Friday announcement: I’ve authored a new BBC Radio 4 Archive on 4 documentary, it’s called OUTRAGE INC, and it airs next Saturday, at 20:00. Huge thanks to the brilliant Alison Vernon-Smith for her insight, patience, and sheer determination in producing, and the editing genius of Julian Mayers. I hope it's an entertaining and provocative hour of radio. You’ll know I’m obsessed with the lessons of history we keep forgetting. This programme travels through more than a century of noisy, provocative stunts from Suffragette arson to Greenpeace in front of harpoons, from flour bombs at Miss World to the humour-as-weapon genius of Otpor, Political Beauty, and the Yes Men. It’s about why the stunt still matters and why, in an age of draconian restrictions on protest, we need to remember the history as much as we argue about the now. Next week, I’ll share more about what’s in it and the lessons it holds for anyone trying to shift opinion, hold power to account, or seed an idea that refuses to die. I'm bored with commercial PR stunts; the most interesting ones have a purpose Because history shows this: the best stunts don’t just make noise, they create ripples that move long after the cameras and the media chatter have packed up. OUTRAGE INC BBC Radio 4, Saturday 23rd, 20:00, and on BBC Sounds.

A young man dies in horrifying circumstances. His family grieves. And POTUS turns the tragedy into AI entertainment, starring himself. This is what happens when the pursuit of engagement consumes every remaining boundary of taste and judgement. The presidency isn’t a content creator’s playground. Proof that somewhere between the memes and pseudo events, we’ve lost sight of the difference between leadership and performance.

Information has become a battlefield, and most of us don’t even realise we’ve been conscripted.

And so it begins …

If you can hire the best legal team expect a result .. justice in the hands who can afford it .

Stop the clocks: @piersmorgan has just blown the lid off Charles Spencer’s grubby Diana bank raid. He has ripped the heart out of Spencer’s testimony and exposed the hypocrisy beneath it. The book’s claims are bleeding out, its credibility flatlining, while Penguin editors look on in abject horror. Somewhere in SW11, a fact-checker is clutching a P45. Although I suspect a junior head is already rolling out of the door.

Sheeran’s Philly performance was crisis containment, not resolution. He swapped corporate defensiveness for apology, empathy and a message of unit acknowledging October 7, condemning Gaza’s destruction and reconnecting with his fans. In effect, he was cauterising the rep wound.

Well #justsaying @nigelpauley .. you might be right it’s more than a stylists fail. For those of a certain age it seems his management see him as a redux’d Jimmy Tarbuck. Josh’s performance belonged to the classic golden era of 1960s British variety, LE, and TV comedy. Not a great career move.

Can someone please help Josh Widdicombe and get the bloke a stylist. #strictly @bbcstrictly

All the hand-wringing and reflective outpourings of sympathy for Jason Arday may be sincere. But our goldfish attention span will soon twitch elsewhere. Before long, the algorithms will find another human sacrifice and the crowd will gather again. I have seen the inside of these cyclones. They turn people into content, destroy them for clicks, then move on as though nothing happened.

My #Neil Reading tribute linkedin.com/posts/markborko…