Meghan's silly Father's Day list, Scots drink the USA dry & a seagull sandwich

0:02The Telegraph.

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0:51Poppy Coburn: Welcome to The Weekend Tea, a brand new podcast taking a look back at the controversial and comical stories of the week. With two of The Telegraph's opinion writers, That's me, Poppy Coburn. And me, Michael Deacon. So for the next 20 minutes, relax, make yourself a cuppa. And listen to us at least trying to make sense of the stories making the headlines.

1:20So I guess the big story of the week is the Makerfield by-election, which Andy Burnham, the King in the North, was victorious in.

1:27Poppy Coburn: Yeah, yeah, a big win. I mean, we were talking beforehand about how, oh, it's invested reform or will restore, split the vote on the right. And actually, even if you combine the right wing vote, it doesn't even come close to Andy Burnham. There was also a split on the left as well because you had the Green Party standing against the monster raving loonies. So the Green Party vote totally split and they came nowhere. No surprise. To be honest, the thing that interested me most actually watching the results come in, standing beside Andy Burnham was a candidate who was a bloke dressed in a fox costume.

1:53I did see this. Yeah, there's always someone that's dressed as some kind of fairy kind of animal whenever there's a by-election now. Yeah. There was a badger the last time. Incredibly irritating.

2:02Poppy Coburn: I find it very annoying. It's so twee. It's so twee. And, you know, clearly the good people of Makefield agreed because the fox got precisely 0.0 % of the vote. Oh, brilliant. And with any luck, he's now being chased across fields by hounds or shot by a farmer. You can only hope. At least the fox was on stage. Andy Burnham's in the middle. There's the fox and there's the bin, which I did think was quite interesting as a political strategy. Oh, yeah, the guy dresses as a bin. Yeah, yeah, because it's kind of Andy Burnham's way of saying, I can do in the impossible. I can actually keep foxes out of your bins, which is something I would actually vote for, being a London resident.

2:35Poppy Coburn: Yeah, fair enough. So maybe that's why you got 50 % of the vote. Anyway, shall we move on from that? Yeah, move away from the boring old politics onto another boring old politics story, the social media ban. Ah, yes. Which I'm very angry about. I knew you'd be angry about, because as you have confessed before, you are so obsessed with your phone you actually sleep with it under your pillow so you can actually tweet in your sleep presumably yeah thanks for calling me out with that i knew you you would be into this so i was arguing quite a bit this week with basically everyone including my own mom about how social media is actually fine i even wrote a column about it but i think maybe something has exposed that i'm not okay because i was the first generation that grew up with social media right i watched this clip that went really viral of this young girl describing how her life was going to go after the social media ban.

3:22So let's just listen to that quickly. Tell me how you felt when you heard the Prime Minister say no more social media for you. I didn't think it would actually happen. I kind of believed that he'd chicken out of it and give it more time or more consideration, but he seems pretty sure of it and I'm not sure if I agree with him. So suddenly you're going to have a lot more time to fill. And what will you do? Stare at a wall. and the reason I thought that was so funny is because she said that she's going to stare at a wolf for several hours and I thought how much time do I actually spend staring at that little rectangular brick of glass so I'm going to have a look now because I remember my worst point which is during the pandemic, I think my screen time got to 13 hours a day so let me just have a look now I'm going to treat it if it's under 9 hours that's really healthy so this week has been quite good for me.

4:17The daily average is five hours and 50 minutes spent on my phone.

4:22Poppy Coburn: Right. That's less than I would have expected, to be honest. Exactly. If you'd asked me to guess beforehand, I would have said about 24, maybe. OK. Well, they don't count the bits when I'm asleep. But it's not quite as good as it looks because I could say, well, I use this phone for work. You know, I'm answering emails all the time. I'm on WhatsApp calling up people. No, it's not true. I spend about three and a half hours every day on X tweeting. Well, obviously then, clearly, you're living proof that this stuff is incredibly addictive. But you think children shouldn't be banned? No, no, no. I don't think adults should be banned either.

4:52I mean, ultimately, did it screw up my generation permanently? Perhaps. Did it mean that we can't focus on anything and we can't read books anymore? Maybe. Is it really fun to spend time online insulting politicians? Yes. And so for that reason and that reason alone, I will let you take my social media from my cold, dead hands.

