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Welcome back to Paper Cuts, the modern newspaper review. Our Scottish producer still hasn't appeared since Hogmanae, so we'll be back on Monday with a brand new episode, but today we wanted to share some of our absolute favourite clips from the last 12 months of Paper Cuts. So sit back with a nice cup of tea, the remains of the eggnog or some hot iron brew and relive some of your favourite memories from the year.
You can even share this episode with your friends as a delightful late Christmas present. And then they, and you, might become a Paper Cuts supporter. For under £4 a month, you can get episodes with no adverts and with an added funny bit, plus the chance to join us on exciting Paper Cuts live streams and other daft ideas we have over the next 12 months. Now here are the headlines for today's show.
Don't come all ye faithful. The male discovers a married woman who's never had an orgasm. We are a dog. I'll do anything for love, but I won't do that. Kate Lister suggests a new bedroom technique. John isn't happy. And Diana, still our princess of hearts. Well, she's still gronias anyway, and gronias gonna tell us about it. Welcome to Papercuts. We read the papers, so you don't have to.
Thanks for joining us on Papercuts, where we think 2025 sounds way cooler than 2024, actually. I'm Miranda Sawyer, and we're going to start the show with a trio of stories involving women. All variety of female life can be found here, from the entirely mute Kate Middleton, to a satin-wrapped, daily male lady prepared to tell the world in mad detail about her sex life. Enjoy!
Now, on the front page of the mail is quite the banner headline. It's next to a picture of a woman who is wrapped in fuchsia satin and gazing defiantly out at us all. I'm going to read that headline out once more. I'm 64. I was married for 35 years and have had five children, but I've never had an orgasm. Now read the headline.
I'm not sixty four. It's kind of amazing from the opening paragraph onwards is gripping the novel of our age. She is as as she says a six five year old woman six four year old woman she goes into great detail about.
how she met her husband when she was 19 years old. They consummated the marriage on their honeymoon. She didn't have an orgasm, didn't have a nice time, and then phoned her mum and dad in tears to say, presumably, I didn't come. Her mum doesn't know what to say, so he goes, well, I'll get your father.
And his advice was, oh, well, these things take time. So that he'll find it darling, don't worry. Your mum's never come on ever. It runs in this family.
She then goes on this long 35 year journey of just never coming. But does go into quite love detail about how she knew. I knew what orgasms were because I've watched rom-coms. So I knew and I think how to do the oohing and aing.
Yeah, I know, it's like she'd seen Meg Ryan and thought I'd better go with that. Yeah, I'm like lucky whoever this man is because he's getting a full like Academy Award performance going on. Like she's studied the films for this. There is a, I mean, he, so he apparently died nine years ago, I think she says.
And after that, she actually gets on with a guy. She meets a bereavement group, which is quite exciting. I mean, she then has kind of six years of fun with him, but she neglects to tell him that she might want to come occasionally, too. She says that she was too shy to ask for an orgasm, which you would expect would just be a given, wouldn't you, rather than sort of on the twist. Yeah. Please say, I'm learning so much.
There's an interesting bit in this, I mean, there's, it is an epic this piece and it's really long and it goes through their entire life. And some of it is, you know, I felt very sorry for her, just get kind of slightly happier at the end. But there's a really interesting bit about Fifty Shades of Grey, I think. Fifty Shades of Grey, it's obviously
I mean it's tough, it's absolutely rubbish, it's really badly written, it's kind of awful. But she says she read it and thought, oh, this is quite interesting and took it back into the bedroom with her husband who's now dead. Which I think is quite a common thing actually. There's that, we were talking, there's like a film, the book club.
the book club about a group of women who read Fifty Shades of Grey and it sort of opens their eyes and they start exploring anything. It is obviously like badly written drivel, but I also think it's like a fun, salacious read. And for a lot of people was their first for it being like, oh, this erotic thing. This might be this might be fun. Yeah, so she then just goes does a bit of role play with her.
