Woke madness and flag bans: It’s just not British!

0:02The Telegraph.

0:30Poppy Coburn: easy reordering and 24-7 support. Call 1-800-GRANGER, click granger.com, or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done.

0:40Michael Deacon: Hey, Pablo Torre here. As a sports journalist, I've covered global sports for many years now. And there is one thing that I can promise you.

0:48Poppy Coburn: Nothing compares to the

0:49Michael Deacon: World Cup. And this time, it is even better thanks to McDonald's. You have the chance to take home one of nine legendary cups when you order the FIFA World Cup meal. The cups feature some of the biggest legends in football, like David Beckham, Terry Henry, and Ronaldinho, Christian Pulisic, Lamine Yamal, and Alphonso Davies. Right now, get one of nine legendary cups when you order the FIFA World Cup meal only at McDonald's. At participating McDonald's, only for a limited time, while supplies last, all rights reserved, copyright 2026, McDonald's at the FIFA World Cup 2026.

1:29Poppy Coburn: Welcome to The Weekend Tea, a brand new podcast taking a look back at the controversial and comical stories of the week.

1:36Michael Deacon: With two of The Telegraph's opinion writers, that's me, Poppy Coburn.

1:39Poppy Coburn: And me, Michael Deacon.

1:40Michael Deacon: Say, for the next 20 minutes, relax, make yourself a cuppa.

1:43Poppy Coburn: And listen to us at least trying to make sense of the stories making the headlines.

1:56Michael Deacon: I would offer to make you a cup of tea, Michael, but we were just discussing this. Neither of us actually seem to like drinking normal tea. So you've got coffee in your cup.

2:04Poppy Coburn: I've actually poured coffee into my cup, thank you very much.

2:07Michael Deacon: And I've got something even weirder. I've got kombucha, which does look like beer, but I promise I'm not actually drinking a pint of beer at the moment.

2:14Poppy Coburn: Right, well, I'll take your word for that, shall I? You can rappelise me after the show. Anyway, yes. Yes, I don't know whether our refusal to drink tea means we're not really British and we're about to be stripped of our citizenship. But anyway, I think the number one story of the week, which relates to that, is the World Cup. The football is here. Most of the nation is happy about that, except for local politicians, because a lot of them have decided that England football fans should not be hanging England football flags in their areas, shouldn't be hanging from their balconies of their flats and out in the street and all the rest of that sort of thing.

2:45Poppy Coburn: I believe it is a council in Bristol, I think, has banned fans from doing that.

2:48Michael Deacon: Quite unsurprising, isn't it? Because it is Bristol. Bristol Council comes out against Britain.

2:51Poppy Coburn: Well, everyone in Bristol sort of hates Britain. I was going to say, Liverpool next behind on the list.

2:56Michael Deacon: I mean, this is quite a funny story. One of the reasons why I find it slightly hard to believe, though, is do they actually think all the inland flags that are currently hanging from lampposts across the country are there because people support the football? I think it might have been a little bit early. Yeah, I feel they've not been following the news very closely

3:12Poppy Coburn: in certain areas. But anyway, there you go. But yeah, the World Cup is here, And it's taking place mostly in the USA. And, of course, the Americans do not know a tremendous amount of football. It's soccer to them, right?

3:23Michael Deacon: Soccer.

3:23Poppy Coburn: And I think we've seen proof of this. In England's final World Cup warm-up match the other night, I don't know if you noticed, I was watching the game, and right around the side of the pitch, literally the sideline, OK, in the stadium, they had actual dining tables with fans sitting at them, eating their dinner, while, you know, literally right beside the player. Well, like the Last Suffer, like a great table. And all the rest of it. Yeah, exactly that. And I'm thinking, what on earth if you put dining tables there? I mean, for goodness sake, if you're sitting down to a three-course banquet or something, what happens if there's, you know, your whole dinner is destroyed by sort of wayward volley from Marcus Rashford or something like that?

4:01Poppy Coburn: You know, what are they doing there? And equally, you know, sort of say one of the players comes over, he needs the ball back because he wants to take a throw in. And, you know, you'll have diners going, excuse me, sir, I'm not giving you the ball back until you've ordered me another bottle of wine. You just smashed my bottle of Shadow Neuf Dupes. You're a soccer player. You're on 300 grand a week. You can easily afford to buy me another one. I'm trying to have a romantic three-course meal with my fiancé here, and you just ruined it. What do you have to be playing football here?

