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Hello, it's Wednesday the 28th of June. I'm Miranda Sawyer and I'm holding my nerve as the deadlines approach. Welcome back to Paper Cuts, the modern newspaper review, where we go toe to toe with the headlines, grapple with the daily's weirdest moments and occasionally give an arms aloft cheer when the papers do something great. It does happen. And we have a lovely Nissener review from America.

Great way to start the morning. Wish we had a podcast like this talking up or down. US Papers says brave girl 01 who's my kind of woman. We're out mid morning every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So subscribe on your favourite podcast app and you'll never miss an episode.

Now, here are the headlines for today's show. Matt, sorry for Hancocking it up. Ex-Health Secretary apologises for Covid strategy. Grope for me. Tory wannabe London Mayor candidate still standing despite sexual assault accusations and pingers for winners.

Businessman proposes an enhanced Olympics where athletes can take any drugs they want. Welcome to Paper Cuts. We read the papers so you don't have to. Thanks for joining us on Papercuts, the show that might have smoked once but never inhaled. I'm Miranda Sawyer and here to take a heavy toke on the doobie of news.

It's TV and radio presenter and host of the Smart 7 podcast, Jamie East. Hello Jamie. And we're really happy to have our friend and colleague, John Elledge back with us after a painful few days. We've missed him and we're very glad he's here. Hello, John.

Thank you, guys. I'm very glad to be here, too.

All right. So what have we got on the headlines front Jamie I'm going to you first.

Okay in the Guardian story about the government plans to hit net 0 have been pretty catastrophic they've not done a single thing government adviser condemns UK for failed leadership over net 0. In the mail we have 7 days of NHS chaos as senior doctors walk out. Only those over a hundred grand though. And also with the mail another breast groping story from Sarah Vine saying how she had her breasts groped at number 10 by Harry Enfield. And in the star, pack your wags.

Expert warns that 99% of dogs need a holiday to improve their mental health.

Oh, there's a nice picture as well, isn't there?

It's got a little little viszla. That's a viszla wearing heart sunglasses, sipping a pina colada.

Oh, quite right. John, what do you have?

I'm going to be honest, mine are a bit less cheery. They're about Matt Hancock at the Covid inquiry. So we've got from the Metro, we've got body bags are higher priority than virus. The Express has gone with I want to be brutally honest with the public, which is a take. And the star being the star has dressed him as a clown and gone with Coco.

It was a real circus.

Amazing. Okay, so let's have a look at a couple of the stories. So we had Sarah Vine there talking about groping. This has come out of another story. It's on page 6 and 7 of the Mail.

It started at the beginning of this week. In the Mail it says, crisis grows for number 10 grope claim Tory. This crisis is because Daisy Goodwin, who's a formidable TV producer, I have met her.

She's brilliant.

She's amazing. And she has written 2 articles in the Times and the Mail about her encounter 10 years ago with this bloke called Daniel Korski. He has got to the final 3 in the contest to become the Tory candidate to become London Mayor in May next year. So when she met him, he was a spad 10 years ago. He invited her to Downing Street, said we want to talk about a potential TV show, and grabbed her breast while she was there.

She said, which is amazing, are you actually touching my breast? Which he went like that. But she didn't write about it at the time. She's writing about it now. So, John, I'm going to go to you.

Who is this man, Daniel Korski?

This is a very good question. He's someone I feel like I'm almost offended that we have to know who this man is. He's I mean, he's on the short list of Tory candidates for London mayor. It's a measure of how well the Tories are doing in London that they're all Could that people from the will every every election campaign in London their candidates get worse somehow We're now several levels below that goldsmith He was once upon a time. I think in the David Cameron years.

He was deputy head of the Downing Street policy unit He's also had an amazing career in

2015.

He was going around asking politicians not to regulate Uber while fervently denying that he was lobbying on behalf of Uber. A couple of years after that, he started this company called Public.io. This is an incredible story in which he would help a selection of tech startups win government contracts in exchange for the small matter of 3% of their equity. Anyway, he is apparently 1 of the Tories' 3 best candidates to be Mayor of London.

