I am going into the woods and ditching my favourite magazine, one I still buy 10 out of 12 months of the year, the physical magazine and stopping looking at my news outlet of choice. And switching off all media outlets actually except Al Jazeera who wrote a piece on the 6th Aug about Cambridge University defending the Professor Dr. Jason Arday and then didn’t cover the story again until today.

The September 2026 cover of Vogue has got us all talking.

A requirement for any kind of engagement in social media. You have to get people commenting and how else to do that than by doing something extreme.

It seems we don’t actually engage when something is really good, only when something is so bad the consensus is it’s Patsy Stone pill popping drunken sex maniac from 1990’s TV sit com Absolutely Fabulous not Oscar winning super star actress and Hollywood darling Nicole Kidman.

Venetia L Scott shot it Poppy Kain Styled it, Giles Hattesley did the interview they threw all the big guns at this one.

Except it’s not only me when half the comments on British Vogue insta are talking about Patsy Stone…….

The pictures don’t look like Nicole. It looks like she didn’t make it to her first ever cover shoot for British Vogue and the stand in, stood in instead.

First off the images are so manipulated I can’t even see any remnants of Nicole Kidman. From the back combed hair, to the over filtered features, it has been suggested the AI merged beauty aesthetic norm has left us wondering is it Madonna, Kylie, even was suggested a much younger Adele, maybe Michelle Pieffer no one knows.

Lisa Armstrong writes in the Telegraph in her commentary on the September Vogue cover Conde Naste wouldn’t allow her to publish their pictures unless the article was positive. She had to use the British Vogue Instagram posts to accompany her story about what is happening to our skewed view of beauty driven by the main stream media.

I work in fashion and was working with this T shirt yesterday. I snapped this picture of it before I heard or saw the news.

I don’t want to be in trouble with Conde Nast and don’t need to publish another picture I don’t have the right to.

When the news broke of Dr. Jason Arday’s tragic untimely death someone none of us had even heard of until a month ago, I had to find out what had led up to this preventable tragedy. This was someone who believed everyone has talent to be nurtured and everyone has limitless potential.

The media are to blame without a doubt, stirring up trouble and an unnecessary frenzy about an unproven potential misstep on a CV. I’ve stretched the truth on a CV, who hasn’t. Rachel Reeves the UK chancellor was guilty of plagiarism who was the Secretary of State who said he was a qualified solicitor and wasn’t, but the media did not batter these stories to the death. Virginia Guifree dead whilst the former Prince Andrew gets on with his life in peace, luxury and privilidge. What the hell. Haven’t we learned anything from Caroline Flack, how many people will it take.

I am furious I gave money to the Guardian now, as Chris Packham says in his advert for Naked Paper, how we spend our money is the most important decision we make every day. I am switching by the way to Naked Paper. Not so convenient, you can’t just find it in the grocery store but I support their mission. And cancelling my support of the Guardian. An opinion piece by Afua Hirsch taking the leftist higher ground may have been the last straw.

We expect this kind of baiting vitriol from the Daily Mail and the likes of Australian journalist Amanda Platell, even the Times and The Telegraph jumped in with an all pile on mentality until someone cannot breathe literally but come on the Guardian hounding someone his colleagues and friends were urging editors weeks ago to desist the relentless battering because this person was vulnerable. They all knew and carried on regardless.

The guy resigned, gave up everything he had worked for because of potentially a stupid mistake we have all made, including people in the most powerful positions of governance and influence. What more was he expected to do?

Kill himself?

I hope everyone goes out and reads his book

Great and Unfortunate Things, a title that now resonates so deafeningly.