4:30Michael Deacon: I imagine it's probably quite difficult as well, considering the prices that people are paying for those front-row seats have got to be... They're probably wealthier than the people who are actually on the pitch, which I don't think has ever been the case in the United Kingdom before. But that's America for you. But enough about food, because I have a story now that I think is going to put us all off our lunch a little bit.

4:48Poppy Coburn: Right.

4:48Michael Deacon: Do you remember Samantha Niblett?

4:50Poppy Coburn: Samantha Niblett, what a wonderful name that is. She's a Labour MP, isn't she? And her name sounds like a line of dialogue from a carry-on film, doesn't it?

4:57Michael Deacon: Yes, and she does act quite a lot like a carry-on film, unfortunately. So this is the Labour MP who proposed, apropos of nothing, that we should have a summer of sex. She's come up with some quite interesting quotations in the months since. So one of the things that she said is that she likes to pleasure herself to pornographic videos of people having real, messy, unfiltered sex.

5:18Poppy Coburn: Can we say this at the Daily Telegraph, this sort of thing?

5:20Michael Deacon: It's coming straight from the mouths of a government representative. I'm only quoting. Right. It's really quite something, isn't it? Because I thought when she did this campaign, you know, it came out a couple of months ago now, everyone's response was a kind of universal WTF. Like, what on earth are you doing? But she's apparently found a fan. So Emma Thompson, you know, Emma Thompson, quite posh, old English actress. She is apparently supporting Samantha Niblett's Summer of Sex. She's all behind the educational push for Samantha Niblett to go around schools, you know, community halls around the country and tell people about how much she just loves watching pornography.

5:55Poppy Coburn: Well, that sounds very age appropriate. Wonderful. And yeah, I believe that part of the campaign will be holding an exhibition of dildos in the House of Commons and also offering sex tips and things like that. You never used to get this sort of thing with Geoffrey Howell, did you? Roy Hattersley's top ten sex tips. Or position of the fortnight with Edward Heath. You know? I mean, it just shows you how much politics has changed, I think. But also I think, is this really what voters want from their local MP? You know, you go to your constituency surgery and your MP says to you, have you thought about trying role play?

6:27Poppy Coburn: And you go, really, I just wanted to talk about fly tipping. Oh, fly tipping, what's that? You've been a very dirty boy.

6:35Michael Deacon: I mean, I do think that it says something about the calibre of I can't politicians that they're always running these campaigns. I mean, usually it's something like get some money together for the donkey charity. But I suppose in this case, let's get some money together and let's make a blue movie is is is quite something.

6:50Poppy Coburn: Yes.

6:50Michael Deacon: Well, it's more from pop stars, don't you?

6:52Poppy Coburn: Well, since you say that, you know, I think if any of our viewers haven't run off to throw up, I'm afraid I'm going to say something that's even more disgusting now because this is Madonna's comeback. OK, she's 67 years old and I think she's determined to prove that she can still be outrageous and push certain boundaries and that sort of thing. Because she's released her new music video and it features and I'm I'm not making this up. I'm going to quote here. I am going to quote here from The Guardian, which says that her new music video features laser beams shooting from vaginas. From the vaginas of Madonna and her female dancers.

7:26Poppy Coburn: And The Guardian, they think it's a triumph of female empowerment. Again, I quote, the green lights shooting out of everyone's vulvas are there to signify life force and unstoppable organ energy. I'm not sure what organ energy is. I think some kind of hippie nonsense.

7:42Michael Deacon: But anyway, yeah, I mean, that's quite a technical achievement for Madonna to have managed to find a way to shoot a laser out of her vagina. I mean, that's quite something.

7:51Poppy Coburn: To me, it just sounds like something out of a Bond film, really. You know, you can sort of picture that, right? So Bond is hooked up with this very glamorous and sexy young foreign woman. Sexy young 68-year-old woman. 67-year-old woman. He hooks up with her, he gets her into bed. Little does he know that she's actually a secret agent working for his deadly enemies, and she's been sent to assassinate him using... Anyway, I don't know if I should leave that to your imagination, but anyway, he's trapped to the bed, he's lying there, he can't move. The laser is inching closer and closer and closer.

8:21Poppy Coburn: Oh, God. I think, you see, that sounds to me like old school James Bond, but not like the sort of drippy, metrosexual dad rubbish, that you get in Bond films nowadays.

8:31Michael Deacon: This is the reboot we actually need. We spent way too much time arguing over who's going to be Bond. We should actually be saying, Madonna, would you like to be a Bond girl?