I mean, her husband has a great, doesn't he? So he has quite a boring sex life, you know, at least he's coming all the time. And then it has, you know, then gets role play for the last six years of his life, which she says she didn't, she still didn't have an orgasm, but she had a much more fun time, which I guess if you're not going to be having an orgasm, you might as well be playing Let's Pretend and having a fun time. Yeah, just a bit. I'm a policeman now.
My favourite bit is that there's a bit that the Daily Mail has chosen to pull out as a quote where it says, perhaps a young man with stamina could show me how tough and orgasm, which is when you realise, oh, this is just a very large paid advertisement that's just put out. Very, very expensive.
I think fair enough, I do think, I mean, because obviously there's an element of it, where you think, okay, she's had her photo taken, she hasn't written the piece, so what she's done is told it to a journalist called Samantha Brick, who does a lot for the male, and it's kind of amazing at getting people's stories out, I have to say, she is really a fantastic interviewer. But I don't imagine that the woman who speaks, who's this article is about, actually thought she was going to end up on the front page of the male,
Or with a massive, she just didn't. She told a story. She had a photo taken. She thought it would be a little piece in female and it is front page news. So obviously for her, I mean, on one level, that's kind of devastating, I think. I just know that she's delighted. I can't tell you how I know. I was going to say, but I'm hoping that they will then turn into, it is like an advert. It's like when people go on first dates and they have a terrible date, but actually then people get in touch and go, I think you're really great.
I think she right now, as we speak, is having some sort of Earl Grey with her friends having just finished Reforma Palates. And she's going, yeah, front page. Never come. Front page. And they're all going, wonderful. And this is your year. This is your 2024, 2024, more like Carol.
Get this woman on love, honey. Well, we love her, don't we? Absolutely love her. We might get in contact. Find her a friend. Yeah, get her on this.
Now, it's International Women's Day today. Hooray for us all! It's also National Freelancer's Day. A national middle-name day as well, actually. But anyway, several papers have decided to celebrate our special day alongside all of us lovely women. Shall we have a look at how they are doing this? Coco? Yes. The Independent, which is an online paper these days. It has really decided to go all in for the ladies today, hasn't it?
has indeed. So on its digital front page is Britain's 50 most influential women. It includes names like Penny Morden, Floella Benjamin, Kate Garaway. Inside, there's more Tracy Emman, Ray, Dua Lipa, Jamila Jamil. You'd be pleased to hear that we've all been ranked.
which is very much in this spirit of women's day. That's very good to pit them against each other, I think. That's really important. Yeah, that's what we want. And the number one position actually goes to Brianna Jai's mother, Esther Jai. So I think overall what's interesting about it is it raises a philosophical question, which is, what is influence?
What is influence? What does it mean to be influential? Because some of the figures on the list are certainly present, certainly famous, but influential. Kate Middleton, for example, I'm sure she's contractually obliged not to be influential and not to give opinions. And also, like, who is she influenced? Do we all, like, by witnessing her wonder when she's around, being very skinny and not speaking?
Yes, it's like what we were meant to like a for. Well, exactly, exactly. You know, Shirley Bassie. You're sure? No, sorry. I'm not afraid you can't say anything about Shirley Bassie. If it's influential women of the year, they have to have done something influential this year. It cannot be from the past. What is Shirley Bassie done this year? Well, do you know what, fair? Being alive, basically. And do you know what? Good or not?
I am just going to, you know, it's Shirley Patsy. Yeah. She's the only day that I actually care for. You know what I mean? She's the fact that she's there. She's there. She's our dolly partner. She's a reminder. She's a reminder though. We can hold on to the glamour.
of life when all of this is unrolling from us. I always find it funny when influential lists where they put politicians because obviously that is true, they have influence. But again, that is their job. So then to what extent should that be valorised? Like, you know, I find it weird when they put actors in there or actresses, whatever you want to
But I think Gillian Anderson, is she influential? I mean she's great. I'm influenced by her, Olivia Coleman. I've been very influenced by both of those, but I think that is largely because I am an ally. Anyone with a strong haircut, in a bold kind of role. You're living for me, Gillian.