5:11Poppy Coburn: Right, OK. The thing is, though, isn't the real issue with this ban is that it won't work because the average 10-year-old child knows more about how the internet works and how phones work than Keir Starmer does. Certainly than Liz Kendall. So they'll get around it. My son's 12 years old, right? And I mentioned this ban to him because I knew it would be of interest to him. And I said, what do you make of this? And he said, well, I think it's stupid, but it doesn't really matter. I said, why is that? And he said, well, my TikTok account is registered in Greece. So the UK law doesn't apply to me.

5:43I did like to see Liz Kendall try to get around this by saying we're going to ban VPNs, which even Vladimir Putin hasn't managed to do. So that is an interesting approach from the Labour government to basically try and shut down the entire internet.

5:53Poppy Coburn: Well, I mean, do you think this is really about protecting children or is actually their clever way of ending online anonymity? Because now all adults, in order to prove they're not children, will have to hand over all of their ID if they want to use social media. They'll have to identify who they are, here's my passport, driving licence, whatever like that, and therefore it'll be impossible to be anonymous online anymore, right, which shuts down free speech. Is that really what this is about? It's not the first time that Kim Ledbetter has actually let the entire Labour government down, because she kind of gave the game away yesterday when she did an interview.

6:22She said that social media creates division online, that that's hurting our politics. I thought, hang on, wasn't this supposed to be about helping children, you know, making sure that children grow up in a childhood where they're not using screens? And you actually just don't want people to be rude to you on Twitter, which seems to me like it's maybe slightly different in terms of priorities. But there you go. I'm very much against the social media ban. I will try very hard to see if I can get my social media down to three hours a day. Well, in that case, I wish you very, very good luck.

6:51Poppy Coburn: We better move on because there's something else I want to talk about. I mean, if I'm talking about this, you can just be tweeting or going on. I just need a bit more stimulation. I want to talk about Prince George. Another child. Because another child, I don't know how much social media he's allowed. I'm going to guess that Kate's pretty strict on that. But anyway, they've announced this week that he is going to be sent off to Eton College, just like his dad and his uncle before him, which to me seems a perfectly reasonable place for a future king to go to school, the poshest school in the country, fine by me.

7:22Poppy Coburn: But there's loads of people on the left who are absolutely enraged by this. They find it somehow shocking that a boy who's grown up in a palace should go to a posh school. Anyway, in particular, there's this hard-left MP called Zahra Sultana. Last year she quit the Labour Party because it's not left-wing enough for her. She's formed a new party with Jeremy Corbyn. Anyway, this is what she said, OK, about this George issue. What's wrong with the local comprehensive? She said this on Twitter, so you'll have seen it. If state schools are good enough for everyone else, why not the future king? Meanwhile, we're expected to keep footing the bill.

7:54Poppy Coburn: One rule for them, another for us. Abolish the monarchy. Now, where to begin with this? I think I'd probably begin with one rule for them, one rule for the rest of us is kind of the point of the monarchy. Isn't that the whole function of why you have a king? You don't expect to bump into the king when you're doing a little shop, do you? That's kind of the function of why you have a royal family. It's not an egalitarian system. By design. Well, yes, and this is the whole point. The standard left-wing argument against private education is that it's unfair. It gives a small minority of children an unfair advantage in life over the rest of the children, particularly when it comes to securing a career and the best paid professions, that sort of thing.

8:33Poppy Coburn: Now, OK, even if that's true, though, how is that relevant to Prince George? OK, because he's going to be the king in the future no matter what. He doesn't need to get onto a good graduate scheme. Yeah, it's not as if we levelled the educational playing field. Some kid from a council estate could be the monarch instead, right? Now, look, I went to state school myself. So did I. There you go. Now, at no point when I was a child did I say, oh, it's so unfair. If only my parents could afford to send me private, maybe I could be queen one day. You know? So what is the issue here? What is the issue?

9:07Well, the other thing I thought was a little bit strange is I think they have quite a parochial idea of where King George is in the totem pole because you shouldn't be comparing him to, you know, you and I, the subjects of the crown. You should be comparing him to the royal families around the world because actually sending him to Eton is a bit of a downgrade. When you think of how we used to train our monarchs up, they would have a whole army of private cheaters. They'd get philosophers in. It's like, oh, Rousseau, come over and teach the future king about liberty. Nowadays he's just going to be amongst many other royal families.

9:37He'd probably get bullied for being too poor.

9:39Poppy Coburn: Well, exactly. They'll point out you've got the wrong trainers, mate. Beat him up because yours only cost£15 ,000 or something. OK, well, still to come, we'll be talking about Meghan Markle's Father's Day gift guide and also how the Tartan army has been drinking America dry.

