19 Comments
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David Pocock's avatar

With my morning coffee this piece has a dangerously high incidence of laugh-out-loud moments. Goodwin may be a fish in a barrel but this is still terrific shooting!

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Julian Petley's avatar

Great stuff. By the way, Goodwin says that he's been in and out of London since 1981, but that was the year he was born! Could he be the model for Private Eye's Angry Baby columnist? And I wonder how many of the *thousands* of readers that he bangs on about have actually been to London. I suspect that many of them are Americans who've never even been to Britain.

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Torr's avatar

Excellent and very funny. The original was truly insane, I compared it to the letters you would once see in the Telegraph signed Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells and usually written, in mid to late 20th Century, by elderly dyspeptic former Colonels! The sheer humourlessness of Goodwin is staggering. All his stuff has begun to read like an old man in a fever dream of angst and I begin to wonder if he has been passed over by Reform for a job and is becoming enraged! By the way does anyone know if the Goodwin Aaronovitch debate of a while back is available online?

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Dave Hill's avatar

Shockingly, Bloomsbury was different 100 years ago: That's "Sadiq Khan's London" for you: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/sadiq-khan-killing-literary-tradition-in-london/

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Alistair Hann's avatar

I'm reminded of an article by Peter Hitchens wherein he relates the story of taking a lovely weekend bike ride through this green and pleasant land, but then his entire day is ruined when he spots a kilogram sign being used at a greengrocers.

The reactionary are unintentionally hilarious

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pauljn's avatar

The man is an idiot

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Mark Tomblin's avatar

Lovely stuff. I particularly enjoyed the final paragraph. A true coup de grace.

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Neil Stanworth's avatar

Brilliant

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Dave Aitken's avatar

"Bulgarian-looking street cleaner", so clearly distinguishable from those less-swarthy Romanian refuse bin emptying operatives.

My belly hurts

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Bob Borsley's avatar

5O years ago England cricketers had names like John, David, and Bob. Now it’s names like, Zak, Ben, and Shoaib. Could anything demonstrate more clearly the nation’s sad decline.

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Dave Aitken's avatar

& "Beefy" & "Mad Bob" - epithets to swell the heart to busting with pride

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Steve Taccagni's avatar

Surprised he didn't complain about Blackfriars Bridge. I mean, how woke can you get? Where's the Whitefriars Bridge eh? eh??

To be fair though, I like pictures of Swiss mountains as well.

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Mr Richard Evans's avatar

Great parody. The world actually moves on these days.

Richard Evans

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Colin Rosenthal's avatar

_This time_

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Fiona Laird's avatar

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

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Rob Stead's avatar

At least you don’t mention buying instant coffee!

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David Aaronovitch's avatar

I hope it doesn’t Joshi. I haven’t seen that piece and I wrote mine in my head walking from Warren St to the BBC and back yesterday. Hopefully you’re joking

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