I think it's the one that gets me as Penny Morden because you just know she's just like opened the paper today and being like, yes, my de facto Queen status is rising again. She loves it. She's got a quote as well, which is the kind of quote that slightly drives me mad. Her quote is, it's inspiring and bloody difficult women who make Britain greats, whereas I would argue that it's the uninspiring women who just keep going, who make Britain greats.
I'm not Penny Mordent. Shall we analyze the photo-scotting? You know, on International Women's Day, I'd love nothing more than judging them. But these pictures that they've published in the eye are very peculiar. They look slightly AI-generated. I must say that not all 50 women were given the opportunity to be photographed. Only 10 of them were valuable enough to be photographed.
But they're like, if you could imagine like, Sim City versions of headshots, where these, they're highly polarized and you kind of have to look at the name to be like, oh, that's Rosie Jones. Oh, that's Penny Morten. Like, they slightly don't look like the people that they're supposed to illustrate.
They completely don't look like they're carved out of polished woods. It's a really weird look. I mean, I have to say, anyway, at least there's a vaguely celebratory tone about this independent piece. Shall we turn to the Guardian? Yes, please. How does the Guardian decide to celebrate our special day? Well, you know, the Guardian does its traditional way of showing love, which is tough love, and making you feel sad and depressed. And they've achieved it very well this International Women's Day.
On the front page they have trailed a story about killed women counts. That's a project that highlights the toll of male violence. It quite literally names every woman that's been killed by a man this year. I believe it's the list that Jess Phillips reads out and it's a list
that is growing and it's just very, very harrowing. On the top of the paper, you've also got a comment piece from the author Angela Saney. She talks about why history shows at Patriarchy is far from inevitable, which is kind of upbeat and uplifting. But also, why do we have it then? It's a bit sad.
Yeah, exactly. And inside, I have to say, next to the story about the killed women count, there's two other stories, right? One is about how mothers earn 4.44% an hour less than other women, and the other one is about how domestic violence is the driver of bad mental health among women. It is the most depressing page for International Women's Day that I can imagine. Do you feel inspired?
I do not. And the other thing I would really object to about these stories is it's all about stuff that is being done to women. You're being killed. There is domestic violence that is affecting you. Nobody's paying you right. I would like on International Women's Day to have a nice story about an older group of women who form a commune and have a great time.
and all about women that set up kind of food banks that are helping their community. The women doing things, not having stuff done to us all the time, it drives me nuts. But anyway, it's a lovely piece isn't it? I'm not, that bit mum, this isn't it. But what I mean by that is like
You know, working-class women, like me, work for the council and they're just trying their best to try and keep society stitched together in a really small way. Having a laugh. Yeah. You know, why not? You know, all those stories that they run is that they're supposedly really bad side of the Grand National. I'm like, yeah, put them up. That's great.
Now on various front pages today and over the weekend is what we might call the fall out from the Princess of Wales announcement late on Friday that she's got cancer. Rather than say she's got a highly trained fleet of smart bomb lookalikes or an extra arm. Marcus, what are the papers saying?
Well, the papers are saying everything there is to say, still, despite spending most of yesterday going, I think now is a time for reflection and perhaps a bit of quiet. And the front page today, here's a massive picture of her and more of what we think about it.
So the telegraph have gone quite heavy on the idea that China and Russia were behind the slurs on the princesses. As a China, Russia and Iran are fueling disinformation about the princess of Wales to destabilise the nation. And I think for what it's worth, that if a nation can be destabilised by people circulating rumours about Princess Kate, we deserve to be.
We absolutely deserve to be. I mean...
It's so very unstable. I'm very unstable. I nearly tipped over on the way here. This is all so strange, right? Setting aside a mum of three who's in a place where she cannot ever hide from the press, as we've seen, who's had abdominal surgery and is now having chemotherapy, right? That is a whole catalogue of terrifying stuff for her and her family to deal with.