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10:42Poppy Coburn: So yes, it's Father's Day this weekend. Very exciting for Warn out. Worn out middle aged men like me. And the reason I want to bring it up is that none other than Meghan Markle has been giving her tips for Father's Day gifts. Now, you might think she's a slightly surprising person to appoint herself an expert in Father's Day, given that she doesn't have the best relationship with her own father. I dread to think what exactly she's sending him in the post. But anyway, she sent out a newsletter to her followers of her as ever luxury lifestyle brand and telling them what they should buy their dads anyway.

11:17Poppy Coburn: And the reason I want to bring this up is that, as a dad myself, I just thought these ideas were absolutely toe-curling. I mean, just totally, totally wrong. Can you give me some examples? I will tell you, OK, so first of all, she puts out a perfectly curated photograph under the heading Breakfast for Him, OK? It's got a croissant, it's got a mandarin, and also a serving of her as-ever strawberry spread sprinkled with flower petals, OK? These are her famous flower sprinkles, described on her website as a blend of tiny, vibrant, edible flower petals that act as confetti for your plating. And anyway, this is her idea.

11:56Self-described by Meghan Markle as her famous flower petals.

11:59Poppy Coburn: They were on her TV show, her terrible TV show, which nobody watched. Anyway, but for me, apparently. And alongside this, she's also promoted several products from her website, including a scented candle. OK, Megan's signature candle, number 519, which she describes as the feeling of warm sunshine and blue skies surrounded by love and laughter. This signature candle is inspired by the ease and joy of a day that holds my most cherished memories, my wedding day. Now, here's the thing. This is meant to be for Father's Day. All of those gifts I've just described there, they sound like great gifts for your mum, for your dad.

12:36Poppy Coburn: I mean, a middle aged heterosexual man. You give him gifts like that, he's going to be thinking, what are you trying to say about my sexuality here? Dad, Dad. What are you saying? A scented candle? Dad, I've just been thinking about you today, and I really thought that you would like a candle that smells like laughter, whatever that means. Although I'm saying this, I'm looking at your shirt, Michael, which is covered in flowers, and I'm thinking you are the perfect recipient of a Meghan Markle Father's Day Budweiser. You know what, maybe. I've said all this stuff. I tell you what, if my son's watching this, he's thinking, jeez, it's only 24 hours to Father's Day.

13:07Poppy Coburn: can I get Megan to send this first class from America? He needs a whole crate of flower sprinkles. That's what dad will want. Look, it's not the worst celebrity candle. I'm thinking of Gwyneth Paltrow's awful goop candle, which I can't even tell you what that smelled of. It's not the worst possible gift that you could get for your dad. At least it doesn't smell like Gwyneth Paltrow's crotch. Moving on. Well, yes, on that bombshell, shall we move away? And I want to talk about football. And in particular, in particular, Scotland fans at the World Cup in America. Now, I myself happen to be a Scotland fan.

13:38Poppy Coburn: I appreciate that I don't have the broadest Scottish accent, but I was actually born in Inverness. So I support Scotland, not England. But anyway, I've not been lucky enough to have tickets for the World Cup, but about 20 ,000 Scottish fans are currently over in Boston, Massachusetts. And they have been drinking the bars dry. I mean, I've seen news stories, you know, quotes from bar owners saying, we have never seen anything like this. Even in St Patrick's Day, this is crazy. Yeah, yeah. The Irish can't compete with this, which I think that's a proud post for Scotland. And also, when they're not at the Games, just marauding all over the city, behaving themselves, but just in a delightfully drunken manner.

14:17Poppy Coburn: I saw a fantastic clip in a children's playground and you're just looking at the bottom of a children's slide and nothing seems to be happening, nothing seems to be happening at all. You're thinking, what's this? And suddenly, whoosh, down the slide comes a Scotsman in full Kilton regalia and he's playing the bagpipes. That's perfect. I mean, my favourite has been all the photos of them putting fluorescent traffic cones on the heads of every single statue. And it turns out that Boston has an awful lot of statues, including one very strange one, where it's lots of animals. It looks like Noah's Ark.

14:47So they've had to go out and find about 20 cones to put on top of every single animal statue's head, which is really British culture in action.