Unbelievable. I mean, it's unbelievable. So he's, I mean, what's actually interesting about this story is that despite all this, he's been doing quite well within the Tory party. Nobody's kind of pulled him up on it. But Daisy Goodwin has pulled him up on the way that he treated her when she met him.

He's denied it, I have to say, completely. And what's interesting about it now is that she's actually finally put in a formal complaint to the number 10 cabinet office, so they have to take it seriously. Before, she kind of did that thing that women often do, which is, okay, it was a bit dodgy, I'll brush past it, we'll just get on with life. But now it's becoming more serious.

Yeah, I mean, as I understand it, there is a bit of a sort of a row going on over whose responsibility it is to answer these allegations. With both the government and the Tory parties that are saying it's the other lot's responsibility.

That what they don't want is him to answer for it because he was on, you were telling us before we started recording John, that he was on talk TV.

Oh yeah, this is an amazing quote. Talk TV asked him if he'd always been faithful to his wife, and his reply was, look, I have a fantastic marriage to my wife, and I'm really excited that we've built a fantastic family together. I don't think it would be appropriate to talk about anything else.

Which is kind of 100% appropriate.

Yeah, well, very true. I mean, it's a strange twist about it. I mean, I do think the story will run. Yeah.

But will he?

Yeah, well, exactly. The main story is because he's completely denying it. I think that perhaps if he had said, look, I did do it, It was appalling. I'm different now. I thought we were kind of, maybe this was a bit of a date and I was really clumsy.

I mean, maybe we could forgive him, but if he just says.

It's difficult to say it was a bit of a date in Downing Street.

Exactly. In the form

of a

meeting. What a crap date. Yeah, terrible, absolutely appalling. And also he was in his mid-30s at the time, which I thought he must have been in his early 20s. But anyway, in a strange twist today, Sarah Vine has now described a party, I wonder if What she's trying to say is left-wing people do this too.

So she describes a party in 2010 at Downing Street where basically Harry Enfield says to her, do you mind if I have a go and jiggles her boobs?

Yeah, I think there's a bit of solidarity for Daisy as well. It's kind of like, you know, this is this isn't a unique event that's happened. Blokes tend to touch breasts or they used to in inappropriate ways. And yeah, I think it is a bit of like it's not just not just the tour, as you know, famous lefty Lily Allen's godfather Harry Enfield did the same. But I think slightly not sinister is the wrong word, but slightly less sexually, I guess is the...

Yeah, I think that...

He was doing it in a kind of like his comedy character, not that it's excusable in any way, because he touched her breasts against her will, but kind of like did it in a kind of like, look at them bloody things, you know, which is which is equally as horrible.

It's just differently horrible. The main thing that I find, you know, speaking as a woman, he was speaking as a father, Daniel Korski, wasn't he? But it's the idea that breasts are simultaneously kind of sexy and funny, which we've always had in Britain and we don't seem to be able to get rid of. That this thing that is literally just part of a woman's body is something slightly to be mocked. Yeah.

And 1 of the line that really lands with me in Sarah Vine, Sarah Vine is not my favorite columnist, but what she says is that she basically has to laugh it off. And she says it did rather take the wind out of my sails. Yeah. What she's saying is that she felt humiliated, which is exactly what Daisy Goodwin was saying. She felt humiliated.

It is humiliating. So this is an unusual story. It was in the Times today and it was in the Telegraph yesterday. Essentially a man called Aaron de Souza wants to stage, we can call this the Drug Olympics next year. This is a serious proposition, he has a website and everything, meaning 1 where athletes can use performance enhancing drugs.

So his argument is that the current system where you're not allowed to use performance enhancing drugs means that people use them but then they pretend that they haven't. That's the deal.

Yeah, they're secretive about their about steroids.

Yeah, so he's saying if we allow all these athletes to use drugs and world records will be broken, you know, we'll all get amazing kind of performances out of these athletes and everything will be fine.

Yeah, he said that the current world 100 meter record stands at about 9.58 seconds. Wouldn't it be amazing to see someone break that 9 minute barrier? It's like, well, yeah, it would, but Not if they're just up to the gills on amphetamines.

