Podcasts by Category

Alas Vine & Hitchens

Daily Mail

What's the Big Idea? Finally, Sarah Vine (once memorably described as being ‘like and loathed in equal measure, divisive, but never indecisive’) and Peter Hitchens (a man whose writing a critic was called to compare to a Guardsman’s boot: ‘as highly polished and potentially lethal’) meet once a week to look at the world and mutter, alas… Acclaimed columnist and journalist Sarah Vine and best-selling author and broadcaster Peter Hitchens discuss and dissect social, economic, and pop cultural flotsam and jetsam that have risen out of the dark waters of that week’s news.

Taking one big idea each episode and pulling it apart with élan, imagine Vine and Hitchens respective columns brought to life and then skewered, scoffed at, debated, and given the full weight of Vine and Hitchens impenetrable gaze. Though an accord might not always be reached, it’s the journey that matters.

Whether it’s the tech bros gone rogue – Meta tearing up its own rule book on fact checking, Musk attempting to influence governmental policy, or the knotty subject on society’s ever-increasing reliance on anti-depressants to treat what might just be the modern malaise and not depression at all. Or, evil, nature or nurture? Does evil actually exist or is it an idea that hangs over us, or do we just sometime embody it and the actions themselves are evil, not the individual? All this and more are to be pored over, one towering topic each week discussed with humour, insight, and real understanding.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

137 - Declining Donald Trump and Election Promises

0:00 / 0:00

137 - Declining Donald Trump and Election Promises
On this week’s show, Peter would like to talk about the ever-declining Donald Trump while Sarah (and Peter) will be positing their manifesto ideas that could help propel any of the major parties to power. Probably.

And we’ll be opening our mailbag to ask whether we are seeing the end of people reading actual books. How the pair react to sometimes ‘feral’ criticism. Marvel at the fact that we have a rollerblading Floridian fan in Key West and ask when’s the right time to clean a building. Truly.

On our reading, listening and watch list this week:

A Toccata of Galuppi's – Robert BrowningLost Horizon – James HiltonThe Benedict Option – Rob DreherThe Strange Death Of Liberal England – George DangerfieldThe Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916–1931 - Adam Tooze

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 26 Oct 2026 - 46min
136 - Playing War Games and Paris is Burning
On this week’s show, Peter would like to ask why British troops are playing wargames in support of Ukraine, and escalating the chance of war with Russia, while Sarah wants to know why Paris and huge swathes of France are on fire.

And we’ll be opening our mailbag to discuss the Unionist from Northern Ireland taking issue with something Peter said (who knew?). Why the Lib Dems aren’t half as bad as our presenters painted them. Divorce dos and don’ts. And more stories of a hapless WWII mission.

On our reading, listening and watch list this week:

The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945 – Richard OveryBomber Command – Max HastingsHow Not To Be A Political Wife – Sarah Vine

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 19 Oct 2026 - 37min
135 - Proportional Representation and Apocalypse Now
On this week’s show, Peter would like to talk about proportional representation (he’s not a fan), and as the government launches its ‘Prepare’ campaign, Sarah is busy preparing for the apocalypse.

And we’ll be opening our mailbag to discuss American politicians playing the fake Irish card. Why Peter did not get to fulfil his dream of being the captain of a Royal Naval destroyer. What did the sexual revolution ever do for us? And the pair discuss buildings that are built to move us. All human life is here, etc.

On our reading, listening and watch list this week:

Take A Girl Like You – Kingsley AmisThe Children Of the New Forest - Frederick MarryatThe Drowned World – J.G. BallardOld Filth – Jane GardamWhat Happened to the Corbetts – Nevil ShuteToo Big To Fail – Andrew Ross Sorkin

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 12 Oct 2026 - 38min
134 - Capital Punishment and the Hijab Handout
On this week’s show, Sarah would like to know why the government is handing out hijabs to channel migrants, and Peter would like to talk about capital punishment, especially in the USA.

And we’ll be opening our mailbag to discuss what might happen should we lose the Falklands, the slow erosion that is state surveillance, and even though Peter’s shed a lot of weight, why won’t his old trousers fit him?

On our reading, listening and watch list this week:

East Of Eden – John SteinbeckDispatches: Cameron: Toff At The Top12 Angry Men – Dir: Sidney Lumet

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 05 Oct 2026 - 44min
133 - Russia’s Nuclear Threat and what now for Northern Ireland?
On this week’s show, Sarah will be asking why Russia is reviving its doomsday nuclear strike program and how worried should we be about that? And Peter will be looking at the latest news coming out of Northern Ireland as protestors attempt to stop the Orange Order march.

And we’ll be opening our mailbag to discuss De Gaulle's infamous 1967 ‘Vive le Québec libre!’ speech, the daunting amount of work that goes into death admin, the curse of TikTok addiction and should we really be having raves in St. Paul’s Cathedral? Probably not.

On our reading, listening and watch list this week:

• The War Game – Dir: Peter Watkins
• On The Beach – Nevil Shute
• The Greening Of The White House – Conor O’Clery
• This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair – Hugo Young

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 28 Sep 2026 - 38min
132 - Earl Spencer’s Accusations and Letby Latest
On this week’s show, Sarah will be looking at the latest revelations swirling around Earl Spencer’s book about his late sister, and Peter will be turning his attention back to Lucy Letby in light of the Thirlwall Inquiry.

And we’ll be opening our mailbag to discuss personal political responsibility, there seems to be so little of it left. The great and not so good Grammar schools, asking what did Joseph Conrad ever do for us? And what can one do with the Olympically dim?

On our reading, listening and watch list this week:

·      Heart Of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
·      A Revolution Betrayed: How Egalitarians Wrecked the British Education System – Peter Hitchens
·      No Love For Johnnie – Wilfred Fienburgh

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 21 Sep 2026 - 36min
131 - AI’s Evolution and Has Alastair Campbell Seen The Light?
On this week’s show, Sarah will be asking if AI is really coming for all of us, and she doesn’t just mean our jobs. And Peter would like to know if Alastair Campbell has finally found God. Yes, that took us by surprise too.

And, as pupils nationwide drift back to the classroom, we’ll be opening our mailbag to discuss what is school for? How can the Ukraine war possibly end? The latest news on Peter’s compendium of some of his most notable writing, and if you’re attending a dinner party at Sarah’s or Peter’s then expect schnitzel or fish and chips and champagne. We’ll let you find out which.

On our reading, listening and watch list this week:

·      A Dead Statesman – Rudyard Kipling
·      Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines – Dir: Jonathan Mostow
·      The Abolition of Britain – Peter Hitchens
·      We Must Pace The Frontier - Dario Amodei

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 14 Sep 2026 - 42min
130 - Vive de Gaulle and Russia and Germany’s Hybrid War
On this week’s show, Peter has been to the flicks to see the new de Gaulle movie (five stars from Peter), splashed out on some popcorn too, and Sarah is asking is Germany really going to war with Russia.

And we’ll be opening our mailbag to discuss whether there could ever be such a thing as a united Ireland, the evilest person they’ve encountered, should Prince William get a hair weave and what they both watch or do to rile themselves up.

On our reading, listening and watch list this week:

•A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle - Julian Jackson
•This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair – Hugo Young
•Murder At The Castle (A Miss Merkel Mystery) - David Safier
•Dawn Of The Dead – Dir: George Romero

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 07 Sep 2026 - 38min
129 - Lime Bikes and the Idiot Box
On this week’s show, Sarah will be talking about her U-turn on Lime and electric bikes (Peter is very pleased) and talking of Peter, he’ll be asking is TV a bad thing? He might also need help turning one on.

And we’ll be opening our mailbag to discuss whether the pair believe in a prenup agreement and would either one sign up if they ever got married again. Why was Peter’s 2015 pre-election column pulled and why the pair may be heading to Spain for next year’s much anticipated eclipse.

On our reading, listening and watch list this week:

·      Ludwig – BBC One
·      Ann Droid – BBC One
·      Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – BBC Two
·      Bonanza – ITV
·      The Onedin Line – BBC One

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 31 Aug 2026 - 35min
128 - Harry’s Game and History Repeating
On this week’s show, Sarah will be talking about the dark shadow cast upon this land as Harry and Meghan return to the UK and Peter would like to chat about the August night in 1968 when the Soviet Union crushed the Prague Spring.

And we’ll be opening our mailbag to discuss whether a journalist, if proved wrong, should change tack and apologise. Not that Peter has ever been proved wrong. The pair debate the reintroduction of bison and wolves into the European landscape and the sheer joy that can be found in a night sky full of stars.

On our reading, listening and watch list this week:

·      God. The Science. The Evidence: The Dawn of a Revolution - Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies
·      The August Coup: The Destruction of the Soviet Union and the Making of New Russia 1985-1991-Robert Service
·      The Unbearable Lightness Of Being – Milan Kundera

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 24 Aug 2026 - 41min
127 - Jason Arday and the Rise and Fall of Farage
On this week’s show, Sarah, in light of the Jason Arday case, will be talking about the nature of so-called witch hunts, while Peter will be ruminating on Clacton’s favourite son and bin beating by-election winner, Nigel Farage.