14:54Poppy Coburn: Yeah. And some very joyless people back home have been sort of disapproving all of this and saying, oh, you know, this is bad for Scotland's image. I think total opposite. it this is actually this is what i call soft power okay right these men are promoting scotland's commercial interests around the world because what is scotland's biggest export alcohol basically whiskey also loads of beers and stuff and now that scotland fans have drunk america dry america's out of beer so it's going to need to import some where's it going to get it you know buy our whiskey buy our beer you're going to have to you've got none left we've drunk at all.

15:28Poppy Coburn: You see? So it all knits together. Fantastic. You can really see how he used to rule the world with kind of brilliant schemes like that. There you go. It's a stroke of genius. Well, talking of other great British exports and beloved figures, Jeremy Clarkson's been to the news this week. Quite a sad reason. So he's revealed that he has prostate cancer and he's undergoing treatment. That's right. Yeah, this was right in the final episode of the latest series of Clarkson's Farm, which I think I love it. It's a fantastic television. Best show on TV. Yeah, and it was quite startling, Although he announced this in a very sort of Jeremy Clarkson way.

16:01Poppy Coburn: He somehow managed to make it funny. Yeah, he can make anything funny. But I mean, I've interviewed him before about 20 years ago when I worked for a men's magazine. And he's an amazing interviewee because, you know, most interviewees, they are, they don't necessarily have an anecdote or an opinion or whatever you just ask them, which is understandable. They're normal human beings. Clarkson's not like that. You can throw any topic at him at all and he will just come back with a really pithy, funny, outrageous opinion about it or a funny story. And he's so smooth. You do start to think, is there an auto cue over the back of my shoulder?

16:33Poppy Coburn: And he's just reading this stuff out. He is so good. He's absolutely amazing. He was my, you know, when I was a teenager, he was one of my absolute favourite television stars. In fact, I was 13. I went to Paris for the first and only time. And I saw him on the Eurotunnel when we were coming back. and I got so excited that I burst into tears, which is quite weird for a 13-year-old. That's how excited I was to see Jeremy Clarkson. I'm very impressed. Well, I'll tell you what, can I tell you, before we move on, can I tell you a Jeremy Clarkson joke? Please. OK, this is an old one. He wrote this when Tony Blair was Prime Minister, but I think it's relevant again now, which is why I want to quote it, OK?

17:06Poppy Coburn: It's a joke about Britain. A hundred years ago, we were an empire ruled by an empress. Then we were a kingdom ruled by a king. Now we're a country Anyway, if they leave that in I hope everyone enjoys that

17:25Poppy Coburn: Look, it's the weekend tea We're allowed to come loose here As I say, that's a joke He wrote that about 25 years ago But I think he would be happy for us to repeat it right now That stands up I feel it's topical once again There we go I don't know about you, but I'm sweating quite a bit I am, I'm really worried It's so hot in the studio today I'm really concerned My armpits are going to start squelching and they're that close to the microphone. Bit of ASMR for everybody. I hope we can edit it out, otherwise I do apologise. But anyway, yes, it's incredibly hot and the reason I want to mention this is that in France they have decided or they're trying to ban men from walking about shirtless in public or either they're going to fine you€150, is it something like that?

18:04Poppy Coburn: And I just want to say I'm right behind that idea. I think we've got to bring it in here. There is no more disgusting sight in the world than seeing a grown man walking around in the streets or in the park, wherever, anywhere at all, even on the beach, topless. Because most men, I'm sorry, they don't have the figure for it, OK? It is disgusting. So these rolls of sort of scorched flab and moob and all that. Oh, no. I totally disagree with you on my question. In fact, I'm now starting to think that you're not a patriot at all. You're not a true conservative. What? How can you not agree with the right of an Englishman who is totally sunburned, who actually looks like the St George's Cross, to get his top off as soon as the temperature gets over 18 degrees.

18:45That, to me, is what it means to be British.

18:47Poppy Coburn: No, it's not. This is a disgusting and, may I say, very modern phenomenon. Because if you look at photos of our ancestors, let's say from Edwardian times, OK, photos of the beach, are the Edwardian men walking around topless? No, quite the opposite. They are totally covered out. They are wearing top hats or bowlers. They are wearing their full suit and tie and waistcoat and everything like that, and they look extremely respectable. I mean, they must be close to passing out from heat stroke. I was going to say, are you trying to say something? But they are so smartly dressed. Even when they go into the water, OK, they're not wearing the suits, but they're wearing a full bathing suit which covers the entire body, right?