You know, it's like, it

kind of takes it away a bit, doesn't it? They may as well be on roller skates, jet-powered roller skates.

Yeah, exactly. Somebody pushing them along. It's ridiculous. I mean, he's a funny character, this man. He's previously known.

He bankrupted Gawker by funding the Hogan defamation case. He sounds like somebody...

He's another disruptor.

Exactly. He's a disruptor. This is what he wants to do. And weirdly, at the same time, there's a few other stories about other people taking drugs.

Yeah. Elon Musk, the Times have this. Elon Musk takes small doses, underlining the word small, of ketamine to manage depression, while Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder, enjoys magic mushrooms, a report claimed. Now, I've heard of microdosing mushrooms, I've heard of microdosing LSD, I've never heard of microdosing ketamine. I'm not quite, I didn't know that was a thing to treat depression.

I did not know it was a thing to treat depression. What I would say is a kind of thing amongst students, it's a very cheap drug, and if you want to get really out of it, then that's your drug of choice. It seems very kind of, I like to sit at home in front of my video games.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is almost like the homeopathic kind of version of that, isn't it? Because microdosing is something like 0.2 milligrams. I sound like I know a bit too much about this already. But mushrooms are prevalent.

I mean, they have become, I mean, they've not come out of nowhere because mushrooms have been around since the year dot, but they always used to be, I used to be really scared of mushrooms when I was a kid. It was like, because you know, the red and white spotted mushrooms, they'd kill you in an instant. And you'd have like the big lads going, it's like, let's get some magic mushrooms that's some time by the rugby field. And they'd go and you'd only see them for days. Now, I was like, we'd come back from Glastonbury.

I've never, like, it is now the middle class drug du jour. It's just insane. Mushroom gummies, mushroom chocolate, just mushrooms on toast. It's just like it was everywhere. People are brazenly open about it.

It's now the new, it's the new spliff.

It's very interesting, isn't it? Because it's actually, you know, underlying this is a more serious story I think about how depression is treated by doctors. Because if people go to the doctor they tend to get given enormous doses of amitriptyline and can't move for days. So people are trying to treat their angst themselves.

I believe, I believe, you know, I'm an advocate of it. I believe it does work. You know, I know tons of people that microdose mushrooms and it works like a treat for them.

I have to say it's very Dulwich Mum.

It is very Dulwich Mum. I mean, most of them, the ones I know are Dulwich Mums. I hate all the Dulwich Mums out

there. Thanks for listening. It's literally the new equivalent of Valium, how to get through your day. Now headless body found in topless bar. Bum-tish.

Day. Shee! Headlines are the lifeblood of the papers. Sometimes they're worth your cash all on their own. On every edition of Papercuts we choose the very best ones out there.

What have we got Jamie? What do you have?

Everyone's favourite Englishman, Danny Dyer, wants to die a fucking hero by bumping off Vladimir Putin live on TV.

Not an unreasonable request, why would you not set this up?

This is from a brilliant episode where he appeared with Kathy Burke on Where There's a Will There's a Wake and the headline is dire warning, I'll do in Putin. Star will choke tyrant with, can you guess?

No idea. Pillowcase. It's very specific

isn't it? He's thought about this a lot.

He's thought about this an unnerving amount

well, it's got he's got form for you They do not remember his infamous 9-11 tweet Where's like still does my nut into this day that those slags flew into that building.

He's like he's just the gift that keeps giving isn't he?

Yeah and

I'm sticking with the I'm sticking with the star as well for my next 1 and This is about Pisces men with beards cheat the most.

Look at you.

I've got a beard. I'm an Aries. Thank you. Hi Mrs East. Relax.

And the headline is stubble and strife.

Oh, very good. Like that. OK. And John, what do you have?

So The Sun's got a nice story about I'm going to massively mispronounce this pregashin. Pretty good. OK, that's good. Doing well. The the guy who runs the Wagner group and have the abortive coup against against Putin over the weekend is apparently he's hiding away somewhere where he feels safe in Belarus, I think.