And we’ll be opening our mailbag to discuss regrets (Sarah’s had a few), a damn good childhood read or two, their respective lives as young journalists – there was a lot more drinking going on – and how does Peter manage to be so curmudgeonly and pleasant simultaneously?

On our reading, listening and watch list this week:

·      Advise and Consent – Allen Drury
·      The Eagle of the Ninth – Rosemary Sutcliff
·      The Faraway Tree – Enid Blyton
·      The Wind In The Willows – Kenneth Grahame
·      Mr Benn – Dir: Pat Kirby

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 17 Aug 2026 - 36min
126 - The Plight of Graham Phillips and Cinematic Snafus
On this week’s show, Peter will be asking why the foreign office is still going after Graham Phillips, and Sarah will be grabbing the popcorn and headed to the cheap seats to talk film/book adaptations, some good, some not so good.

And we’ll be opening up our mailbag to discuss Sarah’s best nightie (she favours pyjamas), why MPs should live a full life before entering into politics, the correct us of ‘hopefully’ (let’s hope we get that right) and where to go and what to see when you’re visiting Berlin (according to Peter).

On our reading, listening and watch list this week:
•Drowned World - JG Ballard
•The Last Of The Wine – Mary Renault
•The Kraken Awakes – John Wyndham
•American Gods – Neil Gaiman
•Almansor - Heinrich Heine

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Tue, 11 Aug 2026 - 38min
125 - A Listener Writes…
On this week’s show, Peter and Sarah hand over the floor to our listeners and dedicate the entire episode to responding to emails, WhatsApp notes and Spotify comments that you’ve been kind enough to send.

And what a mailbag it is with stories of duelling in the modern age, should utilities be in public ownership or private hands? Would Peter ever throw in his lot with the Social Democratic Party (unlikely, dear listener)? And cats or dogs? And why does Sarah’s moggy gnaw on her laptop?

On our reading, listening and watch list this week:
·      Bladerunner – Dir: Ridley Scott
·      The Divine Comedy – Dante
·      Royal Flash - George MacDonald Fraser
·      Why I Am Not A Christian – Bertrand Russell

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 03 Aug 2026 - 47min
124 - Disintegrating Donald and is AI Coming for Us All?
On this week’s episode, Peter will be examining the increasing disintegration of one President Donald J Trump while Sarah will be asking if Artificial Intelligence is finally coming for us all.

And the pair pore over our mailbag to chat about looking after your parents in later life, the legacy of former PM Jim Callaghan, asking what did the 1970s ever do for us? And the joys of the Northumbrian coastline.

On our reading, listening and watch list this week:

•  Helena – Evelyn Waugh
•  Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton
•  2001: A Space Odyssey – Dir: Stanley Kubrick
•  Terminator: Dark Fate – Dir: Tim Miller

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East
A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 27 Jul 2026 - 42min
123 - Burnham Begins and the Swinging Seventies
On this week’s episode, Sarah’s looking back at the decade of flared jeans and glitter balls and asking why Andy Burnham wants to take us back to the 1970s. And talking of Burnham, Peter wonders if the new PM should now call a general election?

And the pair pore over our mailbag to chat about the merits of corporal punishment (or lack of) with Peter recalling school days that sometimes featured a thrashing. The interminable rise of the e-bike and politicians that either could do without ever meeting again.

On our reading, listening and watch list this week:

•Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
•Coming Up For Air – George Orwell
•Goodbye, Mr. Chips - James Hilton
•Coriolanus – William Shakespeare
•The Whitsun Weddings – Philip Larkin

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 20 Jul 2026 - 47min
122 - The Fall of Farage and Gin and Toast
On this week’s episode, Sarah talks procrastination, though she has a few other things to do first, and as he’s named the sleaziest politician in the UK, Peter examines the latest Nigel Farage farrago.

And the pair pore over our mailbag to chat about the legacy of one Dennis Potter, why Peter is less than keen on the Singaporean state, on what the locals really call Wittenham Clumps and that most important of questions: is it Vine and Hitchens or Hitchens and Vine?

On our reading, listening and watch list this week:

·      One Party After Another: The Disruptive Life of Nigel Farage - Michael Crick
·      Solving Procrastination: The Science of Why We Put Things Off and How to (Finally!) Stop - Dr. Itamar Shatz
·      Stand Up, Nigel Barton – Dir: Gareth Davies

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 13 Jul 2026 - 32min
121 - Iran Impasse and Living On an Island
On this week’s episode, as the funeral of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei continues, Peter will be looking at the current situation in Iran and then Sarah and Peter will be comparing notes on their Desert Island Discs (Sarah tries unsuccessfully to convince Peter of the charms of Faithless), if the BBC ever come calling…

And the pair pore over our mailbag to chat about dogma in education, Peter’s favourite public debate, the charm of the Boston suburbs and why our politicians are all too human and why we expect too much from them.

On our reading, listening and watch list this week:

Sarah’s Desert Island Choices:

·      Mendelssohn concerto in E minor: Yehudi Menuhin with the Berlin Phil (for my father)
·      Faithless: insomnia
·      Hozier: work song
·      Rolling Stones: Sympathy for the devil
·      Maria Callas: Vissi d’arte
·      Led Zeppelin: Fool in the Rain
·      David Bowie: Moonage Daydream
·      Pink Floyd: The Great Gig in the Sky

·      Book: Dante’s divine comedy, I would spend my time translating it into English
·      Luxury: Contact lenses. Although they might be considered a necessity as I’m so blind. In which case, a hot bath.

Peter’s Desert Island Choices:

·      Bob Dylan: Tomorrow is a Long Time
·      Fairport Convention: Farewell, Farewell
·      Purcell: Nymphs and Shepherds
·      Purcell: Rondeau
·      Gustav Holst: St Paul’s Suite
·      George Butterworth: The Banks of Green Willow
·      Handel: Solomon
·      Beethoven: Seventh Symphony

·      Book: A collection of the Sherlock Holmes Short and Long Stories
·      Luxury: A Fridge

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 06 Jul 2026 - 44min
120 - The Price of Education and Harry’s Game
On this week’s episode, Peter would like to know why Labour are taxing some private schools out of business and Sarah is asking if should we even care that Prince Harry might be coming back to the UK?

And the pair pore over our mailbag to chat about studying double smoking (and drinking cider), how e-bikes have no place even in hilly Lisbon, just how Conservative was Gordon Brown, and what ties Andy Bunrnham and Philip Larkin together.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      The Secondary Mod – Dick Stroud
·      The August Coup: The Destruction of the Soviet Union and the Making of New Russia 1985-1991 – Robert Service
·      The Conservative enemy: A programme of radical reform for the 1960s - C. Anthony R. Crosland

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 29 Jun 2026 - 48min
119 - Keir Curtailed and A Voyage Round My Father
On this week’s episode, Sarah speaks candidly about her father’s recent passing, both muse on the brutality of modern politics as Kier Starmer steps down and Peter wonders why some nations crave war.

And the pair pore over our mailbag prompting Peter’s remarkable impression of an announcer on the Moscow Metro. They both offer up the funniest politicians they’ve encountered and revisit Peter’s anti-Cameron documentary, Toff At The Top.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      Two Women – Dir: Vittorio De Sica
·      Salvador – Dir: Oliver Stone
·      Dispatches: Cameron - Toff at the Top

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 22 Jun 2026 - 41min
118 - Banned Books and Past-It Politicians
On this week’s episode, Sarah’s asking is eighty too old to be a world leader or any kind of politician and Peter would like to know why the Thought Police are coming after Janet and John.

And the pair pore over our mailbag to consider why Peter is s a Swissphile, to wonder what the Victorians ever did for us, how the Mamas and Papas were a musical apex for some and why is one of our presenters practically meat and drink for the Popbitch website.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      Chocky – John Wyndham
·      Janet and John – Various
·      Places Where They Sing – Simon Raven

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 15 Jun 2026 - 29min
117 - An Iron Dome for the UK and Allaying the Blame
On this week’s episode, Peter has finally worked out how to defend the realm (so you might sleep safely in your beds), and Sarah is asking why do some authority figures often go after the wrong people, and leave the real criminals alone?

And the pair pore over our mailbag to consider Britain’s place in two world wars, the valuer of spoiling a ballot paper. What happened when Peter appeared the panel of Have I Got News For You (clue: it changed political history)? How he might go about robbing a bank (unsuccessfully). And to decimalise or not? And what that may or may not have meant to the Roman army.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      What Happened to the Corbetts – Nevil Shute
·      The Phoney Victory: The World War II Illusion – Peter Hitchens
·      The Guns Of August – Barbara W. Tuchman
·      The Life of Brian – Dir: Terry Jones

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 10 Jun 2026 - 35min
116 - Abolish the Police and Return of the Blair Creature
On this week’s episode, Sarah is asking what happened in the brutal murder of student Henry Nowak and Peter would like to know why the Blair Creature has returned from the deep to haunt the Labour Party.