8:39Poppy Coburn: Yeah, if anyone from Amazon is watching this, you can have that idea free of charge.

8:44Michael Deacon: Yeah.

8:45Poppy Coburn: That's absolutely fine by me. Anyway, it sounds like a remarkable thing, the whole laser vulva business. It might actually be useful. I don't know how much it costs to get that installed. But a lot of women go in for laser hair removal, so you could do your own bikini life, couldn't you?

8:59Michael Deacon: Yeah, well, you could film a music video in the process. That's what every woman dreams doing. I think I've had enough of talking about sex. I think, shall we move on? Can we please move on from sex? Right. I mean, you've left me with some very unpleasant images here.

9:09Poppy Coburn: Yes, please. What do you want to talk about?

9:11Michael Deacon: Let's move back to lightness. Have you heard about the new GCSE that we're about to add to the curriculum? I haven't, actually. It's got a hippie, hippie, friendly one. So I'm one of the people from the generation that had proper new GCSEs. I did subjects like sociology and psychology. all the easy fake ones. But they've got an even more ridiculous GCSE now called Natural History. And apparently what Natural History GCSE will look like is learning about how to plant flowers in your garden.

9:39Poppy Coburn: I don't know, is that ridiculous? I think that sounds nice and wholesome. How are you going to do exams for that?

9:43Michael Deacon: You just go out, potter around an allotment, you know, stick in some peonies and go, right, that's an A star.

9:48Poppy Coburn: I think that sounds quite wholesome. I think that's better than media studies or whatever they're, or gender studies, or whatever the hell they're made to study at school these days. I quite like that.

9:57Michael Deacon: What did you do for your GCSEs?

10:00Poppy Coburn: GCSEs? Oh, they hadn't even been invented in my day. Oh, you're an O-level person. I was going to say, you mentioned this. My son, OK, he's 12 now, but when he was at primary school, when he was about, let's see, about seven, he did an after-school class in sort of gardening, basically. Of course, it's a little bit young for picking up gardening, seven, so I think the most he did was plant a potato. I'm not sure what happened to it. I don't know if it ever actually grew, but I think that was about it. I'm not actually sure if it was a serious lesson or it's just for the benefit of parents who are working late and like, I can't pick up my child now, so please can you just keep them occupied in some pointless way for an extra hour?

10:34Poppy Coburn: And that was what we signed up for. It kind of makes you feel like we're just going back

10:37Michael Deacon: to the old days of having child labour in the fields. We've regressed from having an advanced professional society. We've seen the future of AI coming in and we're now teaching children, here's how you plough a field, here's how you pump potatoes.

10:49Poppy Coburn: We've got a massive youth unemployment problem in this country, so don't rule that out.

10:55Michael Deacon: anyway right um on more things that children apparently can't be exposed to because they're they're very delicate minds you must be able to tell me about this this janet and john story this school book because i i'm clearly too young to have read janet and john apparently it's being banned because it's so offensive to young people's sensitivity

11:12Poppy Coburn: it hasn't been banned i'll tell you i'll tell you about this this is basically there is a museum okay in in the west midlands and they've got a new exhibition which is which is full of lots of old books 50, 100 years ago, whatever. And what they've done is that they have put a trigger warning on the front of, I believe, literally every single book there. And that includes a Janet and John book. Now, Janet and John was around even before my time, would you believe. These are very old children's books, but yeah, they were around, you know, 100 years ago or whatever. And these are children's books for very little children.

11:43Poppy Coburn: So there's nothing remotely offensive in them, in my opinion. Although, I'll tell you what the trigger warning says. This book may contain negative depictions of people or cultures and outdated views. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong now. Rather than remove the book, we want to acknowledge its existence and impact, learn from it and spark conversations to make for a more inclusive future. What a load of rubbish. I mean, shut up.

12:08Michael Deacon: Big words for a child, aren't they?

12:09Poppy Coburn: It's true. These books were not offensive. I mean, you know, I haven't read a lot of Janet and John books, I confess, but I'm not aware that there are any books in the series called Janet and John Racially Abuse a Jamaican nurse. Or Janet and John launch a pogrom. OK? Or Janet and John misgender a transgender sex worker. OK? There's nothing like that in it. It's not offensive. It's just about two little children having fun with their dog or whatever, playing ball. But I just get so tired of this stuff. But, you know, there's been a real trend, isn't there, the last few years for either censoring or rewriting classic children's books from the past that are now considered problematic.