And the headline is, Warlord's Hotel has no windows.

Very good.

Because Obviously the most dangerous place in Russia is next to a window.

Definitely balconies avoid.

The Telegraph meanwhile has a lovely report of a different coup going on in a charity called the Actors Benevolent Fund which has been chaired by Penelope Keefe who fans may remember as Margot in The Good Life. She was the chair of that from 1990 until very recently and there's been a row over the ousting of her and the other trustees. The telegraph, it's not even the headline, it's the strap line for it on the front of the paper is Last of the Summer Wine.

Yeah, it's what we like. It's very funny. Mine is from the mail and it's King Charles doing 1 of his meet and greets. At this point he's meeting people and they're all dressing in dressing gowns because they're at a wellness centre. And the headline is, so have you come spa?

Very good.

OK, remember at the top we had quite a lot of Matt Hancock headlines, we had body bag COVID strategy was completely wrong. We had Coco, it was a real circus. I want to be brutally honest with the public. Matt Hancock has appeared in front of the COVID inquiry. And at the moment, the COVID inquiry is investigating how prepared the UK was for the pandemic is the preparation bits.

The papers do not like what he has been saying. Essentially, what he's been saying is that the preparations for the pandemic assumed that everyone would die, which hence body bags rather than protecting the public. This is his quote, the assumption was that it would not be possible to stop the spread of a disease. It's a bit, it was a bit of a disastrous performance, wasn't it, John?

It was. I mean, you can see what he's trying to do is it's sort of, I think, an attempt to shift the blame to a point before he was anywhere near the health service, which does sort of make sense as a strategy. Basically what he was saying is that all the governments of the pandemic policies were about how to deal with an event that caused mass death rather than how to prevent the mass death in the first place. Which, you know, from some points of view, that is often, like many years ago, I was a health reporter, that is sort of the issue of the NHS is it's very much focused on dealing with the problems when they arise rather than preventing them in the first place. So it's sort of that writ large.

I think from Hancock's point of view, the reason this went wrong is he's been, he sat at the inquiry saying things like, the doctrine was, can we buy enough body bags? Where are we going to bury the dead? Totally failing to learn the lessons of the winter of discontent that if you start talking about things like burying the dead and body bags that is going to be the headline next to a picture of your face.

Yeah very much I mean he did I mean a lot of what he said was really quite shocking though I mean you know we kind of guessed it but he did admit that basically he had no idea how many people were in the care homes. No, I mean, just no idea.

Which is

really shocking considering how much they focused on care homes as the story and as a kind of, as a catalyst for containing COVID. And yet they have, there's no spreadsheet somewhere. That tells

you how many

people- No, they

had no idea. And they also didn't even know what protections were in place in these care homes.

Yeah. And it's because the state is, I mean, at risk of defending Matt Hancock here, the state has outsourced all this.

Yeah, they're all private.

To private equity funding, and very badly paid staff. So I'm not in any way surprised that nobody in government knew how many people in these places, what the conditions were. It's to some extent, he was just the guy who happened to be in the job at the time.

Yeah, it's very true. I mean, 1 of the things that he tried to do, which went also completely wrong, was he tried to, there's a lot of bereaved families in the inquiry who were following, obviously, and he went up to them, I mean, he stepped towards them to try and say that he was profoundly sorry. This went incredibly badly.

Well, he's just got no, he's got the worst people skills man I've ever seen in my life. You know, he's got no way of emoting. He doesn't, you know, in my opinion, doesn't really have any empathy. He can't, he doesn't really seem to understand how humans work. You know, look at his bloody TikToks.

He was comparing, he was rating a league of beers last week and this is a man who's like new, he was facing a Covid enquiry this week and was going to be hauled over the coals and yet he's working on, he's always working on brand Hancock And to him, in his mind, that was a great press opportunity for him to look like the people's guy and to show how sorry he was.