And the pair pore over our mailbag to consider what the Festival of Britain brought the UK and if we might ever see it’s like again. While Peter embraces the charms of Paris, Sarah less so. They also ask what use libertarianism? But are united in their love of Spain and its wonderful cities.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      Scarman Report – Lord Scarman
·      The Abolition of Liberty – Peter Hitchens
·      Robert Peel: A Biography – Douglas Hurd
·      Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity) - Pope Leo XIV
·      Tales from the Alhambra – Washington Irvine

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 03 Jun 2026 - 44min
115 - Crime And (No) Punishment and Phew! What a Scorcher!
On this week’s episode, Sarah is asking why a judge thought it was a good idea to let three rapists walk free. And Peter would like to know what the deal is with ridiculous centigrade temperatures.

And the pair marvel over Peter’s rakish black eye and pore over our latest mailbag to answer listener questions on whether devolution really can work and is the blueprint for politics on a national scale. The merits of the free bus pass, compulsory voting works for Australia, so why not us? And, perhaps more importantly, why parenting used to be akin to NATO and that was a good thing.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      A Clockwork Orange – Dir: Stanley Kubrick
·      Book Of Common Prayer
·      Unconventional Wisdom – Peter Hitchens

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 27 May 2026 - 45min
114 - Prawn Again, Bombs and Displaced People
On this week’s episode, two worlds collide as Sarah asks why prawn cocktail and such old school culinary delights as beef bourguignon and banana splits are back on the dinner menu. And Peter will be asking if our policy of bombing foreign countries is driving up mass immigration to the UK.

And the pair pore over our latest mailbag to answer listener questions on whether Kemi Badenoch is really a true-blue conservative or more in the mould of someone like libertarian Javier Milei? The merits of the latest cinematic take on the life of Charles De Gaulle, the shortcomings of the Criminal Cases Review Commission and, finally, what did the 60s ever do for us?

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      The Leopard - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
·      I’m Still Here – Dir: Walter Salles
·      De Gaulle: Tilting Iron - Dir: Antonin Baudry

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 20 May 2026 - 33min
113 - Voting for Beginners and the End of the PM
On this week’s episode, Peter will be telling us why first past the post is a much more preferable voting model to proportional representation. And sticking with the electorate, Sarah will be asking if there should be a general election if Keir Starmer finally falls on his sword.

And the pair pore over our latest mailbag to answer listener questions on the ‘sovereign’ bases in Cyprus, go back and forth on the latest report on the October 7th attacks. Why has the city of Coventry gone to wrack and ruin since Peter left and do either enjoy the cut and thrust of social media? Peter, you may be surprised to find, is all for it.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      In The Wet – Nevil Shute
·      Lost Coventry – David McGrory
·      10/7: 100 Human Stories – Lee Yaron

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 13 May 2026 - 40min
112 - 2000 Days of Lucy Letby and the Badenoch Bounce
On this week’s episode, Peter would like to know why Lucy Letby has been in prison for 2,000 days while there is still little to no evidence against her. And Sarah – struggling valiantly with bronchitis - will be telling you why she was right about Kemi Badenoch all along.

And the pair pore over our latest mailbag to ask whatever happened to civilised political debate and can it possibly ever return? Peter doesn’t hold back on his thoughts on Tom Holland’ s Dominion, we hear from a honeymooning listener who’s been traversing Japan by train while listening to Alas… And King Charles II gets a mention, no surprises there.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      Short Breaks in Mordor: Dawns and Departures of a Scribbler's Life – Peter Hitchens
·      Blue Ambition: The Unauthorised Biography of Kemi Badenoch - Lord Ashcroft
·      Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind - Tom Holland

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 06 May 2026 - 32min
111 - The Recurring Assassin and Falkland Sovereignty
On this week’s episode, Peter would like to talk about the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands, and the time his dad moved a gun across the island, while Sarah wants to talk about yet another attempt on Trump’s life and why security for MPs is so lax in the UK.

And the pair pore over our latest mailbag to ask has the Starmer Project corrupted Labour? The latest update on Peter’s long-awaited book about the car (don’t hold your breath), what do the pair really think of psychology? And a teacher writes from Spain to tell us how the changing of the clocks is dumbing down her pupils.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      The Wizard Of The Kremlin – Giuliano da Empoli
·      Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good – James Davies
·      The Truth About the Drug Companies: How they deceive us and what to do about it - Marcia Angell

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 29 Apr 2026 - 42min
110 - Risible Renters’ Act and Disguised Privilege
On this week’s episode, as Sarah is ousted from her rental home, she’s asking why Labour’s so-called revolutionary renters’ act is such a damp squib and, staying with the left, Peter wants to know why this government hates independent schools so much.

And the pair pore over our latest mailbag to reflect once again on the madness of King Donald and his presidential predecessor, ponder whether the Germans could have ever really won the last world war. The best and worst nationalities to try and befriend, and Sarah and Peter give their guide to Italy’s lesser-known gems.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      The Uses of Literacy – Richard Hoggart
·      The Wages of Destruction – Adam Tooze
·      The Second World War – James Holland
·      The Winds of War – Herman Wouk
·      War and Remembrance - Herman Wouk

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 22 Apr 2026 - 40min
109 - The Madness of King Donald
On this week’s episode, Sarah would like to know why the social agencies and government infrastructure let down the victims of the Southport attack so badly and Peter would simply like to ask: has Donald Trump finally gone mad?

And the pair pore over our latest mailbag to talk about Peter’s time as a member of the International Socialists, not least the donkey jacket he wore. Why cabs are comparable with Concorde when it comes to cost. How cocaine might hold up the Colombian economy. And, finally, the pair mull over their favourite historical monarchs.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      The Caine Mutiny – Herman Wouk
·      Henry’s Demons: Living with Schizophrenia, A Father and Son’s Story – Patrick Cockburn
·      The Daughter of Time – Josephine Tey

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 15 Apr 2026 - 48min
108 - Driverless Cars and Unused Trains
On this week’s episode, Sarah’s wondering if it really is a good idea to introduce driverless cars to London’s streets, and sticking with transport, Peter would like to know why a new 40-mile train line, and brand spanking new station, are yet to see one single passenger train.

And the pair pore over our latest mailbag to talk about Crispin Blunt’s assertion
that he should have been acquitted over his use of controlled substances as charges for drugs should not exist at all. The best Adam Curtis' documentaries to watch and which four people from history that Peter would like to sit in total silence with.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      Trauma Zone - Dir: Adam Curtis
·      Station: A journey through 20th and 21st century railway architecture and design – Christopher Beanland
·      Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car—And How it Will Reshape Our World - Lawrence D. Burns & Christopher Shulgan
Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 08 Apr 2026 - 31min
107 - The King’s State Visit and Visibility Day
On this week’s episode, Peter will be asking why the King and Queen have decided to go visit Donald Trump at the White House after his series of insults aimed at our country. And Sarah is asking do we really need a visibility day? And why are there so many of them?

And the pair pore over our latest mailbag to talk about the role of Christianity and why this modern version might be waning. The allure of ghost stories, the less appealing driverless cars, and the state of modern Italian TV. Bellissimo!

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      Ghost Stories of an Antiquary – M.R. James
·      The Great God Pan – Arthur Machen
·      Gomorrah - Dir: Matteo Garrone
·      The Wizard of The Kremlin - Giuliano da Empoli

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 01 Apr 2026 - 38min
106 - Burning Down of the BBC and Illegal Assassins
On this week’s episode, Peter would like to know why we suddenly think it’s okay to assassinate people again and Sarah is asking why would anyone want to clasp the poisoned chalice that is DG of the BBC?

And the pair pore over our latest mailbag to talk about the unblinking horror of war, the justice system and Lucy Letby and dead guests at dinner parties (don’t hold your breath waiting on an invitation from Peter, no-one’s getting in his house).

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      A Variety of Lives: Biography of Sir Hugh Greene - Michael Tracey
·      Rogue Male - Geoffrey Household
·      Black Lamb and Grey Falcon - Rebecca West
·      Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans After the Second World War – R.M. Douglas
·      A Woman In Berlin – Marta Hillers
Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 25 Mar 2026 - 35min
105 - British Bombs and Student Bodies
On this week’s episode, Peter’s getting behind Ed Davey’s call for an independent British nuclear bomb. And Sarah wants to know why some university students don’t want to share accommodation with their Jewish counterparts.

And the pair pore over our latest mailbag to talk foreign plug sockets – electricity may or may not be green in communist countries, it’s not an exact science – the scourge of sourdough and the demise of the classic loaf, acts of faith and Peter’s quickfire quiz!

On our reading and watch list this week:

·               The Divine Comedy – Dante Alighieri
·               Zoolander – Dir: Ben Stiller
·               The Power Game: How Washington Works – Hedrik Smith
·               The Epistle of James

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 18 Mar 2026 - 54min
104 - Labour’s Thought Police and the Case for Capital Punishment
On this week’s episode, Sarah wonders if Labour’s plans to change the definition of Islamophobia is actually a threat to free speech? And, in light of Ian Huntley’s death, Peter would like to ask whether the death penalty might be better than unofficial execution by another criminal?