Everyone is insane. We're insane though. I'm trying to unrush our own things. Sorry, sorry. Everyone's been driven insane by external forces. Yes. I'm a father now to a two and a half year old who is just beginning to have what's called object permanence, right? So he can imagine a thing that he cannot see. This is why peekaboo works with babies, right? You hide behind your own hands and they're like, where have you gone? You're back again.
The whole nation has not got object permanence. Where has she gone? Peek-a-boo in the most awful sense, right? But still, Peek-a-boo! Oh, there she is!
It's so mad. And the thing about this stuff with China and Russia and Iran is I don't doubt for a second that there are lots and lots of people in those nations under the pay of their governments who are doing everything they can to destabilize. But there isn't at least referred to in the telegraph who've led with it any evidence.
No. Absolutely not. They just wanted to put a big picture of Kate on the front and they thought that would be a good way to do it. Well, I think it's another way of going. It's not our fault. Yeah, well, exactly. It's not telegraph readers that are saying nasty things about Kate and Shida and Russia. And speaking of saying it's not our fault, Rosie, you have read the Sarah Vine article about Princess Kate, haven't you?
Yes. Sarah Vine did a very moving article where she said, we are all to blame. What? We are all to blame when it comes to Kate. Yeah. And she is a little bit as well.
Yeah, because she wrote as a sort of, some might say, hysterical article last week for the Daily Mail, where she said that, come clean Kate, tell us what's going on. And now, of course, we realise that we are all to blame in recent nights of events. All of us, and it's really good that Sarah Vine has pointed that out.
So look, luckily for Kate, and for Charles, and for William, who is taking three weeks off for Easter, which I have to say, G move. Yeah, that's big. Easter's a two-week holiday, tops. Yeah, and he's taking three weeks off. I love it. Anyway, so the papers have given us other royals who are going to take on more duties. So Prince Edward is making a big bid for glory.
The telegraph says he's set to emerge as the royal family's leading man. And the reason why they think this is because they've interviewed a bowel moral gamekeeper nicknamed massacre mason. Sweet crud. That's the man he knows what's going on.
He's called Masaka Masan. He was nicknamed Masaka Masan by Prince Philip, so that's how bad he is. And he bloodied all those poor little boy royals, including William. Anyway, Masaka Masan says that Prince Edward has got inner steel. So he's up there, right? Okay. But the Times has also said we should make way for the Duchess of Gloucester.
But we don't know who she is. Make way. It doesn't happen in a Shakespeare play. Make way for the Duchess of Gloucester. I just want to give you a little bit more information about the Duchess of Gloucester. She has never given an interview or quoted publicity. The Times is literally kind of rubbing his hands and I've gone, come on. But she's patron to about 60 charities, including the Law and Tennis Association, i.e. she gets Wimbledon tickets. And she's carried out more than 5,000 engagements, which sounds pretty good. That's a lot. That's a loss of engagement in 40 years.
Wait a minute. I've done more than that. This has got King Ralph written all over it, isn't it? There are minor royals going, making vocals. I'm available. Just on massacre mass. Can I just tell you a tiny, tiny story? So my dad knows somebody who was invited to go pheasant shooting at Balmoral.
And he was not a very good shot this bloke and he didn't hit anything. And then after lunch, when he was quite drunk, he was given the best spot to shoot everything. And just as the drive began, Her Majesty the Queen arrived just behind him with her security details. So he's now drunk, a bad shot and nervous and standing next to the Queen.
And all of these pheasants come flying over and he shoots and he misses absolutely everything. And then just at the end of the drive, they blow a whistle to indicate that the drive has ended. A bird came over quite low and less quickly than the other pheasants. And he lined up and was kind of bang and he hit it and it went down with a thud. And from behind him, he heard the Queen say, at Balmoral, we don't shoot after the final whistle. And as a general rule, we don't shoot owls.
So the slow moving birds had been one of the very few hours still tomorrow. Could you imagine? Awful.
Now, for this next section, we're turning to what you might call specialist interests. Just how do you like to spend your non-working hours, your let your hair down weekends, your very personal me time? Listen on for some top tips on expanding your recreational repertoire. And yes, I do mean pegging.