It's interesting, isn't it? Because actually what you find about it is it's to do with character. So you have a character like Boris Johnson who never says sorry for anything and people go, okay, fine, he can kind of bluster through. If you have someone like Matt Hancock, who just seems, it makes him seem completely incompetent at all times. It just, He keeps saying, sorry, we got it wrong, sorry, I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to do it, you know, my emotions took hold of me and that's why I was caught snogging somebody and you know, it was all unprepared, I'm really, really sorry.

He just keeps having to say sorry.

He says sorry But then he refuses to accept responsibility for it as well. So he says, sorry, but then says, but it wasn't my fault.

I mean, the whole performance was about shoving responsibility onto other people and different bits of the government. And to some extent, that's fair, but it is nonetheless the wrong tone. Yeah.

It's also very weird. He said it's completely indefensible. Another quote from him that this year, so not COVID this year, 450 million pounds of spent on health care, spent on health care, which sounds quite a lot, but 53 billion pounds of spent on military defence. So he's now saying everything is wrong about the government. You were in the government mate, you were there.

You were literally health secretary.

What's his game plan? Where is he expecting this to end up? Does he seriously think there could be a comeback 1 day?

I know, unbelievable. I'd just like to 0.1 last thing about this which is the Sun has got the COVID inquiry on page 16, very relevant. And it literally the headline says Brexit helped us prepare for COVID. It's a take.

So they're trying to champion COVID as a good thing there or what?

I mean, Hancock did say that 1 of the reasons we did not run out of drugs is because of the stockpiling for no-deal Brexit. Yeah, but we nearly did. We nearly

did. Within hours. Let's have a look at Climate Change, always cheery, and 1 of The Guardian's favourites. Do you want to read out that headline again, Jamie?

Yeah, so the headline in the Guardian is government advisor condemns UK for failed leadership over net 0 and this is basically just talking about how it's just a distinct lack of urgency you know. The government have been really good at kind of like right here's the plan here We're laying out 10 points that are going to tackle climate change, blah, blah, blah. And it's the same to do it for inflation, do it for everything. And then very quietly do the square root of my arsehole.

It's true. I mean, this is from Lord Deddon, who's the outgoing chair of the Committee on Climate Change. And he says UK has, you know, I mean, he doesn't use your words, but he says we've lost the leadership on climate change. It's the same thing. We're not insulating homes, there's no progress on transport emissions, no decision on hydrogen for home heating, there's no slow growth of wind and solar farms.

We're not.

They're still arguing about the benefits of wind farms. They're still debating whether nuclear is the cleanest form of energy. We just need to be building the, you know, we shouldn't still be talking about it. We're 10 years behind from when we first started talking about wind farms. You know, it's just, it's ludicrous.

Yeah, it also does seem, I have to say, John, slightly part of this government's modus operandi. They just don't do anything, do they? They talk a lot and they don't do anything.

No, they're the culture war government. That's all they care about is owning the libs, basically. Yeah. Which it turns out is not going to protect us from climate change. The tabloids are quite excited about this is the weird thing.

It does feel like we're all going to die horribly and quite soon. And the Mail's headline is hotter than

1976!

This June is set to be the warmest ever. Talking about how the month is on course to beat previous temperature records for the month by

2

degrees. That's terrifying!

Exactly! This is not few water scorcher.

This is terrible. Also 1976 was terrifying. People died because it was so hot.

They dress it up as a kind of like, get your bikinis out in the garden for the weekend, get your barbecues ready. Forgetting how grim last summer was. It was awful. No 1 could sleep. Tiles on people's roofs were melting.

It was just,

you know, dogs couldn't,

you couldn't take your dog for

a walk.

They couldn't go on holiday.

There were no, and then exactly that. And the Daily Star are going, Don't forget, dogs need a holiday.

Yeah, well they do, possibly not in the sun, I have to say. There's another side to this, isn't there? This climate change crisis is also accompanied by a few stories, which are on the front of a few papers. We've got a lovely picture of a lady on the cover of The Telegraph and she was the head of Thames Water.

And the

story is essentially she's quit her £1.6 million a year job. Can I just say that again? £1.6 million a year she was the head of Thames Water. She's quit her job. No reasons have been given, but we can kind of assume things have been going a bit wrong.