And the pair pore over our mailbag to mull over the case for paying MPs more (there’s no accord there), who’s to blame for The Irish Potato Famine? Who would call a military operation 'Epic fury'? And we return to the perennial subject of Peter’s borrowed leather biker jacket.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·               Beyond Evil - Inside the Twisted Mind of Ian Huntley – Nathan Yates
·               Motorcycle Jackets: A Century of Leather Design – Rin Tanaka
·               Escape From New York – Dir: John Carpenter

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 11 Mar 2026 - 38min
103 - Terror in Tehran: The End of an Era
On this week’s episode, Sarah, and Peter clash over what the future of Iran should be after the extraordinary aerial assault by the US and Israel has plunged the territory in to war.

And, on a much lighter note, the pair discuss tribal loyalties in contemporary politics, what do we think of our Australian countries and in motorcycle news (we have some!), why the cost of a motorbike might be boosting the popularity of the e-bike and why Peter should invest in a Honda Valkyrie when he reaches eighty and gets back on a bike.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      A Hymn to Life: The Secret War with Iran: The 30-year Covert Struggle for Control of a Rogue State Paperback – Ronen Bergman
·      Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House - Michael Wolff
·      Easy Rider – Dir: Dennis Hopper

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 04 Mar 2026 - 37min
102 - Gisele Pelicot and Performative Policing
On this week’s episode, Sarah is asking if the horrendous case of Gisele Pelicot is more than just an isolated incident and Peter wants to know why our boys in blue have settled on performative policing.

Plus, why has it taken Sarah over a year to realise she’s been wearing her contact lenses in the wrong eyes? The parlous state of children’s fiction in the modern age and why Peter will be getting a motorbike (and leather biker jacket) as soon as he reaches eighty.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·               A Hymn to Life: Shame Has To Change Sides - Gisele Pelicot
·               Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
·               The Bonfire Of The Vanities – Tom Wolfe
·               Never Trust Dragons – Sheila K. McCullagh

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 25 Feb 2026 - 34min
101 - End E-Bikes and Anti-Vaxxers
On this week’s episode, Peter will be asking when new legislation to curb the plague of e-bikes on our streets will finally come into effect. And Sarah wants to know why parents are opting NOT to vaccinate their children against measles.

Plus, how being bullied in school can change you for ever. Football and flag flying, something neither of our presenters can really get behind. The right to bear arms in the UK, or maybe not. And the joys of driving a steam train, sadly, this is not yet Peter’s story.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·               Heathers – Dir: Michael Lehmann
·               The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
·               A Brief History Of Crime - Peter Hitchens
·               Clueless – Dir: Amy Heckerling

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 18 Feb 2026 - 44min
100 - The UK’s Risible Reading Age and Bloody Books
On this week’s episode, Sarah is asking is the English literature curriculum really being dumbed down or are we simply not reading as a country anymore or simply shifting our allegiance to audiobooks? And Peter, as if to prove otherwise, will be bandying a copy of Lord of the Flies around and poring over the latest BBC adaptation.

Plus, why was Stephen Fry stalking Peter at a memorial for his late brother? Why we should eat even if the Queen has done with her meal, royal protocol be damned! Why neither wants a coat of arms, divorce etiquette and why the Suez Crisis reminds Peter of his father getting on his bike.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·               The Phantom Tollbooth – Norton Juster
·               Lord Of The Flies – William Golding
·               A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
·               The Box Of Delights - John Masefield
·               Our Man in Havana – Graham Greene
·               Heart Of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 11 Feb 2026 - 42min
99 - Ducking KGB Bullets and Inside the Epstein Files
On this week’s episode Peter will be going back 35 years to a moment in time where he stood and watched the KGB murdering people in Vilnius. And I’ll be asking why did Sarah Ferguson take her children to see Jeffrey Epstein just days after he was released from prison?

Plus, we find out the truth about magnetised train tracks (all lies!), why both 1976 and 1979 are vying for the best of all possible years for two of our listeners, the rise of the extreme right wing and the night the Queen wore rhinestone.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·               Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
·               Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
·               Hamlet – William Shakespeare
·               Short Breaks In Mordor – Peter Hitchens

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 04 Feb 2026 - 59min
98 - Pitiful Policing and Ballroom Beckham
On this week’s episode, Sarah is asking what can Brooklyn Beckham possibly mean when he accuses his mother of dancing ‘on him’ at his wedding? Both Sarah and Peter have a few wedding horror stories of their own to share too. Also, Peter wants to know if proposed mega police forces will just mean more constabulary cockups? His guess is yes.

Plus, what do the pair make of the new ‘super’ Chinese Embassy in London? Was Peter really in a secret MI5 file? Annoying train announcements and remembering Tony Benn.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·               A Small Town In Germany – John Le Carre
·               Tony Benn: A Biography - Jad Adams
·               The House of Beckham: Money, Sex and Power - Tom Bower

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Alex Graham
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 28 Jan 2026 - 32min
97 - Team America and Ten Years After
On this week’s episode, Peter and Sarah are asking what were you doing ten years and why is social media suddenly transfixed by 2016? And why has America decided to turn into the world’s bully?

Plus, why is Australia’s economy at such a low ebb? What the hell’s happened to civility? Why does Sarah’s fridge keep shouting at her? And when it comes to transporting coal, what’s better, the canal barge or railway track? You can guess which side Peter landed on…

On our reading and watch list this week:

·               North By Northwest – Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
·               Going South: Why Britain will have a Third World Economy by 2014 – L. Elliott & D. Atkinson
·               Brothel In Pimlico – Roy Brooks

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Alex Graham
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 21 Jan 2026 - 39min
96 - Kissing Cousins and an Iranian Uprising
On this week’s episode, Peter and Sarah Welcome are asking why is Sir Kier Starmer choosing not to condemn marriage between first cousins in some cultures? And what it might take for the Iranian people to be heard as civil unrest and revolution spread throughout the country?

Plus, why America is ruining the English language, the idea that Russia is a military world power is complete piffle, Trump’s Golden Fleet, Heated Rivalry (no, really) and the food that neither Peter or Sarah will eat.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·               Rules For Radicals – Saul Alinsky
·               The White Cliffs - Alice Duer Miller
·               Dictionary Of Modern American Usage – Bryan A. Garner

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Alex Graham
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 14 Jan 2026 - 41min
95 - Why Are We Firing Up the UK’s War Machine?
On this week’s episode, Peter and Sarah look to the year ahead, as Peter wonders why this nation’s leaders and heads of the armed forces are rattling their sabres as they attempt to put the country on a war footing.

Plus, our duo on Conservatism (just what is it?) Christianity, the legacy of John Smith MP, the superiority of Japanese trains - any trains in comparison to our dilapidated ted rail network, and Custard Creams; all the colours of the rainbow.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·               The Phoney Victory – Peter Hitchens
·               Winnie -The-Pooh – A. A. Milne
·               John Smith: Life and Soul of the Party - Gordon Brown & James Naughtie
·               Tokyo Express - Seicho Matsumoto

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 07 Jan 2026 - 38min
94 - An American Powerplay and the Freedom of the Press
On this week’s episode, Peter is poring over the latest US national security strategy and being rather surprised by what he finds there. While Sarah is looking at why some people are calling for a resumption of the cancelled Lord Leveson Inquiry and therefore suggesting we blinker the free press.

Plus, our duo on the Arkansas Razorbacks (again), the legacy of Roy Jenkins, what happened to independent newspapers in Kazakhstan and what it feels like to move your family across the Atlantic Ocean.

On our reading and watch list this week:
·      Dangerous estate: The anatomy of newspapers – Francis Williams
·      Roy Jenkins: A Well-Rounded Life - John Campbell
·      The Godfather-in-law: the Real Documentation – Rakhat Aliyev

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 17 Dec 2025 - 38min
93 - Tony Blair Trotskyist and Stop Stupid Smartphones
On this week’s episode, Peter wonders if it ever matters that Kier Starmer and Tony Blair were once Trotskyists? As well as addressing some recent, stinging criticism from a fellow Mail columnist… And Sarah ruminates on the Australian government’s ban on social media for children, and asks is it enough, or should we just wrestle the smartphones from their hands completely?

Plus, our duo on the best custard creams money can buy, where they’d settle if they were still young and free and what exactly is left of the BBC’s monopoly.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      French Connection II – Dir: John Frankenheimer
·      The Well-Dressed Revolutionary: The Odyssey of Michel Pablo – Hall Greenland
·      The Cameron Delusion – Peter Hitchens

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 10 Dec 2025 - 38min
92 - Loss of Hair, Life and Liberty
On this week’s episode, Sarah Vine addresses her thinning pate and loss of hair that has plagued her most of her adult life and why she’s now finally decided to cast her wig aside! Meanwhile, Peter looks at the incredible story of Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe, the woman held hostage by the same Iranian forces who took his friend prisoner too.

