JIMMY CRICKET (1945 - 2026): AN OBITUARY

Jimmy Cricket, not to be confused with Pinocchio's insect sidekick, has cracked his final gag at the venerable age of 80, surrounded by family, laughter, and presumably a spare pair of wellington boots. Born James Mulgrew in 1945 in the County Tyrone town of Cookstown, Cricket – real name suggesting either entomological destiny or a clerical error in the Book of Life – left school at 16, dallied briefly with the precarious mathematics of a betting shop, then discovered his true vocation as a Redcoat at Butlin’s. There, among the knobbly knees and forced singalongs, he honed the persona that would sustain him through five decades of light entertainment: cut-off trousers, bow tie, floppy hat, and those trademark wellies marked “L” and “R” heroically worn on the wrong feet. 

It was comedy of the gentlest, most Catholic variety – wholesome enough to make even a Bishop blush with approval, which, in 2015, one did when Pope Francis conferred upon him a Knighthood of the Order of St Gregory the Great for services to charity and not frightening the horses. Television beckoned in the 1980s after a talent show victory. And There’s More! gave the nation its nightly dose of affectionate daftness, launched Rory Bremner on an unsuspecting public, and allowed Cricket to tour the nation’s stages like a benevolent virus of good cheer. 

He appeared in Royal Variety Performances, pantomimes, radio series (Jimmy’s Cricket Team, naturally), and enough summer seasons to make Blackpool’s illuminations seem fleeting by comparison. His humour never punched down; it patted the audience on the head and offered them a cup of tea. In an age when comedians increasingly resembled angry sociologists with better agents, Cricket remained defiantly pre-ironic, a living rebuke to the notion that laughter requires a PhD in deconstruction. 

He raised four children, one of whom became a priest (proof, perhaps, that divine comedy runs in the family), supported hospices, and maintained the quiet decency of a man who understood that entertainment and edification need not be enemies. Death, that final curtain call, has now claimed him after a short illness. The world of British comedy, already short on unselfconscious warmth, is a size smaller without him. Alas, from Jimmy - now there's no more.

ROD LIDDLE (1960 - 2025): AN OBITUARY

Rod Liddle, who has set off to argue with the saints at the age of 66, was the sort of journalist who made one wonder whether the Fourth Estate had been wise to abandon its feudal origins. Born on April Fool’s Day 1960 – a date that, in his case, suggested either cosmic jest or impeccable career planning – he rose from Teesside roots to edit BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, only to resign in 2002 when the Corporation discovered, to its exquisite dismay, that impartiality and Rod Liddle were not natural bedfellows. 

In the years that followed, Liddle colonised the opinion pages of The Spectator, The Sunday Times and The Sun with a vigour that suggested he viewed the English language less as a vehicle for nuance than as a blunt instrument for poking sacred cows until they filed complaints. Where others saw complex social phenomena, Liddle detected pattern and folly: immigration as a time bomb, identity politics as a collective nervous breakdown, and the liberal consensus as a form of institutional self-harm conducted with the serene confidence of the well-pensioned. His critics called him a provocateur; his readers, when not writing letters demanding his head on a pike, found in him the relief of a man willing to say the unsayable, often before breakfast. 

He wrote books too – Selfish Whining Monkeys among them – in which he surveyed modern Britain with the affectionate exasperation of a man watching his favourite pub slide into gastro-pub irrelevance. There were marriages, divorces, children (Wilder, Tyler and Emmy, who spoke of him with touching filial loyalty), and a late tilt at parliamentary candidacy that confirmed politics had not lost its capacity to disappoint. Through it all, he maintained the air of a man who had wandered into the culture wars by accident and decided to enjoy the artillery.

Death, that ultimate sub-editor, has now blue-pencilled the lot. One suspects Liddle would have greeted it with a raised eyebrow and a column about how even mortality had been captured by the metropolitan elite. He was, in his irascible, indefatigable way, a reminder that journalism at its best is not a polite seminar but a bar brawl with footnotes. Britain’s public discourse is quieter for his absence, and perhaps a little duller. Which, one fancies, would have pleased him no end.