12:43Poppy Coburn: I mean, that happened when the Roald Dahl books were rewritten. The sensitivity reader. They were too offensive. Yeah, terrible rubbish. or Enid Blyton. Now, Enid Blyton is a classic case. I do accept there are certain words in Enid Blyton books that are considered problematic now. A parent today would not want to read this out to their children at bedtime, right? For example, and I quote, a lot of the books are filled with the word gollywog. Okay, a modern parent doesn't want to read out that sort of thing. I understand it. That's fine. But I just feel sometimes that the modernising goes a bit far.

13:13Poppy Coburn: For example, there was recently a film of a classic Enid Blyton series. for children called The Magic Faraway Tree. They made a film of it.

13:22Michael Deacon: So you went to go see in cinemas, didn't you?

13:23Poppy Coburn: I did because, again, I have a 12-year-old son and this is the kind of thing I go to see in the cinema. OK, so now... And they have modernised it. They've set in the present day and they've removed any references to gollywogs if I can get away with saying that again. And I understand that, but I think they took it a little bit far because one of the key characters in The Magic Faraway Tree is this sort of fantastical being called Moonface. Yeah. And the reason he's called Moonface is because he's got a face like the moon.

13:50Michael Deacon: Kind of quite self-explanatory, isn't it?

13:52Poppy Coburn: It's big and round and silvery and shiny. I mean, we all know what the moon looks like. OK. Now, who did they cast to play the guy called Moonface? The answer is they cast an actor who is black. Now, you could have cast any other character in this film with a black actor. That would have been absolutely fine. It would have made perfect sense. But I think the one person who can't be played by a black actor is a guy who's called Moonface because he's got a face by the moon. And yet that is what they chose to do. And on the way to the cinema, I was thinking, oh, my goodness me. I mean, how do they play this?

14:25Poppy Coburn: The lead characters in the film are little children. As any parent knows, little children have a horrible habit of asking really awkward questions. I was thinking, what's going to happen when they meet Moonface for the first time? He's going to say, greetings, children. Welcome to the magic faraway tree. I am known as Moonface. They're going to go, why? Race was not mentioned at any point. But anyway, if you want to know, what the producers did was instead of, I don't know, giving him white makeup, whiting up, if that's a phrase, what they did was they gave him a wig, which was all bright and silvery and in the shape of a crescent moon.

15:01Poppy Coburn: But even then, I was thinking, well, that's not really satisfactory. You called him moon hair, wouldn't you?

15:04Michael Deacon: Well, I see.

15:05Poppy Coburn: Why are the children just going to say moon face, moon hair? So none of it made any sense at all. But anyway, there you have it.

15:10Michael Deacon: I think this might be the last time you're actually allowed to speak on this, because I think you've now explained why sensitivity readers need to exist for podcasters, not just for children. Well, there you are.

15:18Poppy Coburn: Basically, I'll be on trigger warning. Should have come with a trigger warning. But there you are. It's too late now.

15:22Michael Deacon: You're a Steve at Barlap fan.

15:24Poppy Coburn: Who's he again?

15:24Michael Deacon: I didn't think you would be a Steve at Barlap fan. So he's a mega podcaster. I think he's also a bit of a wellness guru. He went viral earlier in the week because he put out a quite extraordinary statement. And I think because we're two journalists, we will find particularly what he said to be quite irritating. So he said he had two glasses of wine one evening. and that was enough to knock him out for three days. Couldn't go to the gym, couldn't podcast, couldn't sleep because he had two glasses of wine.

15:49Poppy Coburn: Two glasses of wine?

15:50Michael Deacon: Just two. Two glass of wine. Normal size glasses of wine. And that ruined him for three days? Yes.

15:54Poppy Coburn: And this guy, just confirm for me, this guy's British.

15:57Michael Deacon: Yes, he is. Yeah, listen to him now. He's going to go talk about it.

16:00Poppy Coburn: I had a year of not drinking, decided to have a drink again. It ruined three days of my life. I had a couple of glasses of wine, didn't get drunk.

16:07Michael Deacon: it ruined three days of my life because of the domino effect it caused so it meant that i got worse sleep that night and then because i got worse sleep that night i ate more poorly the next day because my my dopamine system or whatever the cortisol system was all messed up and then i podcasted worse i didn't go to the gym the day after that that day or the day after because of that because i felt really bad i then slept worse and i could track all of this on my week hashtag

16:31Poppy Coburn: ad hashtag sponsor hashtag investor whatever yeah and i was like oh my god those three glasses of wine had this hidden domino effect that I must have been living with for my whole life. Sorry, I think that was completely pathetic. I mean, no self-respecting British man should ever admit that he's got a hangover for three days with just two glasses of wine. That's breakfast.