Plus, Peter and Sarah ruminate on dual nationalities, Sarah’s Spotify wrap thinking she’s aged 75, if identity politics has damaged progress for the working class and, remarkably, the listener who suggest that Peter puts him in mind of Tom Cruise’s character in Top Gun. Well, he is a maverick in some ways.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      Top Gun – Dir: Tony Scott
·      Top Gun: Maverick – Dir: Joseph Kosinski
·      Breaking the Silence on Women's Hair Loss: A Proactive Guide to Finding Help – Candace Hoffman
·      Prisoner 951 – Dir: Philippa Lowthorpe

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Fri, 05 Dec 2025 - 31min
91 - An Audience with Vine & Hitchens at St Peter’s College, Oxford
On this week’s episode, Sarah and Peter travel to St Peter's College, Oxford, where Peter ruminates on an increasingly unlikely peace deal in Ukraine, and Sarah begins by asking why Christmas starts earlier each year before regaling the student audience with tales of Christmas past more woeful that Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

Plus, Peter and Sarah take on all comers, and each other, with questions from the floor including the evolution of women’s role in the workplace (which goes off like a cheap firework), what they both really think of President Donald Trump and Peter’s Moscow goose (it’s not a cocktail).

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      In The Wet – Nevil Shute
·      When Women Lead – Julia Boorstin
·      Moscow Christmas: A Diary. December 1966 – Peter Pears, Benjamin Britten
·      Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 03 Dec 2025 - 52min
90 - Puberty Blockers, Save Our Juries and Tea with the DG
On this week’s episode, Sarah and Peter are asking why new trials for puberty blocking drugs in children have been announced after a government decided to ban it last year? And they’d really like to know why David Lammy would like to take our juries away from certain cases after once tweeting that the jury was the one of the pillars of our judicial system.

Plus, which countries did Covid well? Why did the former BBC DG go around Sarah’s house once to ask about the future of the corporation and then totally ignore her advice? And would either consider turning vegetarian? You can probably guess the answer to that one.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      12 Angry Men – Dir: Sidney Lumet
·      Rumpole Of The Bailey – John Mortimer
·      The Abolition Of Liberty – Peter Hitchens
·      A Man For All Seasons – Fred Zinnemann

Please do get in touch, email: Alas@dailymail.co.uk you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 26 Nov 2025 - 39min
89 - Piggy, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the late Leon Trotsky
On this week’s episode, Peter, once described as ‘godless Trotskyist’ by The Guardian, will be ruminating on the legacy of one Leon Trotsky while Sarah will be asking if it’s ever okay to call someone piggy, no matter if you are the leader of the free world or a so-called alternative comedian with a national newspaper column.

Plus, debating Ann Coulter, Welsh authors you must read and why Peter’s literary avatar is Mr Badger while Sarah leans more towards Alice drifting through Wonderland.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      The Man Who Loved Dogs - Leonardo Padura
·      Bronshtein in the Bronx - Robert Littell
·      The Revolution Betrayed – Leon Trotsky
·      The Great God Pan – Arthur Machen
·      The Devil Rides Out – Dennis Wheatley
·      Mr Burton – Dir: Marc Evans

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 19 Nov 2025 - 39min
88 - Cancel Culture and Something Rotten at the BBC
On this week’s episode, Peter and Sarah ask why crazed ideologies seem to have taken root at the heart of both the BBC and the publishing world as we examine the corporation’s latest missteps and the scandalous case of author Kate Clanchy’s cancellation.

Plus, being berated on social media over shots of your bookshelf, trying to take the train to Glasgow on a Sunday (a schoolgirl error) and why novels need more vivid descriptions of food and drink.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me – Kate Clanchy
·      The War Game – Dir: Peter Watkins
·      Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime 1919-1924 – Richard Pipes
·      The Death Of Faith – Donna Leon

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 12 Nov 2025 - 49min
87 - (Prince) Andrew, Useless Architects and Awful Airport Security
On this week’s episode, Peter wants to know if the government really going to strip Andrew of his Falkland campaign medals and, in the light of this week’s attack, Sarah will be asking what kind of security do our transport systems need to make us feel safe?

Plus, don’t get them started on parking permit portals, underwired bras, and the awfulness of some architects, but do ask them what historical biographies you should read.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      Elysium – Dir: Neill Blomkamp
·      The Deluge – Adam Tooze
·      All The King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren
·      Young Stalin - Simon Sebag Montefiore
·      Scum Of The Earth - Arthur Koestle

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 05 Nov 2025 - 42min
86 - The Hopeless Home Office and A Cosmic Car Crash
On this week’s episode, Peter will be asking why Britain’s infrastructure is so very awful and why are we concreting over so much over the countryside and then sticking ugly new buildings all over it. While Sarah is dumbfounded by the fact that the Home Office costs £23billion and spends it time blundering from one debacle to another.

Plus, Sarah reveals what ministers really fight over. And the pair really can’t find any common ground when it comes to Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      Pink Floyd – The Wall (Dir: Alan Parker)
·      Peter Hitchens - The Rage Against God
·      Christian Wolmar - On the Wrong Line: How Ideology and Incompetence Wrecked Britain's Railways
·      Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Micah Clarke

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 29 Oct 2025 - 40min
85 - The Covid Legacy and Now Is Not The Time
On this week’s episode, Peter is rejoicing in the news that the clocks revert to true time on Sunday, whatever that might mean, and Sarah is asking why the hell we closed down schools during the Covid 19 pandemic and what long-term damage it’s done to our kids.

Plus, why does Sarah think politics in its current form is beyond saving, and why her dad had many, many accents. While Peter wonders if we’re seeing the monarchy’s endgame.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      P.G. Wodehouse – Big Money
·      Peter Hitchens – Now Is Not The Time
·      Edmund Burke – The Evils Of Revolution

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Philip Wilding
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 22 Oct 2025 - 42min
84 - The End of Prince Andrew and What Did Thatcher Ever Do for Us?
On this week’s episode, on what would have been Margaret Thatcher’s hundredth birthday, Peter and Sarah tussle over the former PM’s legacy, charisma and what she did or did not do for this country. Elsewhere, Sarah asks why should King Charles solve the problem that is Prince Andrew when the King’s brother should admit he’s a liability and retire from the public eye?

Plus, where do our hosts like to holiday (Peter is not a beach bum for those who were curious)? What was Peter doing with the paparazzi staring at Princess Di? And why we should think long and hard about the repeal of the Corn Laws.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      Donna Leon – Death at La Fenice
·      Don’t Look Now – Director: Nicolas Roeg
·      Robert Browning – A Toccata of Galuppi’s
·      Not for Turning, and Everything She Wants - Charles Moore

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 15 Oct 2025 - 45min
83 - Singing Bob Dylan on a Steep Hill and Health & Safety Gone Mad
On this week’s episode, Peter and Sarah ask why parks shit down at the first sign of inclement weather? Why do under twenty-five-year-olds feel the need to rail against something, but not bother to read up on it first (we’ve all been there)? Elsewhere, Peter recalls chasing a bicycle thief while hitting him about the head with a bag of dirty laundry. Not to be outdone, Sarah admits to punching her brother in the face with her car keys, which should teach them both something about bringing up politics at a restaurant table.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      Anshel Pfeffer - Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu
·      E.H. Gombrich - A Little History of the World
·      Roy Strong – The Story Of Britain
·      Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall - Our Island Story: A History of Britain for Boys and Girls from the Romans to Queen Victoria

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 08 Oct 2025 - 38min
82 - Digital IDs, Dinosaurs and Class A Drugs
On this week’s episode, Peter and Sarah debate the idea of Digital ID cards, wonder at the minutiae we’re obsessed with as a nation, also, what did Sarah make of Michael Gove’s admission of his drug taking past? And sticking with history, where would our intrepid pair travel to if they could go anywhere in time and what one artifact or memento would they bring back with them?

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      The Lost World – Arthur Conan Doyle
·      Sneakers – Director: Phil Alden Robinson
·      Time Of Hope – C.P. Snow
·      The Cameron Delusion – Peter Hitchens

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Alex Graham
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 01 Oct 2025 - 43min
81 - The Cost of Health Tourism and Why Do We Kill?
On this week’s episode, Peter and Sarah tussle with medical tourism and bloody murder. Peter wants to know what drives an assassin to kill and Sarah is asking why we’re allowing our already overrun NHS to become a destination for so called health tourists.

Elsewhere, modern Methodism, being heckled by Danny Kruger while he was still a staunch Tory and is it the Union Jack or Union Flag or can it be both? Tune in to find out.

On our reading, watch and listening list this week:

·      Night Falls On The City – Sarah Gainham
·      The Rage Against God – Peter Hitchens
·      Critical: Why the NHS is being betrayed and how we can fight for it – Dr Julia Grace Patterson

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 24 Sep 2025 - 36min
80 - Our Submarine Fleet is Sunk and what to call Camilla
On this week’s episode, Peter, and Sarah struggle to think of Camilla as Queen but for quite different reasons, though Sarah did very much enjoy her cosy supper at Clarence House, not least the excellent wallpaper and furnishings.

While both bemoan the sinking state of Britain’s submarine fleet, and Peter recalls the time it was leaked that we once leased our missiles from the US much to the fury of then PM Margaret Thatcher.

Elsewhere, yet another listener has been dreaming of Peter, Peter and traffic lights, and we finally find out what car he drives, please do stay tuned for that.

On our reading, watch and listening list this week:

·      The Horse and His Boy – C.S. Lewis
·      Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good – James Davies
·      No Room for Mistakes: British and Allied Submarine Warfare, 1939-1940 – Geirr Haarr

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 17 Sep 2025 - 38min
79 - Fly the Flag, Sea Fences, and I Dream of Peter
On this week’s episode, Peter and Sarah discuss vexillology, or flags for the layman. Not least how Peter was once saved by flying a rather tattered Union Jack while attempting to flee Somalia.

