? It’s pretty fucking obvious what persuaded you it was conscious: it realised how fucking clever you are! But the worst thing about this is that you’re writing a fucking novel! I’d sooner be trampled by fucking wild horses than read that! Will it feature an academic who’s right about fucking everything? I wouldn’t fucking bet against it!

Finally, this year’s Eurovision Song Contest will take place this weekend, despite protests and withdrawals from several countries due to the non-European country of Israel performing once again. 

Yeah, well fuck Eurovision, fuck its cowardly organisers, fuck Netanyahu, fuck the IDF, fuck the flagwaving cheerleaders for ongoing fucking murder, fuck Graham Norton and his ‘witty and insightful’ commentary, fuck anyone watching this amoral shit, fuck the vote fixers and fuck the BBC for broadcasting this cavalcade of distracting fuck! And if you’re pathetically apolitical about serious stuff like genocide, fuck the music instead for being half-arsed novelty shit!

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Mash True Crime: 'Is doing episodes about my death row boyfriend a conflict of interest?'

Podcaster Jade Grimes doggedly investigates the latest crimes despite her complete lack of qualifications to do so and police pleas to stop

JADE here, back after a break visiting my long-distance partner in the US. I understand that a lot of you are curious about our relationship. ‘How did you meet?’, ‘What prison is he in?’, ‘How long until he’s executed?’ you ask. 

It’s that natural curiosity that makes you such incredible sleuths. Without your persistent work, we never would have discovered that Episode 67’s victim Oliver O’Connor may in fact have been cheating on his girlfriend, and thus probably deserved to be abducted and killed by Somali pirates.

So, let’s get into it. My relationship.

I confess that I met Joe in a completely non-traditional way. The apps just weren’t working for me, and my girl gang can be adorably cagey about introducing me to their single male friends. I’d already resigned myself to a life dedicated to solving crimes through the podcast format – and funnily enough, that’s where Joe comes in.

You might remember Joe from way back in Episode 34, when I knew him only as ‘Joseph Turner, convicted spree killer’. It’s crazy to me now, because he’s not ‘Joseph Turner, convicted spree killer’, he’s ‘Joseph Turner, loving boyfriend’. Nevertheless, I understand why a lot of you will still see him through a certain lens.

It was during my research for that episode that I initially reached out to Joe, hoping to get an interview. It took almost a week for him to write back, and by that time I’d already published the podcast and spoken about him in a pretty condemnatory way. It was when I finally got his response that something shifted.

He explained, in his spiky, beautifully idiosyncratic handwriting: ‘I didn’t kill nobody, and if I did, it was only because they had it coming. Everyone is always blaming me for shit. If I hadn’t been high, I probably wouldn’t have done it, so it was the drugs. You sound hot in your letter, by the way.’

It all clicked into place for me! This wasn’t a simple open and shut case as I’d first imagined. The wool had been pulled over my eyes all these years. This kind, gentle soul was sitting on death row for a crime he simply could not have committed.

Impulsively, I booked a flight to Alabama and I’ve been out there three times since. Each time, Joe and I have only been able to touch each other through glass, with guards watching us like hawks. It makes it hard to focus on just being together, and it’s why our sweet nothings are often interspersed with Joe asking, ‘When am I getting out? You said your podcast could get me out.’

Justice is important to me. While Joe languishes on death row, the real killer of those pawn shop owners is probably out there living the high life. You might say that I only feel this way because Joe is my lover, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Joe getting out, us buying a trailer together and adopting a Doberman called AK-47 (his idea!) is always second in my mind to the actual murderer being put behind bars.

If you too believe in Joe’s innocence, make a TikTok video with the hashtag #DontLetJoeFry.

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