16:52Michael Deacon: That's breakfast.

16:54Poppy Coburn: It's pathetic. You know what? You know what? We should strip him of his passport. We did it to Shamima Begum when she ran off to join Islamic State. But actually, you know what? I think this is worse, if anything. This is embarrassing, honestly.

17:05Michael Deacon: and oh my goodness me no yeah i mean it is it is the reaction to this has just been absolutely hysterical because i think basically everyone agrees with you the idea that two glasses of wine are so incredibly distressing to one's nervous system that it completely shuts you down to three days when i've had hangovers that have lasted for three days but i've drunk enough to actually almost end up in a hospital i mean i've really put the work in this is university time by the way everyone i'm clearly a upstanding member of society it's not beer in this mug i I promise it's kombucha. But yeah, it is quite extraordinary to have Stephen Barlett actually admit on his podcast that he's a lightweight.

17:40Poppy Coburn: I think we've got to help this guy and we need to build up his stamina, his endurance. We're going to go on his podcast. We're going to bring a litre of vodka and a funnel. Okay, you're going to hold him down.

17:50Michael Deacon: Chug, chug, chug. You hold him down.

17:52Poppy Coburn: I'm going to shove the funnel in his mouth. Litre down there and strength training.

17:57Michael Deacon: Yeah, and then at the end we hand him a certificate of British citizenship. There you are. Say welcome to the United Kingdom, Stephen. You can have your passport back now.

18:03Poppy Coburn: Now you are British.

18:05Michael Deacon: Speaking of other people who have shamed the country through their bad conduct, maybe not someone who you'd expect to actually have messed up. There's been a quite interesting case where a burglar was told off for a judge, not just because he was a burglar, but because he was a bad burglar.

18:19Poppy Coburn: A bad burglar.

18:19Michael Deacon: Yes, he was a rubbish burglar. So he broke into a£4 million house in Belgravia. Very nice, not too far from the office. But he made one big mistake when breaking in. He had brought his photo ID with him and he left it at the crime scene.

18:32Poppy Coburn: Right, brilliant.

18:33Michael Deacon: I mean, I know the police are rubbish, but even they managed to solve that crime with their brilliant powers of deduction. Oh, hang on, mate, he's just left his passport here. Oh, and it's also got his home address on it. Perfect, right, we can just pick him up on the way back home.

18:45Poppy Coburn: Yeah, it wouldn't make a great episode of Miss Marple, would it?

18:48Michael Deacon: No, it wouldn't.

18:49Poppy Coburn: You know, sort of, well, yes, of course, I can tell you who the murderer is, dear. Well, you see, he's left behind his passport, his driving licence, three recent bank statements, and a recent utility bill.

18:58Michael Deacon: And a right-to-right cheque, perfect. You've got him there fully down. so it's quite a sad story really of people losing their way and this man is 57 years old as Wilderberg so you'd think at this point in life he'd be really good at it he's had lots of practice got the decades in of breaking and entering but apparently not

19:16Poppy Coburn: It's a tragic story I suppose really he's going to have no choice but to actually go and get a job

19:19Michael Deacon: Yeah, on the straight and narrow now he might do better off

19:22Poppy Coburn: Well it's a sad story I suppose then on that note we should probably let our viewers have their weekend back but anyway thanks for joining us for our first episode and we'll see you again next week.

19:58Poppy Coburn: Grainger knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, You're not managing one building. You're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog, HVAC on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering, and 24-7 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done.

20:28Michael Deacon: Hey, Pablo Torre here. As a sports journalist, I've covered global sports for many years now. And there is one thing that I can promise you.

20:36Poppy Coburn: Nothing compares to the World Cup.

20:38Michael Deacon: And this time, it is even better thanks to McDonald's. You have the chance to take home one of nine legendary cups when you order the FIFA World Cup meal. The cups feature some of the biggest legends in football, like David Beckham, Thierry Henry, and Ronaldinho, Christian Pulisic, Lamine Yamal, and Alphonso Davies. Right now, get one of nine legendary cups when you order the FIFA World Cup meal only at McDonald's. At participating McDonald's, only for a limited time, while supplies last. All rights reserved. Copyright 2026. McDonald's at the FIFA World Cup 2026.