While Sarah pores over our copious emails to mull over the suggestion from a listener that we take illegal migrants and put them in the army or at least to work.

Elsewhere, someone’s been dreaming lucid dreams about Peter and our hosts bemoan the state of our ever-failing education system.

On our reading, watch and listening list this week:

·      Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags – Tim Marshall
·      Jabberwocky – Lewis Carroll
·      Education in Britain: 1944 to the Present, 2nd Edition – Ken Jones

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 10 Sep 2025 - 44min
78 - Nadine Dorries says Boris and Nigel should work together, if their egos allow
In this exclusive episode, Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens managed to grab lady of the moment Nadine Dorries, fresh from her unveiling at Reform’s conference.They tackle the state of the right, where it all went wrong for the Conservatives, whether the union to end all unions if one the cards, and yes… whether singing on stage is an acceptable face of a serious party.

It’s a hum-dinger - you won’t want to miss it.

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Guest: Nadine Dorries
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sat, 06 Sep 2025 - 48min
77 - Digital IDs, Daddy Issues and Dude, What’s My Car?
On this week’s episode, should we be worried about Keir Starmer’s digital IDs when, according to Sarah, we’re a slave to the digital idiom as it is. Not that Peter quite sees it like that.

Nor do the pair see eye to eye on the raising of children and what staying at home means for the parents or baby. Voices were raised, thoughts were shared, it would be untrue to say compromises were met.

Elsewhere, Peter doesn’t know what car he drives, its size he’s fairly sure of and that it can get him to the occasional funerals of his friends. Sarah told him to check the badge on the bonnet, which went well.

On our reading, watch and listening list this week:

·      Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster – Helen Andrews
·      The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life – Arthur Firstenberg
·      Girl, 20 – Kingsley Amis
·      Flashman at the Charge - George MacDonald Fraser
·      Night Watch: A Discworld Novel – Terry Pratchett
·      Down with Skool! A Guide to School Life for Tiny Pupils and their Parents – Geoffrey Willans

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 03 Sep 2025 - 52min
76 - Headscarves, Hijabs and Underperforming Politicians
On this week’s episode, Sarah wonders if Kier Starmer’s perceived weakness in leadership might have kicked open the door for Nigel Farage to come through? And Peter would like to ask; the hijab, a sign of oppression, or something that as a society should make us think more?

Elsewhere, did any government in living memory impress Peter? Don’t count on it. Why did Christopher Hitchens once storm out of The Great Lives recording studio and who did our hosts choose to revere when it came to their turn in The Great Lives chair? Plus, is there really a better biscuit then the classic Custard Cream?

On our reading, watch and listening list this week:

·      The Roads To Freedom - Dir: James Cellan Jones
·      Crooked Cross – Sally Carson
·      Tales Of The City – Armistead Maupin (Radio 4)
·      The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – Douglas Adams (Radio 4)

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 27 Aug 2025 - 39min
75 - Porous Pension Pots and Please Appease Me
On this week’s episode, Sarah wonders if it’s worth putting into your pension pot anymore as new government policies promise to make your golden years anything but. While Peter would like to ask why does nobody likes appeasement until it suits them? Not that Sarah can help with that, she’s one of life’s great appeasers.

Elsewhere, all things considered, Peter would rather be a rich Edwardian, Sarah misses Swansea and one of our presenters gives a spirited rendition of the rallying cry of fans of the Arkansas Razorbacks. It’s quite something.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      A Pocket Full Of Rye - Agatha Christie
·      The Lie - Agatha Christie (Drama on 4)
·      The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L Sayers
·      The Sign Of The Four – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
·      Tales Of The Unexpected - Now TV

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 20 Aug 2025 - 41min
74 - The Not So Great War and Does Counselling Really Work?
Peter would like to know why Britain slept walk in to the First World War and what our country might look like if we’d never stumbled into that national tragedy.

Elsewhere, Sarah and Peter pore over our bag of electronic mail and ruminate on everything from the benefits of counselling (Sarah is for it, Peter less so), how to write a novel – not that either have – the power of Billy Wilder’s The Apartment and how Peter never actually ran with a motorcycle gang and why he’ll never wear a leather jacket again. The world couldn’t bear the fall out.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      Germany's Aims in the First World War – Fritz Fischer
·      The Guns Of August - Barbara W. Tuchman
·      Covenant With Death – John Harris
·      The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age - Juliet Nicolson
·      Bodyline – TV Series
·      Army Of Shadows – Dir: Jean-Pierre Melville

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 13 Aug 2025 - 1h 00min
73 - The Case For and Against Lucy Letby and Rise of the Robots
In light of the recent documentary, Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt? Peter reiterates his call for a retrial of the convicted nurse.

Elsewhere, Sarah asks if students are so worried about AI spoiling their chances of building a career, then why are they all using ChatGPT to write their exam papers?

Also, Peter’s written a thriller, well, the first chapter at least. We can reveal very little of the plotline apart from the fact that someone dies by fax machine just after exiting a toilet. This is all true.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      12 Angry Men – Dir: Sidney Lumet
·      Unmasking Lucy Letby: The Untold Story of the Killer Nurse - Jonathan Coffey and Judith Moritz
·      The Rose of Tibet – Lionel Davidson
·      Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 06 Aug 2025 - 55min
72 - Nanny State and Made to Measure
Peter is up in arms – who knew? – over Sarah’s use of centimetres over inches even though she was raised on the continent and it’s all she knows. A measure of distance which, he insists, are simply made up. For her part, Sarah tells us that if you’re going to employ a nanny, make sure it’s not an English one.

Elsewhere, Sarah, admits she enjoys going to church, if only because it’s the one place where no one can hear her sing and the discovery that Peter can be found online portrayed as a housemaid and a lemming. He is neither.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      Micah Clarke - Arthur Conan Doyle
·      About The Size Of It: The Common Sense Approach To Measuring Things – Warwick Cairns
·      The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World – Ken Alder
·      Don't listen to the whingers: London needs immigrants – Andrew Neather

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 30 Jul 2025 - 38min
71 - Up In Smoke and I Predict A Riot
Peter is inflamed! Why, he wants to know, searching around him in vain for an ashtray, does smoking seem to be on the rise once more in the UK? Is it vaping? Is it fashionable once more, heaven forfend? He sincerely hopes not. For her part, Sarah doesn’t smoke, well, only after three glasses of wine.

Elsewhere, Sarah asks is rioting on the rise once again? And asks are we now too far gone as a country where we can’t expect anything but civil unrest? Though it’s not all doom and gloom, we have poetry, plump up your cushions and settle back as Peter and Sarah take turns to soothe the savage soul with hand selected verse.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening – Robert Frost
·      Under Milk Wood – Dylan Thomas
·      The Raven – Edgar Allan Poe
·      The Dragon Book of Verse - Various

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 23 Jul 2025 - 33min
70 - City to City and Walk A Mile In Our Shoes
Peter has a five-year plan for the five pairs of identical shoes he owns, buy in bulk, rotate diligently, but another set in five years times. Sarah, for her part, can’t walk past a shoe shop with a sale sign in the window, it’s like catnip to her.

Elsewhere, Peter has had enough of cities changing their names – and not just because it keeps making his maps out of date – and Sarah muses on a song some people consider a national treasure which she could happily never hear again. And don’t get Peter started on the Beatles…

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      The Lifelong Scruff – Peter Hitchens
·      A Small Town In Germany - John Le Carre
·      Return Via Dunkirk – Gun Buster
·      Great Expectations – Dir: David Lean
·      Dunkirk – Dir: Leslie Norman

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 16 Jul 2025 - 40min
69 - Terrorism, Extremism and Rubbish Rock Stars
The love of cinema, Peter’s sonorous baritone, Sarah’s hatred of hot weather, the case for changing the way we adopt in the UK and does Peter ever go to watch Millwall and throw lager about? He does not. And those are just the topics and questions posed by listeners.

Peter and Sarah also ask why we now embrace organisations that were once proscribed as terrorists? And in light of Coldplay being the most boring band on earth (scientific fact), why can’t we make decent rock stars anymore.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      The Greening of the White House – Conor O’Clery
·      Never Look Away – Dir: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
·      The Cruel Sea – Dir: Charles Frend
·      Bicycle Thieves – Dir: Vittorio De Sica
·      Ida – Dir: Paweł Pawlikowski

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 09 Jul 2025 - 40min
68 - Going Off the Rails and Too Hot to Handle
From Lord of the Rings lesser liked characters to the ‘deep state’ of government according to Dominic Cummings, and drinking beer beneath the Northern Lights, Peter and Sarah take on listener questions before wrestling with the thorny subjects of the pain and pleasure of train travel – it depends very much on where you board and depart your train and helps if that’s not in the UK.