Now, in the eye for some mad reason, Kate Lister has decided to tell us all about the joys of pegging. Why all straight men should try pegging once is the title of a column. It's hardly Adrian Charles, is it? Anyway, Jason, why should all straight men try pegging once?
Listen, I'm not going to answer your question because this column doesn't answer your question. But what you need to know is that this might be the finest thingpiece that's ever been written. It's absolutely sensational. Kate Lister, I salute you. I'll buy you lunch. This is how it begins. She says that, for absolutely no reason whatsoever at all, I have found myself thinking about pegging quite a lot over the last few weeks.
Which is an amazing jumping off point for this column. Isn't there? She's never done it, not because she's averse to the idea, but she's never been asked to. I feel like we should explain pegging. Do you think we should explain pegging? I feel like we should explain pegging briefly. OK, so pegging is when your sexual partner straps on a dildo and performs anal sex on you. Wait!
Um, Kate Lister says, it's not a sex act that's ever appealed to me. Like poodleballing and water sports, it's just not on my radar. Okay, so poodleballing, every day's a school day. So poodleballing is when two ladies who love each other very much rub their bits together. Well, why do they have to bring poodles into this?
I like poodles in a totally nomusic. I don't like this at all. All the labelling makes me laugh because pegging and poodle-balling just sounds like you're hanging out at the washing and taking the dog for a walk.
Ah, the domesticity of sex. So can you think of any less sexual thing to say? Well, do you want a fancy poodle ball? Yeah. A lady's calling their bits poodles. I don't remember that. I need to read you more of this. Of course, if I was with someone who loved it, I would absolutely roll up my sleeves and get stuck in. Stuck in. Who knows? I might even find out that I liked it too. There's been many a time that I've found myself enjoying something a lot more than I assumed I would. Laser quest, for example.
What's that a euphemism for? Yes, what's laser questing now? I may not have pegged anyone, but I'm absolutely fascinated by it. Why, Kate? Why? Why? That's the heart of the article, isn't it? Kate is fascinated by pages. It's brilliant. She's just gone, I can't stop thinking about pegging, so I'm going to file. It's quite long, isn't it? It's about a thousand words. I go up.
Did you? I did. Why? Did you get to the serious bit? There's a serious bit as well. That's quite exhausting. There is a serious bit, right, which wasn't needed to be fair. But basically, having explained what the prostate is and why exciting it with a bit of pegging can take a man to sexual heights. Wait. She then says, of course, the reason a lot of men don't get their prostate checked is because they don't want to thumb up the bum.
And she's basically going, maybe if we all did a bit more pegging, we'd loosen up a bit about things going up our bums. So the thing, the angle that she's using is that pegging might be good for you. If that's her argument, then the fact that she is not pegging is that she's a fucking hypocrite. That's true, Katie's to try it. Practice what you preach, Kate. Well, she does eventually go on to suggest a maybe mandatory pegging.
Mandatory begging, maybe an extreme stance to take, but I think it would do us all a lot of good. How would you monitor this? I mean... The pegging police. It's like this, the bottom police.
And she does go through a few of the times, then pegging, pegging, has been shown on screen. Yes. Yes. One of them is Deadpool, which shows Brian Reynolds wincing through a pegging by his girlfriend to celebrate International Women's Day. To celebrate. Celebrate. Yeah. Can I just point out that as we record, this is 10 o'clock on a Wednesday morning.
Johnny looked broken. 30 years bit broken. About a year ago I just thought it'd be really nice to do some work that wasn't writing once in a while. I'd be lovely to get on a, if I could get a regular thought on a lovely podcast with nice people and then this is what's happened. And I don't think, I don't think the listeners want to be thinking about my views on pegging. What are your views on pegging, John? Yeah, I have no objection to whatever anyone's into it.
I just don't want to talk about these things in public! I want to go home!
Now, as we said, on the front page of the mail is one of the most striking banner headlines we've ever seen. I'm just going to read it again. Well, that's a teaser, isn't it, Jack? So what's been going on?
