(((David Bennun)))

Every so often a headline appears that has the paradoxical twin effect of making me feel better about my own life yet worried that I'm just not making the most of it.

This is, as one has come to expect from Ms Lewis, a brilliant and humane piece. As if its own immediate subject were not enough, it's an excellent takedown of one of the most flawed and damaging ideas in wider discourse: that we are all entitled to be taken at our own estimation.

Will Self interview link here: thejc.com/life/books/wil…

I interviewed Will Self for @JewishChron, and found a man in some ways profoundly changed from the one who notoriously "resigned" as a Jew twenty years ago, while in others still very much at odds with mainstream Jewry - but seeking to mend fences. Link in reply.

Linky-dink: totallyradio.com/shows/threads/…

It's Tuesday, and there's a new episode of THREADS up, on the hotly topical theme of EASTER EVERYWHERE. You can hear it on @slackcityradio, via @totallyradio, through the link in the comments. Or, if you prefer, you can not do that. Free will innit.

Contemporary antiracism 101:

Look forward to The Guardian running a Jonathan Liew column in which he describes the torching of four ambulances as "a small act of petty symbolism" in response to the "heavy-handed high-street aggression" of a Jewish charity operating an open-to-all community ambulance service.

(ICYMI, Liew used those words to describe, respectively, the repeated vandalism of a bakery in a chain founded by Jews, and the opening of said bakery in the first place: archive.md/luyxU)

Vive la France!

Me: "To understand antizionism you have to understand that antizionists are to all intents and purposes a fundamentalist religious sect." Antizionists: *embark on literal pilgrimage*

Yes, thank heavens somebody is finally calling attention to this woefully underreported matter.

Berks update.

Hear it here, should you care to: totallyradio.com/shows/threads/…

New THREADS is up, y'all, on @slackcityradio via @totallyradio, and this episode is about MISLEADING INTROS - when you think a song is going to be one thing, and it turns out to be quite another. Link in reply, natch.

I believe this is what is known as "failing to read the room".

10/10 conceptual gag, no notes.

Me: "The BBC urgently needs to remedy the demonstrable institutional biases in its reporting that have grievously undermined public trust and imperiled its future." Also me: "BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE SORT OUT THE SUBBING ON ITS WEBSITE"

I mean, technically, it probably was, but I'm not sure that's what you meant.

Link: thejc.com/life/howard-ja…

I had the enormous pleasure of talking to the great Howard Jacobson for @JewishChron about his superb and very funny new novel, Howl. Link in reply if you'd like to read all about it.