While Sarah’s been hiding indoors as the continental sunshine has bene visited on the UK, and she would very much like to complain about this latest heatwave and at some length too. Shade your eyes…

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      Corridors Of Power – C.P. Snow
·      Ernst Marples: The Shadow Behind Beeching – David Brandon & Martin Upham
·      British Rail – Christian Wolmar
·      Night Mail – WH Auden

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Alex Graham
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 02 Jul 2025 - 33min
67 - Abortion Bills and Nuclear Bombs
Sarah and Peter wrangle everything from the latest abortion legislation to how to purge the world of nuclear weapons (Sarah suggests we move them to the Moon – pity the poor astronauts who next land there), Star Trek and what the Federation really alluded to. Did Hollywood treat Napoleon fairly or meddle with history for its own ends? And, more happily, we cast Peter as Badger in Toad of Toad Hall with remarkable results. Stay tuned for that.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      Take A Girl Like You – Kingsley Amis
·      The Abolition of Britain – Peter Hitchens
·      Racing The Enemy - Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
·      Farm Hall – Katherine Moar
·      The New Men – C.P. Snow
·      Star Trek (original series)

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 25 Jun 2025 - 39min
66 - Marshmallow Totalitarianism and the Beauty of the Real Iran
Flared trousers, the fate of Northern Ireland, free speech, swimming with Gordon Brown and childish children’s books. All human life, as they say, is here. Sarah wants to know why we’re afraid of difficult conversations and saying what we really think, is it that we’re always being shouted down by those who don’t agree with us? What ever happened to civilised debate?

Not that our debates are ever civilised.

While Peter reminisces about his time in Iran some decades ago and how it’s not the country torn from recent headlines with a huge number of its people who actually want to live in a peaceful, secular society, not the regime enforced on them under mullah rule.

On our reading and watch list this week:

·      The Apartment – Director: Billy Wilder
·      The Wind In the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
·      The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
·      The Water Babies – Charles Kingsley
·      Black Beauty – Anna Sewell
·      Iran: A Nation of Nose Jobs, Not Nuclear War – Peter Hitchens

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Alex Graham
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 18 Jun 2025 - 42min
65 - How Not To Be A Political Wife
As Sarah’s book sends shockwaves through former political grandees and the corridors of power, Sarah and Peter sit down to ponder listener questions (and some of Peter’s thoughts too) related to ‘How Not To Be A Political Wife’, a book that has been described as ‘fascinating, embarrassing and fundamentally tragic’, ‘witty, wry and incredibly touching’ and an ‘unflinching account of life at the heart of politics.’

Expect questions and answers on falling in and out of love with Michael Gove, is there such a thing as a happy political marriage and would Sarah ever bite the bullet and go into politics herself?

On our reading and watch list this week:

· How Not To Be A Political Wife – Sarah Vine

Please do get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 11 Jun 2025 - 35min
64 - With Friends Like These… and is Poland the new Ukraine?
To paraphrase Randy Newman, you’ve got a friend in me, but for just how long? Especially when you’re Sarah Vine and you’re supposed best friend’s husband is on the side of staying in the European Union while your then husband is all for pushing Brexit through. As Sarah discovered, loyalties are soon divided and what ultimately makes a true friend anyway?

While Peter Hitchens looks askance at the continent and wonders, as Poland lurches to the right with its latest elections results, if the European Union can leave its meddlesome ways behind it and let democracy work for once.

On our reading and watch list this week:
True Grit – Charles Portis·
The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley·
Orderly and Humane – R.M. Douglas·
The Confession – Director: Costa-Gavras·
Berlin Rules – Paul Lever

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 04 Jun 2025 - 33min
63 - The Mental Malaise of Marijuana
As rampage killings are on the rise both here and abroad, we ask if the long-term effects of drugs are impacting on our societal norms and encouraging a violent recklessness not seen before? As charges for cannabis possession are fast becoming a thing of the past and modern culture embraces increasingly strong strands of weed, is there a case to be made for really doubling down on those who break drug laws or as cannabis legalisation creeps across the globe, we ask, is it already too late?

On our reading and watch list this week:
* Attacker Smoked Cannabis: Suicide and psychopathic violence in the UK and Ireland – Ross Grainger
* The War We Never Fought – Peter Hitchens
* Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence – Alex Berenson

To get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Take our show survey at:
https://ex-plorsurvey.com/survey/selfserve/550/g517/250305?list=9

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 28 May 2025 - 37min
62 - The Menopause Superpower and some Sibling Rivalry
Books, plays and films have been written about it, its onset feared in some quarters, pilloried in others, and it will, eventually, affect almost all women. Though that’s not why Sarah Vine wants to talk about the menopause, but why, in some circumstances, it can be a huge liberation for women; finally freed from being slave to one’s hormones, and that’s just the beginning. So, why, do so many women fear the onset of the menopause?

Plus, Peter Hitchens, is told several times a week (online, never in the street or to his face), how much cleverer his older brother Christopher was, and that Peter should have died in his stead. This used to annoy Peter, understandably, but now he finds these brickbats amusing and interesting, and is left wondering, sibling rivalry, what is it all about?

On our reading and watch list this week:
·      Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
·      A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
·      The Menopause Brain: The New Science Empowering Women to Navigate Midlife with Knowledge and Confidence – Dr Lisa Mosconi

To get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Take our show survey at:
https://ex-plorsurvey.com/survey/selfserve/550/g517/250305?list=9

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 21 May 2025 - 33min
61 - The Death Penalty and What I Did (or didn't do) On My Holidays
To Peter Hitchens, the idea of capital punishment (at least at home here in the UK) could make for a country that is less vengeful and, he goes so far as to suggest, even more gentle. Having experienced two executions while working in the US, he knows the power of that final switch and the deterrent it might bring. But is he right, would the shadow cast by capital punishment be enough quell violent crime and those who commit it?

Plus, on a much lighter though no less graphic note, we look at holidays and Sarah’s memories of her dad driving the family home from Rome to West Wales, steering with only his knees, a cigar in one hand, a beer in the other, and music blaring to the point where it made both children travel sick. Childhood holidays, it’s not all sandcastles and ice cream.

On our reading and watch list this week:
·      Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
·      12 Angry Men
·      The Kraken Wakes – John Wyndham

To get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Take our show survey at:
https://ex-plorsurvey.com/survey/selfserve/550/g517/250305?list=9

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 14 May 2025 - 33min
60 - The End of Education and Did We Really Win the War?
Sarah’s two children are currently at university, which is rather handy as a regular listener has asked that Peter and Sarah chime in on the current state of the education system here in the UK. And how times have changed, Peter spent his university years trying to kickstart social unrest, while Sarah pursued a job at The Body Shop.

And as the Union Jacks flutter in the hazy afterglow of VE Day, Peter rand Sarah reflects respectively on their father and grandfather’s service, one at sea in Scapa Flow transporting weapons to Russia, the other fighting in the jungles of Burma.

On our reading and watch list this week:
·      The History Man – Malcolm Bradbury
·      Quartered Safe Out Here - George MacDonald Fraser
·      The Phoney Victory – Peter Hitchens

To get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Take our show survey at:
https://ex-plorsurvey.com/survey/selfserve/550/g517/250305?list=9

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 07 May 2025 - 40min
59 - Applying Udder Cream and the End of Civilisation
Sarah’s brother was at home in Madrid this week when Spain underwent a blackout, alone in the dark with the only the thing in his house still working, his old radio. This week too saw the start of the great switch-off of analogue phones; and just look at the chaos caused by a cyber-attack at Marks and Spencer in the last few days. So, Sarah’s question is this, as we fall under the thrall of ever updating technology, are we going unwittingly back to the dark ages?

Meanwhile, Peter is as reluctant as the average vampire to be seen in the sun, so why, every summer, does he turn the colour of an expensive riding saddle? Tune in for a remarkable, death-defying story of being stranded in Mogadishu and having to flee across the desert to escape. And sunburn.

On our reading and watch list this week:
·      The Stand – Stephen King
·      Black Hawk Down
·      Leave The World Behind – Rumaan Alam

To get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Take our show survey at:
https://ex-plorsurvey.com/survey/selfserve/550/g517/250305?list=9

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 30 Apr 2025 - 25min
58 - Turn off your TV and Bloody Taxes
Not unlike the Rolling Stones, Peter Hitchens is ready to toss his TV through the nearest window. He’s in accord with the late, great Groucho Marx who was once moved to remark: "I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book." Once forced to rent a TV to watch the news before being quickly lured towards shows like Minder, Peter is now wary of the television, to the point he blames it for a lot of the world’s woes. Tune in for that.

And as the customer friendly ad for the Inland revenue insisted, tax doesn’t have to be taxing. Try telling that to Sarah and her circle of friends who have tried and failed to reach the HMRC to query a bill or simply get help. The revenue sent bailiffs to the door of one friend, while another chum had to draw down part of their pension to meet a tax demand. So, here’s the question, why are the inland revenue so awful and insistent on treating people like criminals?