Well, the thing is no one at the party remembers what was going on because everyone was on cat and then it's just complete blackout. My favorite thing about the headline is the drawn T exclamation mark at the end of it didn't go well. It's a lovely little wink. And I can't help but thinking if this was a working class person doing drugs, this would have been a shock horror story of like we have drugs epidemic. But if you're doing it, I'm assuming maybe in suburbia, your daughter's birthday, it's just a harmless bit of fun, isn't it?
It's basically Abigail's party 2024. This article is genius. It's so fun to read. It's kind of like if you ask chat GPT to write a Hunter S Thompson short story, but in the style of Bridget Jones.
It's fabulous. So these are some of my favorite excerpts. I mean, you must read the whole thing because it's a joy from start to finish. But the introduction is, why on earth did I do it? I'm not an aging raver, nor a criminal, which I absolutely love. So she's setting that out. So basically it's a story of a mum who wanted to be able to warn her children about the dangers of drugs, but she can't just warn them without trying them. So she tries them at her daughter's birthday party or a party rather. So I love the idea that
The logic of that's insane anyway, the idea that you have to try everything you're warning your children against. Let's hope she's not about to warn them against the dangers of chemsex orgies or this weekend Sarah is about to have a crazy, crazy time. So she picks the auspicious day of her daughter's party and decides to do ketamine in front of all of her friends. She says, given its popularity, I wanted to know what I was dealing with when it came to warning my children aged 16, 17 and 19 about it.
For this next bit, I want you to imagine her swinging her chair around backwards and sitting like a supply teacher who swears and doesn't care who knows about it. She says, Molly, oh, you mean MDMA? In our day, we called her ecstasy. Well, if you want to lose your individuality and all discernment and get yourself arrested for making faces at policemen, be my guest.
That's definitely what happened as well. Do you know what I mean? That's like a personal anecdote, isn't it? It'll win wrong for her. Yeah, she's been she's been hauled off into the into the pigs van by 10 coppers honked hide with her arms behind her back carried out like a handbag because she made a funny face at a policeman higher her face on horse tranquilizer. What I love is that she says that she wants everyone in the story to be anonymous except her own children who she mentions numerous times.
She refers to, I'm assuming it's her daughter's friend who gave her the cat-a-min, the drug dealer. People would say, but she refers to him as the cat-a-min provider. So she does a bump. She makes him do it. I felt really bad for this. So it's literally a 19-year-old's party in their home, and she goes up to one of the people and says, can you give me a bump of cat? And it's like, she's the hostess. It's her house, so we can't say no. We can't say no to the hostess. It's proper peer pressure.
Do you know what I mean? It's absolute peer pressure, but normally peer pressure happens between children, not a mum sliding up to you going, look, I provided all this finger food and the ties are over there. Give us a bump. It's insanity. It's pure insanity. And it completely backfires on her. Does this experiment have the desired effect? Sarah writes, even worse, I can feel the catamom making me grin insanely giggles stupidly. I don't think I've ever felt so foolish. Oh, mum, says my daughter heavily. You're so embarrassing.
It's just awful she cut because she goes in need to a k-hole she can't move her daughter comes over and obviously it's a bit worried she's like what's wrong she's worried about mum she's worried about her mum and she she goes what i mean as you would do. You've taken care of me what the hell is her party talk about drawing focus it's just a poor.
Yeah, don't pull focus. A friend of mine's mum used to always get really drunk and sing simply the best by Tina Turner and open her shirt and wave her boobs around. And I thought that was the most embarrassing thing I'd ever heard of mum do. Actually, that's up to me. That's up to me. That's up to me. It's got a lot more fun than Keptner. Quite sure, because at least she was moving around and dancing and could talk. This poor mum is like looking like an ironing board leaning up against the wall. Can't serve drinks.
Eyes roll back in her head. It's a nightmare. Hashtag kept mum. Hashtag kept mum. Let's get it trending. But I don't even know what we're meant to have learnt from this. What's the... There's one glaring lesson. Don't do drugs at your children's parties. It was such a fail. As far as like cool mums go. She's not a normal mum. She's a cool mum. She's a hashtag kept mum.
