Jonathan Meades c/d?

yeah i doubt that he's Tory in any meaningful sense

not that i think it would dent my admiration if he were

I feel the same tbh

we're all allowed up to three conservative voters we like unreservedly

I always got the impression that he was right-libertarian leaning?

I thought he would be more that way inclined. I could imagine him criticising austerity for it's negative effects on culture/buildings/arts, but not much gaf about actual people!

That Football Pools Towns episode from Off Kilter is hilarious, sad + brilliant and it gets quite angry with Thatcherism. Loads of shit food and bad public housing sadness and ace football grounds. Brilliant. Also probably not exactly Nostradamus level when he predicts Gove and BJ would stab Dave in the back, but still very otm in the context of '09.

"Animal lactates are poisonous, unless they are transformed into cheese" and the one about Scottish chip shops offering a better euthanasia service than Switzerland!

All buildings should be made out of granite, it even makes blocks of sandstone look like cheap Spanish air-bricks.

I have been re-watching the awesome Magnetic North tonight, would love a Euro trip to some of the locations and sample the architecture, beers and foods.

also "Germany without potatoes is as unimaginable as a repetitively re-offending suicide bomber" !

I couldn't get very far with the Encylopaedia of Myself. Far too solipsistic (which I know is the point, but...).

Search: Magnetic North, The Absentee Landlord. I love the show he did on Brussels most of all.

Tried watching his show on France but turned it off after his rant on the self-hatred (yes, France, that most self-hating of countries) that lead to a former French Algerian independence fighter who blew up a cafe getting a place in French academia in women's studies, "ironically, since most of the people in the cafe had been women".

I know blowing up a building with people inside is a somewhat graver sin than being a bit dim on gender but it still felt too Daily Mail Comments for me to stick with it.

New Meades anthology! https://unbound.com/books/pedro-ricky-come-again/

Jonathan Meades on Jargon definitely going out 27th May 10.30 BBC4 after slight delay due to 'sensitive' content - being rude about the political class - clashing with pre-local election broadcasting rules. pic.twitter.com/2cwBehjcaW

— Francis Hanly (@FrancisHanly) May 18, 2018

hurrah!

wondering if this is going to be like francis wheen's mumbo jumbo book

can't question JM's Goal setting, achievement orientation, and intrinsic motivation here.

stoked for the madness

xxp

slight difference in thst Meades is clever

yeah but pomposity - meades’ cookery book p self-satisfied.

shit recipes as well! I'll start boiling bones and Parmesan rinds as an alternative to eating bark ftr!

but still love him.

This is so dated and banal. It could have been made twenty years ago.

forgot it was on, shit is it really that bad?

It’s on iPlayer.

I love Meades but this is pretty much a hodgepodge of Dad opinions (footballers have stupid hair, modern art is rubbish, things were better when people on tv enunciated properly, etc) that makes no real attempt to engage with the 21st century.

idk, plenty of people seem to have liked it so maybe I am a grouch but it was enormously disappointing.

business jargon is bad is also like a 90s bad comedian level type of thing

I've enjoyed bits of this tbh, but when he said Duchamp was a bad joke then, that get's worse with the re-telling - that's tired old great great granddad opinions ffs!

It's easy to show a load of wank modern-art to back up a shit opinion.

Dressing himself up as a Benny, too.

The further he gets from architecture, the more he becomes a "rugged individualist" has often been a feature of his work. But not in a good way at all on this one - in places.

The idea he seemed most interested in is the one he outlined in the Radio Times - that RP is a tool of self-improvement and homogenisation is a positive thing - which has echoes of his challop about how good it was for Algerian children under occupation to be rote taught obscure facts about the amount of rainfall in different parts of France with a view to making them more French and therefore more likely to succeed, etc. That could have made a provocative hour of television but the material obviously didn’t stretch that far.

His mid 20th century modern art challops might have been intended to wind up certain types of pseud arseholes, but that doesn't stop it being really played out and wrong willful philistinism.

when I say mid 20th c, I sort of meant they probably would have passed as mainstream opinions back then.

In music terms what he did would be like trash-talking John Cage and then showing footage of britpop arseholes to back up his prejudices.

was looking forward to iplayering this, maybe I'll pass :(

I bet he could be very witty + funny on footballing dimwits with tribal tattoos, but he wasn't in this and also perhaps it is a bit of a shooting fish exercise for a heavyweight like him.

which has echoes of his challop about how good it was for Algerian children under occupation to be rote taught obscure facts about the amount of rainfall in different parts of France with a view to making them more French and therefore more likely to succeed, etc.

I couldn't get through his show on France. He diagnoses it as suffering from self-hatred (FRANCE, of all countries!) and talks about a dude who started off as a terrorist and ended up a professor in women's studies "ironically, since most of the victims of the bomb he planted were women". There aren't enough eyerolls in the world.

If you're hunting something architectural to watch from lockdown, an anonymous hero uploaded almost every Jonathan Meades documentary here: https://t.co/SqtJxAfMQ6 - I wrote about Meades during my MA, so I might share some choice transcribed quotes and screenshots below pic.twitter.com/Vxi6gs7jgR

— MatthewLloydRoberts (@MatthewLloydR) March 31, 2020

Somebody linked it on another thread. Great stuff.

Scratching a similar Nairn-Meades itch but happening right now, there's this fellow, Dan Cummings, a similar mix of knowing, irritating, funny and interesting: http://www.youtube.com/user/CummingsYourWay/videos

He and his mate appear to be making these films and lobbing them on youtube. I hadn't come across him before this morning but it looks like he's been doing this a while.

Content warning: Black Country.

That's not a warning that's a recommendation

Quite so. But mostly I was trying to get your attention NV. The Hull episode's pretty good also.

three quick observations:

a) shame on you for making me want to go down to the pier when i can't
b) i think he's very knowingly riffing on Meades especially
c) these look brilliant!

pub montage at the end of the Hull ep is particularly cruel

good shout Tim, never seen a Youtube address so many of my interests in one go :D

Sorry. Agree (to what extent he’s knowingly Nairning it up also, I couldn’t say, could be both, couldn’t be Nairn only I think). Glad you’re enjoying them.

he obv doesn't like Wessies or at least he seems to have a preference for the more picturesque parts of Yorkshire. Mind you I think Nairn was driven to despair in Hudds and probably had an extra ten pints at dinnertime to fortify himself against the ugliness of such a heathen shithole, until Halifax cheered him up!

i am going on such a crawl if there's anywhere left after lockdown ends

no apologies necessary, these lads are a real find

The new Jonathan Meades book is out today from @unbounders. An incredible 900+ pages of his collected essays. I haven't even got past the dedication and I'm already laughing. #pedroandrickycomesagain #jonathanmeades pic.twitter.com/SH7uSD2FG1

— Alex Boyd (@AlexBoyd) March 8, 2021

Nice interview of a book I'd like to get hold of.

https://thequietus.com/articles/29856-jonathan-meades-pedro-and-ricky-come-again-owen-hatherley-interview

Meades v much the right-winger it's ok to like amongst leftist types, eh?

Pretty funny to see Unbound retweet enthusiastic reviews of this book that are all "this man warned us about the woke!"