On our reading and watching list this week:

·      The Wonder Years
·      Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business – Neil Postman
·      The Great Tax Robbery: How Britain Became A Tax Haven For Fat Cats And Big Business – Richard Brooks

To get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Take our show survey at:
https://ex-plorsurvey.com/survey/selfserve/550/g517/250305?list=9

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 23 Apr 2025 - 31min
57 - Birmingham’s Bulging Bins and the end of the Toby Carvery Tree
Sarah Vine wants to bin it off. Though given the decline in public services nationwide, that’s getting harder and harder to do. As the Birmingham bin strike rolls on, the council declares itself bankrupt and rats invade the city’s streets, we ask what the hell is going on with our public services and is this just part of a wider societal malaise? Also, could someone please take this rubbish away?

They were once the so-called lungs of the earth, but as a centuries-old oak tree with “more ecological value than the Sycamore Gap tree” is hacked down by owners of a nearby Toby Carvery, Peter Hitchens asks why we’re chopping down our majestic, sometimes ancient trees and why is it so damn easy to destroy something so beautiful and filled with life?

Also, how do say crikey, exactly?

On our reading list this week:
·      The Fifth Estate: Britain's Unions in the Seventies – Robert Taylor
·      The Magic Faraway Tree – Enid Blyton
·      Tiger Tim’s Annual 1937

To get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Take our show survey at:
https://ex-plorsurvey.com/survey/selfserve/550/g517/250305?list=9

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 16 Apr 2025 - 29min
56 - Drinking Swamp Broth and why our Police Forces are Failing Us
Peter Hitchens hates to be blunt about these things, well, not really, but he’d really like to know why the police are so useless. And not in one specific instance or area, but generally. No coppers on the beat, rarely answering emergency calls and heaven forfend they actually bang someone up. What happened to policing in the UK?

While Sarah has spent her week at a wellness centre (don’t call it a fat farm), and while she has returned glowing like a rare gem, she did manage to put some weight on. But did a week of wheatgrass colonics, waddling about and living on liquids take her to some higher spiritual ground? Possibly…

On our reading list this week:
·      The Abolition of Liberty – Peter Hitchens
·      Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety - George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson
·      The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma Paperback – M.D. Bessel van der Kolk

To get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Take our show survey at:
https://ex-plorsurvey.com/survey/selfserve/550/g517/250305?list=9

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 09 Apr 2025 - 39min
55 - Keep Your Enemies Close and Cross My Palm With Silver
Peter Hitchens puts forward his defence of ‘Whataboutery and asks why does the west delight in attacking its current enemies like Putin for things it allows its friends like Tayip Erdogan to do with impunity? What is it with all this posturing hypocrisy?

While Sarah makes the case for the ancient art of astrology and wonders if we’re looking at star signs for answers as conventional faith is failing us daily. Or, as she puts it, what makes your sky fairy more important than my sky fairy? She may have a point.

On our reading list this week:
·      The Water Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby - Charles Kingsley
·      The Roads to Freedom – Jean-Paul Sartre
·      The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – C.S. Lewis

To get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 02 Apr 2025 - 39min
54 - Power Corrupted PMs and Peter Hitchens almost meets Prince Charles
All human life is here.

Dogma, closed minds, modern slavery, net zero and why Peter will never enter the House of Lords - though he will take tea there – and why you’ll never find letters after his name.

Sarah asks why Labour are pushing for a new deal with China at the risk of human rights violation and why did Margaret Thatcher think you could drive the 5 plus miles from Downing Street to Dulwich – turns out, outriders on motorbikes help.

And both wonder when did the honours system become such an ‘inverted pyramid of piffle’? Word for word.

On our reading list this week:
·      HMS Ulysses – Alistair MacLean
·      The Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher: From Grocer’s Daughter to Iron Lady – John Campbell
·      The People’s Trilogy - Frank Dikötter

To get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Take our show survey at:
https://ex-plorsurvey.com/survey/selfserve/550/g517/250305?list=9

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 26 Mar 2025 - 36min
53 - Does My Bomb Look Big in This?
To paraphrase Edwin Starr; work, what is it good for, absolutely nothing… At least according to Gen Z.

Reports suggest that a whole generation might be ready to give up work, which, coincidentally, is how Peter felt every day as a younger man when he was mucking out pigs on the farm, while Sarah’s eighteen-hour days in Hobbs only finally relented when she found herself talking to a drunken sub editor in a pub who was baffled by his new mac at work, just as Sarah had learnt how to use one…

Elsewhere, we take to the seas as Peter asks why our submariners are spending over 200 days underwater at a time and why do we cling to the notion that we need a cold war superweapon like the atomic bomb and what really happens when you try to launch a Trident missile at sea? Nothing good, apparently.

And what tests do you have to pass if, God forbid, you have to stand in for the PM one day?

On our reading list this week:

·      Simple Subs Book – Leslie Sellers
·      The Silent Deep: The Royal Navy Submarine Service Since 1945 – James Jinks & Peter Hennessy
·      The Hunt For Red October - Tom Clancy

To get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 19 Mar 2025 - 35min
52 - Covid Tomatoes, Diplomatic Camels, and Our Kind of Despot
Lockdown saw Peter Hitchens riding through Hyde Park in a Polish gas mask hissing the word ‘virus’ at strangers.

Sarah Vine spent hers in Waitrose checking produce until an outraged fellow shopper saw her return over ripe veg to the shelves and accuse her of spreading ‘covid tomatoes!’. Whatever they are.

Both struggled with lockdown – especially as Sarah was sharing a home with Michael Gove, who was very much behind his Party’s policy to close things down – but, five years later, what did they make of the seismic period when Britain turned out the lights?

Also, Peter asks why the hell can’t the west stay out of other country’s business, unless those despots or dictators can make life easier for us? It’s enough to make cynics of us all.

On our reading list this week:
·      Lockdown Secrets – Eleanor Tattersfield
·      Catch Your Breath – Ed Patrick
·      The Great War For Civilisation – Robert Fisk

To get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 12 Mar 2025 - 34min
51 - Drugs, Depression, Diet, and a Dutch Utopia?
Peter Hitchens is so anti-drugs, and so engaged with his moral compass he won't even consider taking the fictional recreationals, while Sarah Vine has been on antidepressants for over a decade and swears by her 'fat jab’.

This, while Peter dreams of a Dutch like utopia where cars are rarely seen and children are safe to walk to school.

Shall the twain ever meet? Occasionally.

Join them for a conversation that begins by asking is society, sleepwalking into a delirium of self-medication and can end just about anywhere...

On our reading list this week:

The Road To Wigan Pier – George Orwell
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good - James Davies

To get in touch, email: alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 05 Mar 2025 - 36min
50 - Trump, the Rise of Europe’s Far Right and what now for NATO?
When viewed from above the North Pole, the Earth rotates from left to right and now some of its inhabitants appear to be headed the same way. From Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy through Geert Wilders’ far-right Freedom Party in the Netherlands to Germany’s AfD party and the ever-encroaching Chega (Enough) party in Portugal, the boots on the ground appear to be facing one way, so are we looking at a new world order that’s suddenly leaning towards the right?

Plus, is war finally over for Ukraine? What is NATO really for? What is the true meaning of power and how do we grab it? And did we finally answer all the questions Sarah Vine’s mum asked of us?

On our reading list this week:

·      Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands – Richard Sakwa
·      How the West Brought War to Ukraine: Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe – Benjamin Abelow
·      A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle – Julian Jackson

To get in touch, email: alas@dailymail.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on Whatsapp – on 07796 657512, start your message with the word ‘alas’.

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Philip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 26 Feb 2025 - 33min
49 - Introducing... Alas Vine & Hitchens
What's the Big Idea?

Finally, Sarah Vine (once memorably described as being ‘like and loathed in equal measure, divisive, but never indecisive’) and Peter Hitchens (a man whose writing a critic was called to compare to a Guardsman’s boot: ‘as highly polished and potentially lethal’) meet once a week to look at the world and mutter, alas…

Acclaimed columnist and journalist Sarah Vine and best-selling author and broadcaster Peter Hitchens discuss and dissect social, economic, and pop cultural flotsam and jetsam that have risen out of the dark waters of that week’s news.

Taking one big idea each episode and pulling it apart with élan, imagine Vine and Hitchens respective columns brought to life and then skewered, scoffed at, debated, and given the full weight of Vine and Hitchens impenetrable gaze. Though an accord might not always be reached, it’s the journey that matters.

Whether it’s the tech bros gone rogue – Meta tearing up its own rule book on fact checking, Musk attempting to influence governmental policy, or the knotty subject on society’s ever-increasing reliance on anti-depressants to treat what might just be the modern malaise and not depression at all. Or, evil, nature or nurture? Does evil actually exist or is it an idea that hangs over us, or do we just sometime embody it and the actions themselves are evil, not the individual?

All this and more are to be pored over, one towering topic each week discussed with humour, insight, and real understanding.

To get in touch email alas@dailymail.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
To get in touch email alas@mailonline.co.uk, you can leave a comment on Spotify or even send us a voice note on WhatsApp - on 07796 657512 start your message with the word 'alas'

Presenters: Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens
Producer: Phillip Wilding
Editor: Chelsey Moore
Production Manager: Vittoria Cecchini
Executive Producer: Jamie East

A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Tue, 18 Feb 2025 - 1min

Show More Episodes

Podcasts by Category

Alas Vine & Hitchens

Podcasts similar to Alas Vine & Hitchens