And for our final part of the show, we're turning to a couple of women who surprise us all, who manage to break free from their restrictive backgrounds to take on the world, tell us what they really think and show off their lovely hair. Now, you may not be able to pay your electricity bills, but do you know who needs more money? The King, that's who. His income is juicerised by more than 50 per cent! Jove, what's going on?
Right, the king has a lot of stuff and therefore gets a lot of money. It's the short tale of it. What's going to happen here is there, so, right, let me try and get everyone's heads around this because it is quite confusing. The crown estate, a load of land and a load of shit that basically the monarch owns. And there's a bit of a deal that we've made where the profits from the crown estate are not given, the king doesn't take all the profits. They go back to their country, but then taxpayers
pay the sovereign grant, which is a percentage of those profits, which at the moment is set at 12%. It's gone down, it used to be at 25%, now that's 12%. And so essentially, there are profits of 1.1 billion from the crown estate, and he will get 12% of that. So from 2025 to 2026, it'll be 132 million pounds that he's getting from that. So yeah, a huge amount of money, because they need it to do stuff.
to do lots of stuff. They work so hard, guys. Well, that's the thing. They work really hard. For one, that is, that's true. It's so hard. Like, they have to arrive at places where people are happy to see them. Yeah. Sometimes they have to accept some flowers. It's so hard. Well, they are frustrating. It can be, you know, when Anuba either arrives too early or too late. And that happens all the time for Charles, I'm sure. I'm sure he's even getting rushed out the door or he's going, fucking carriage again. But...
Essentially not carriages, because the other thing they need cash for, obviously some of it is for renovation, even though things like, for example, Frogmore Cottage, which was renovated for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, remember them? Boo and hiss. That remains empty, so it's meant 2.4 million to renovate that, and now no one lives there, so that's great. But also helicopters, the Royal Family spent more than £1 million on helicopter journeys last year.
And we take delivery of two new ones to replace their 15-year-old models. But I'm sure, Gron, you can fill us in here. There is some positivity about the helicopter, actually. Well, yes. I mean, I sort of want to bring this up. I mean, this is sort of, so this story, obviously, the Guardian has spun it as OMG, giving royals more money. The Times has spun this as bio-bentleys and green helicopters for Charles. Yeah. Sorry.
We're now saying Bentley's and helicopters are environmentally friendly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What they are is environmentally friendly helicopter. It's like a regular helicopter, but it's got a recycling bin on us. Oh, good. And then an environmentally friendly Bentley. It's like a regular Bentley, but it picks up radio four. So just painted them green. Would that help? Well, it's that Charles can have like a brat summer. Yeah.
But I mean also in other very important real news, Gronya, there's another royal story you've picked up today about the Queen of all our hearts. It's just like every time you think you can move on, something pulls you back. It's another Princess Diana story. So apparently there's a royal biographer who was interviewed this week and she said that just weeks before she passed,
Princess Diana had said to her that what she'd really like is, let's use that Charles the center from the early days of the relationship to be published. So the people would know that he did truly love her. Oh, it's too heartbreaking. It's so sad.
The J.Lo is a modern-day Diana. The greatest love story. Diana's like, I had the greatest love story never told. It did love me once. The fact that that still matches her. The fact that she still valued so much that he once had affection for her is so heartbreaking. I think she really wanted especially for the boys to know that they were brought up into a couple that really did truly love each other once.
Oh my god, the poor thing. I kind of just want to take her from Martini, but she has been dead for a while. It's just, I can't handle it. Princess Diana is my flash earth, so that you could say anything to me. You could give a demonstration. You could say, look, she was a difficult woman. She would have been a hard person to be friends with. And I'd be like, uh-huh, uh-huh. And 30 seconds later, I'd be like, but she was an angel, though.
I'm an angel and she stopped landmines. Exactly she hugged the ace kids. She ended AIDS and landmines. What more do you want?
now. It's finally December. Hooray. So we are free to talk about Christmas and the papers are all excited. There are lots of lists of mad Christmas presents and the Guardian has come up with a piece on Christmas parties and how they're all different these days. So Jacob, what is different about contemporary Christmas office parties? Basically, it's that people lean towards activities rather than just sitting and drinking, right?