I assume she was quite bad at her job.

Well, exactly.

Maybe she just didn't need to earn any more money. I mean, it sounds like she's probably got quite a lot already.

Yes, she's got quite a lot. But this is also accompanied by in the Times, the front page of the Times, saying that the water companies want to increase household bills by up to 40% to meet strict pollution targets because they blatantly have not been meeting them so far.

It's, I mean, it's the same as, You know, everyone in the UK feels as though they're paying for Energy Boss's profits and supermarket profits. And Water have thought, actually we'll have a piece of that. All that stuff that we completely cocked up over the past year is when we've been pumping turds into the 7. We admit now that that's wrong. We've sat the boss, but can you guys pay for it, please?

And you cheered me up, Miranda, because I got here and you said, you'll be Southern Water, won't you? Yeah, we said you're paying about 470 quid a year now. It's gonna go up to 680. Yeah,

I've got the precise bills.

Do you want them?

Please. Yeah,

okay, Southern Water. Just so I can adjust my overdraft.

Southern Water will be raising your bill from 432 to 672. It's

just so unsustainable it's almost funny.

Yeah.

You know it's just crazy But at least she'll be signing on now. Ha ha ha.

The papers aren't just gloomy news and grim statistics. There's the fun stuff of style, sport, science, space, clever pets, and happy people in big trousers explaining how they lost weight. So what's caught our eyes today? What do you have, John?

So the Times has got a story which is transparently based on a press release from Deliveroo about how we're all going to be eating in the mid-2000s. But as with this kind of press release it lives and dies by the puns. It's talking about trends like Meganism.

What's Meganism? Meganism

which is a hyper personalized diet plans. There's also Out-a-hole which is alcohol mimicking drinks without the downsides. So basically if you've ever watched Star Trek, it's that kind of stuff. Okay. And the 1 they've gone with for the headline, foodgasms, in which the eating experience alters your mental state to make you feel awakened and stimulated.

I don't really see the appeal of mixing those 2 things up, but

I mean either I mean you have 1 bite then blokes Just have to sit down for 20 minutes This is from the mirror rapper the gaffer this craze I'm sure this must be just like tax write-off time. We had Ryan Reynolds and His mate Rob McElhenney buying Rexham and you know off the back of basically to get a commission from Netflix for the great documentary Stormzy and Premier League footballer Wilfred Zaha are buying AFC Croydon Athletic in South London, which is a great, you know, great story great kind of boost to see you know people are gonna go there just to spot Stormzy And it's just if you were if you were a lower league football club now, you would accept nothing less than a celebrity boss. You know, Woking, my local club, Woking, you know, holding out for Charlotte Church to come in and save them. You know, it's just something I do love these stories, though, because it's it's It's great local paper fodder.

Yeah, they're incredibly cheering, aren't they?

Yeah, I just think Ted Lasso has a lot to answer for. Exactly.

Very true. OK, and I have the male who is still banging on about St Bernard. I keep calling him St Bernard, but it's actually Sir Bernard Jenkin, the nudist that they hate. And this is a headline. How can Sir Bernard still stay silent as MP say sorry for Weiss lockdown drinks party.

Okay, so it's the classic it's the story that he went to a lockdown strength party, they say, but Private Eye knows the kind of reason why they're really going for it. And that is because the Mail on Sunday held a leaving party during COVID in direct contravention of the rules. It was led by the paper's then editor, Ted Verity, who's now the editor of – ooh, what's the paper I'm holding? – The Mail! So that might be the reason why poor old St Bernard is getting it in the neck.

And that's the end of today's Papercuts. Thanks to Jamie East.

Thanks for having me.

And thanks to John Elledge.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for listening and don't forget to follow Papercuts on your favourite podcast app. If you really like us, then go to Apple Podcasts and give us 5 stars and all the medals, championes review. You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Papercuts Show. Links are in the show notes. I've been Miranda Sawyer, and you've been listening to Papercuts on a day when it's been discovered that orangutans can beatbox in the same way as humans, proving that the Ootang clan ain't nothing to fuck with.

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