19:23Poppy Coburn: And that's the way it should be. We need to go back to that. Top hat and tails for going to the beach. Is this just what you want to do? You don't actually want to show any skin at the beach, so you're trying to get us all back into our Edwardian costumes. I'm feeling pretty exposed today because I'm not wearing a jumper for once, right? Just a shirt alone for me makes me feel a bit naked, OK? So, no, no, I hate it. I hate these topless men. Well, speaking of crimes against English people, have you seen this amazing story about a man who decided to take matters into his own hands about a very polluted local river?

19:52He actually went with himself and some friends to clean it up, which is a really good thing to do. You very rarely see litter pickers now. If they're not wearing the Hive's vest, they're being paid by the council to do it. But apparently not, no. He's actually broken the law by doing a good thing and cleaning up the river, because I guess it was maybe our rubbish. And he's been fined.

20:11Poppy Coburn: Yeah, I think, oh, yeah, this is the environment agency, some useless quango full of pen pushers who have threatened him with prosecution. And supposedly the maximum penalty for this, I mean, if he gets charged, if he gets convicted, would be up to two years in prison, would you believe, for cleaning a river, for goodness sake. And the reason, their reason for this is that, oh, you don't have an official licence for taking rubbish out of the river. Hang on just a sec, what do they want to do? Throw the rubbish back in? I'm terribly sorry, yeah, I'm just going to put it all back again. It's like if you built a conservatory without planning permission, they make you pull it down.

20:41They're going to make this guy open loads of packets of crisps and throw them into the river one by one.

20:46Poppy Coburn: It's nuts. And it's also so inconsistent, right, because there was another story this week, a woman in Nottingham who has been fined£150 for accidentally dropping a kale leaf, yes, a single kale leaf, in a car park at Sainsbury's, OK? Now, frankly, I think, well, she shouldn't be fined for that, but also I would say don't pay the fine. and just say to them, sorry, I can't pick the kale leaf back up. I don't have a licence for that. I haven't got the permit. I haven't got the kale leaf paperwork. I am not legally allowed by the Environment Agency to remove rubbish. I'm afraid it's just going to have to stay there.

21:19Poppy Coburn: I do apologise. Maybe there's a bit of a geographic problem. We need that one guy who sat by that Sainsbury's car park looking eagle-eyed for anyone who's littering. We just need like 100 of these guys all across the country because then the river never would have got dirty in the first place. Maybe that's the solution. We just have to have some complete nutters just watching over if anyone drops a bit of gum on the floor, a leaf falls out of their salad when they're eating it, and they immediately get whacked with a fine. That's how we cleaned up Britain. That's it. Wise words for a happier country.

21:48Poppy Coburn: Right, anyway, I want to end on one other very stupid story, and this is about a Wetherspoons in Norfolk which has told its customers that if they're eating in the beer garden, they will not get a refund if their dinner is stolen by a seagull because they've got absolutely loads of seagulls there, they swoop down, they nick your chips in it. If someone took my Wetherspoons feed, I'd want to pay them. I'd be like, thank you. This is absolutely terrible. You've saved me a bad meal. It's disgraceful. I love Wetherspoons. I won't hear a word said against it. You love your microwave is what you're telling people.

22:13Poppy Coburn: I have to say, I don't blame Wetherspoons here because, look, it's not the pub's fault. I mean, the seagulls don't belong to the pub. They're not members of pub staff. So I feel like there's nothing they can do about it. And they've warned their customers anyway. There's a big sign saying, warning seagulls, they're going to nick your food. But in any case, I've got a solution to this because I happened to be reading the latest issue of a Viz comic, which was just out the other day, and there was a reader's letter on this very subject, and I'm going to read it to you, and don't worry, by the way, I have removed all the swear words.

22:39Poppy Coburn: This is Viz. It says, chickens, turkeys, pigeons, pheasants, geese, the list of birds we eat is seemingly endless, and yet we don't eat seagulls. I can't understand this, since everyone hates them, and eating them would be a surefire way of getting one over on them, and it would stop them nicking your chips at the beach. It's a win-win. So there you go. Here is the solution here. for Wetherspoons, start serving seagull burgers. Oh, my God. Kentucky Fried Seagull, OK? Two birds, one stone. Literally, literally kill the seagulls. Then they can't nick your food because they're dead and you're eating them.

23:09Yeah,£12.99, you've got a delicious meal.

23:12Poppy Coburn: So there you go. So, Tim Martin, if you're watching this, I've solved your problem. You're very, very welcome. Anyway, I think that's just about enough from us today. Yes. So thank you very much for watching and have a great weekend.

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