This is the trend. Yes, it's some of the activities of litters and examples. People got a centre parks for a tree trekking adventure, an aerial tree trekking adventure, giant jenga, trivia quizzes, crazy golf, escape rooms, the irony of which has spent all year trying to escape the people around you in this office.
Some of them even Sherlock Holmes themed escape rooms in London. This does feel quite London centric to me. Do you know what I mean? Londoners love an activity. I feel like we've broken our kind of serotonin receptors and we're incapable of just drinking now. There has to be some like mad activity that feels like it was created by a random sentence generator.
Jamie, my girlfriend was like the other day, she was like, yeah me and the girls are meeting, one of my friends is bringing her dog, we're gonna do puppy yoga and then go for brunch. It's like, what does that mean? The people in whole hearing those words being like, this is why we wanted to leave Europe. It's like, but this is it.
I'm on their side. I read this. I read this and I'm like, why can't we just go to the pub and drink? Why can't we? But there's a part of me that's like, I'm one step away from calling an escape room woke nonsense.
I'm worried about the political leanings that this shows I have, the fact that I just want to go to the pub. I feel like I'm slowly morphing into Jeremy Clarkson, as I say. But it does just feel quite sad. It feels sad that like, I don't know, why can't we just go to the pub and drink? And one of the things, by the way, one of the sort of, one of the reasonings as to why companies are leaning towards this,
There's a group from this piece where companies always consider worst case scenarios. And after the Me Too movement, they're worried about sexual harassment. And it's like, if you've got employees that are capable of doing that, you don't get around it by taking them to an escape room. It's like, well, as long as John doesn't drink, he's all right.
I'm glad that you brought that up because I felt like they buried the lead because they were talking at the beginning of the article about how almost a third of Gen Z don't drink.
You know, if you don't drink, you wouldn't want to go for a chat at the pub with your company. But then later on, they say, well, actually, this is more about employers avoiding lawsuits. And they give an example of one boss that apparently got drunk and promised someone a promotion. Yeah. And then was sued by the employee. Yeah.
That's the boss drinking, though. Do you know what I mean? It's like, if the boss doesn't drink, let the other people drink and have a nice time and just maybe the boss not drink. All of them have some level of alcohol problems or need for therapy and they can't be trusted around alcohol. That doesn't mean just don't drink. I mean, get help!
It also sounds like toddlers, don't you think? The toddlers with drink. I just want to say that I heard of something this weekend that did give me the shivers. It's called bongo bingo, have you heard of this? Again, another activity created by random sentence generator. Okay, bongo bingo, it's not just bingo, right? So it's bingo with a whole lot, it's like bingo plus perseco lunch plus rave.
is mental. This is what I mean. This is what I mean. One of those things should be enough to satisfy an adult. Like one of those actors, you shouldn't want to go to UK garage brunch. What? I really do want to go to UK garage brunch. No, no, no. I'm going. I'm going. There's someone wrong with me.
And that's the end of today's paper cuts. Thanks to everyone who contributed to today's episode. That's Ava Santina, Coco Khan, Daniel Fox, Granny Maguire, Jack Guinness, Jacob Hawley, Jacob Jarvis, Jason Haysley, John Ellidge, Marcus Briggstock.
Natasha Devon, Rosie Holt and Scotty. We love you all. I've been Miranda Sawyer and you've been listening to Papercuts on a day when, 56 years ago, New Jersey declared the album Two Virgin's by John Lennon and Yoko Ono to be pornographic. We'd like to declare that Imagine is a little bit shit. See you next time.
Paper Cuts is written and presented by me, Miranda Soya, audio production by Jade Bailey, production by Liam Tate, music by Simon Williams, designed by James Parrot. The managing editor is Jacob Jarvis, the executive producer is Martin Boytosh, and the group editor is Andrew Harrison. Paper Cuts is a podmaster's production.