TOMCATS, HANDSHAKES, AND THE ART OF NOT QUITE IMPLODING

In the great British tradition of turning necessity into a spectator sport, one finds oneself observing the latest pas de deux between Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe with the sort of weary amusement once reserved for the literary feuds of lesser mortals. Here we are again, in the summer of 2026, watching two men who have spent recent months circling each other like affronted tomcats suddenly entertain the faint possibility of not quite tearing each other limb from limb. Farage’s response to Lowe’s offer of amends was not the instant, resounding “No” that certain loyalists in his orbit had devoutly wished for. In politics, as in marriage, the absence of immediate rejection can feel like the nearest thing to poetry.

The situation is, of course, richly absurd. Reform UK, that curious vehicle which has spent the past year or so trying to persuade the electorate that it is both revolutionary and respectable, finds itself nudged rightward by a breakaway outfit whose very name - Restore Britain - sounds like the title of a particularly optimistic heritage charity pamphlet. Lowe and his associates have performed the useful, if undignified, service of clearing mines that the main party preferred to pretend were not there. They have prodded Reform towards harder thinking on deportations, demographics, and the general sense that the country is sliding, with elegant inexorability, into managed decline. For this public service they have been rewarded with the traditional British conservative welcome: suspicion, recrimination, and the occasional pointed silence.

Yet even Farage, that most resilient of political operators, appears to recognise that the current estrangement is unsustainable. The right, such as it is, risks splitting its vote with the enthusiasm of a drunkard dividing his last tenner between rival bookmakers. Meanwhile - Labour, still wearing the expression of a man who has won the lottery only to discover the ticket belongs to someone else - continues its experiment in socialist governance, with all the attendant joys of open borders, strained public services, and the quiet conviction that the native population is a tiresome anachronism best managed rather than consulted. The prospect of another term of this, or worse, concentrates the mind wonderfully.

One must, therefore, permit oneself a flicker of hope. An agreement between the two men, sealed with something resembling the famous RFK-Trump handshake, would be seismic indeed. It would nullify the most damaging accusations against Farage: that he lacks magnanimity, that his fallings-out are permanent, that personal honour sometimes takes second place to personal loyalty. It would restore a measure of credibility on those stubborn issues; mass immigration, cultural cohesion, the simple demographic mathematics that polite society prefers not to mention aloud. Above all, it would demonstrate to a sceptical electorate that the patriotic side of British politics is capable of doing what the left does instinctively: subordinating ego to collective survival.

And yet, how one laments the near-impossibility of it all. British conservatism has always been better at producing elegant essays on the national character than at the vulgar business of winning power. Personalities loom large; histories of slights and counter-slights stretch back like family grudges at a wedding. The centre, that mythical beast so eagerly courted by Reform in its more conciliatory phases, turns out to be largely fictional, a polite fiction maintained by think-tank reports and focus groups. Meanwhile, the base, once estranged, does not return with the docile gratitude of a prodigal son; it returns, if at all, sceptical and demanding evidence of genuine conversion. The mines have been cleared, but the ground remains treacherous.

Without some form of rapprochement, the electoral mathematics look bleak. Britain’s escape from the embrace of the socialist far left - those earnest, well-scrubbed graduates who speak of 'equity' while presiding over decline - depends on a broad coalition of the disaffected. Millions who have never voted before, former Conservatives disillusioned by fourteen years of administrative competence without conviction, and those who simply wish to recognise that the country they love is slipping away. Such a coalition cannot be built on purity spirals or the satisfaction of old scores. It requires, in the end, the least romantic of political virtues: calculation, compromise, and the occasional public swallowing of pride.

One hopes, against the accumulated evidence of decades, that Farage and Lowe might yet manage it. Not because either man is a flawless saviour (politics rarely supplies those), but because the alternative is too dispiriting to contemplate. A nation that cannot unite even its own malcontents against the slow administrative capture of its institutions deserves, perhaps, the government it gets. But hope, that most stubborn of British virtues, persists in imagining otherwise: a moment of magnanimity, however grudging, that might yet tilt the board. The odds are long, the spectacle, as ever, is grimly entertaining, and the stakes - as Farage himself has noted - could scarcely be higher.