The Archbishop of Canterbury on… enjoying Wonderwall for the 10,000th time, Noel?

18th July 2025

WAKING with a hangover the size of Hampshire, I clear my system by vomiting copiously from an upstairs window, which drenches a passerby but calms my stomach magnificently, and reflect upon the week’s events.

I have found myself pestered by a new appointee, the Bishop of Cambridge, a young fellow of 35, who is one of those irritating sorts who is fresh and full of ideas.

He has noticed how my period of pastoral charge has benefitted from my extensive use of swearing, in both the written and spoken word. However, having come up through the Varsity Footlights, he is of the opinion that I should ‘jazz up’ my sermons with amusing compound words. He requested an audience with me, in which he outlined his thoughts.

‘The f-word, the c-word, the t-word, the w-word… they’re all well and good, but couldn’t you mix it up a bit?’ he suggested.

‘No,’ I said.

‘No, no, hear me out. How about “tossbugle”?’

‘No.’

‘What about “shiteboobles”?’ ‘No.’ ‘Wanktubbies? Pissybobs? Fuckitywhatnots?’

‘Emphatically no. This conversation is over. Fuck off. Don’t fucktrumpet off, don’t fuckity bye off, just fuck. Off.’

Upon which, looking somewhat crushed, and flinching as I threatened to strike him with my staff, he sloped off.

Chuckling over our little contretemps, I take a light breakfast and peruse a periodical. Therein I read that Rory Stewart, on his podcast with Alastair Campbell, remarked that ‘some Israeli parliamentarians are using increasingly blunt language when discussing Palestine’.

Fuck my dead dog with my dead hamster on a stick! ‘Blunt language’? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? We’re not talking about telling your neighbour to keep their bloody music down, it’s people enthusiastically explaining their fucking plans for genocide! And ‘becoming’? I presume that means ‘I’ve only just noticed, or decided to notice’. So about two years late, you’ve finally taken your splinter-filled, bony arse off the fence and realised what people paid fuck all have known since fucking 2023! Some fucking topical podcast. What are you going to notice next, Enoch Powell being a bit racist?

Donald Trump has lashed out against his own supporters, calling them gullible ‘weaklings’ for questioning the transparency of a secretive inquiry into Jeffrey Epstein.

Hahaha, it’s all falling apart isn’t it, you grotesque, weirdly effete, miserable, nappied, adjudicated fucking rapist! Everyone knows that (A) you’re a vile, grab-them-by-the-pussy sex pest and (B) a big fucking mate of Epstein. They can do the fucking ‘math’ from there! And now, realising you’ve been fucking played for a sap by your boyfriend Putin, you’re opening your big mottled buttocks and taking a shit on your idiot MAGA supporters when even they finally realise, with Rory Stewart-like tardiness, that you’re a fucking wrong ‘un!

Rachel Reeves is claiming that cutting red tape for City firms will have ‘trickle down’ benefits for households across Britain.

Ah yes, trickle down. Trickling down, all that money from deregulated financiers, trickling down like the brown dye from Rudy Giuliani’s hair on a hot day. Trickling down like shit down a tree from incontinent baboons above. All trickling down on the heads of the deserving, hardworking poor. Oh fuck off. That money is trickling nowhere except fucking offshore, as we fucking know from bitter, time and fucking time again experience! You’re either an amnesiac fuckwit or you take us for amnesiac fuckwits! Although I wouldn’t mind not remembering you!

Finally, it seems that Oasis, in exchange for £50 million each for Noel and Liam Gallagher, are to continue their world tour to November, culminating in Brazil.

I think it’s fair to say we all fucking hate Oasis, if by ‘we’ we mean anyone with a double digit IQ or higher. But I tell you who is going to fucking hate Oasis more than anyone ever hated Oasis, and that’s Oasis. By November Noel and Liam will feel like they’re churning through Wonderwall for the 10,000th time, staring out at a sea of the world’s most pitiful brayalong morons, realising that they are the modern messiahs of fucking bloke rock mediocrity! And there’ll still be fucking Champagne Supernova and Roll With It to go!

Patties like beer mats and chips from f**king sweet potatoes: The gammon food critic's smash burger bar experience

17th July 2025

Restaurant reviews by Justin Tanner, our retired food critic, who would have watched more of the women’s Euros if the kits had been skimpier.

NOBODY knows their burgers like us Brits. They’re a homegrown national institution, like pizzas and curry. Except these days everyone feels the need to reinvent the f**king wheel.

Take the latest culinary abomination to wash up on our shores, the ‘smash burger’. I can only think they got the name because you’d need to be smashed off your tits to consider eating one, haha. I should be a comedy writer.

Anyway, I’m not one to pre-judge, so when a smash burger place opened in town, I mentioned I was a highly respected food critic, and promptly got offered a meal on the house. They don’t need to know I retired in 2007.

How smash burgers really got their name soon becomes clear. The meat is ‘smashed’ into patties thinner than a bloody beer mat. If I wanted burgers thinner than an anorexic sparrow I’d order a sodding Big Mac. I order two, and I’m still expecting to have to get chips on the way home.

The standard ‘house’ burger comes with cheese, ketchup and unnecessary shit like pickles and bits of salad, which I studiously pick off. As expected, it’s gone in three mouthfuls. No wonder the youth of today are all such pasty, undernourished little shits if this is the rubbish they live on.

My second one, the BBQ Bacon, isn’t much of an improvement. A couple of rashers of bacon plus an onion ring, which admittedly, is an upgrade on the raw rubbish served with its predecessor. And BBQ sauce, whatever the bollocks that’s made from. Give me Heinz tomato ketchup all day long, not this trendy Americanised slop.

But it’s the side orders that really bring down the tone. Loaded fries, which are basically skinny little chips covered in melted cheese. How in the name of God’s bollocks are you meant to eat those? You can’t pick them up without scorching your fingers on molten cheese, and everyone knows that only poofs eat burgers with a knife and fork.

Then honey chicken bites. Who the hell wants chicken nuggets that taste of honey? The world’s gone mad. Besides woke and feminism, obviously. But, worst of all, sweet potato fries. Sweet bloody potatoes. It’s against nature, like Quorn sausages.

There’s the now-obligatory ‘plant-based’ bollocks to cater for the lefties, and a separate children’s menu. Although serving your kids this is child abuse in my book, and I don’t think I need to explain my views on nonces.

Nonetheless, I unenthusiastically eat my free fill and promise a glowing review in due course. As in: when hell freezes over, Kylie Minogue asks me on a date, and England win the World Cup.

Although smash burgers did live up to their name in a way, because I nipped into Spoons to fill up with a proper burger and ended up having eight pints.