Duncan Harley

I’m conflicted. Official advice on the evolving global disaster involves self-isolation and much wringing of hands. But - and I am certainly a big fan of handwashing, self-isolation is pretty much what the digital age is all about anyway. Big-Bit-Corp such as Apple and Amazon – Facebook maybe not so much, WhatsApp certainly, feed on separating us from the herd already. Bring on some digital paranoia. Empty shelves of handwash and big bananas are the thing and the preppy paranoia includes survival gear ranging from assault rifles through to bendy fruit. Even the bananas! What kind of dumb-ass preppy weaponizes bananas? Suddenly everyone from my friendly local car-dealer to the likes of Cineworld wants to be my internet friend. Their reassurances are flooding my inbox with survival hints and assurances that once this is all over, all will be well in the land of car sales and ‘go to’ cinema. I don’t think so. I mean really? Who in Cineworld can even possibly imagine that even 12 m...

As our country teeters on the brink of old-Etonian Boris I have found a bit of light relief on Channel 4.  Unlike the somewhat Glasgow-centric offerings available from the new Scottish Channel - read Tutti Frutti, Paisley-Punk-land or some hoary old history of Glasgow’s Central Station – 4 occasionally leads the pack. We are talking Catch-22 here. Yes, I know that there was a book then a 20 th Century film and some kind of abandoned prime-time mini-TV series. But hey, the new take on Heller isn’t that bad really. The uniforms are right and even the CGI is kind of passable if you ignore the neatly choreographed flying formations – daytime B-25 bomber pilots tended to jiggle about a bit in the face of groundfire rather than just steer right through it. But hey, this is Heller’s masterpiece so a bit of black-humoured in-flight management is kind of in order. If only someone had taken the time to sort out the overall colour masking. This pumped-up Clooney series jumps ba...

It’s silly season yet again. A UK foreign minister – the MP for South West Surrey, a Bullingdon Club boy and the man who famously failed to sell marmalade to Japan - today told a meeting of senior Chinese diplomats that his oriental wife is in fact Japanese despite her blatantly Chinese origins. Quite what our esteemed representative in the Foreign Office was thinking of when he made the Duke of Edinburgh style slant-eyed gaff is unclear. Although, given his sudden succession to the previously Boris-dominated job, one might be forgiven for giving the man some slack, which is more than his wife is likely to do. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi apparently laughed till the camera’s stopped clicking then laughingly threatened to impose an embargo on British goods until such time as the Foreign Office finds someone less dim-witted to enhance trade relations with the Japanese hating Chinese hierarchy. According to CNN “Relations between Japan and China have been strained for year...