From BBC turmoil and budget blunders to migration protests, media job cuts and the unstoppable rise of Celebrity Traitors, 2025 was a year that tested Britain’s institutions, and its attention span.

In this special end-of-year episode of the Grayling Media Podcast, UK CEO Heather Blundell is joined by two powerhouses in British journalism: Alex Goss, Head of News at The Sun, and Darren McCaffrey, Sky News presenter and political editor.

Together, they unpack the stories that genuinely moved audiences, angered readers, rattled markets and reshaped the media landscape. Drawing on first-hand insight from newsrooms, studios and Westminster corridors, the conversation goes beyond headlines to explore what these shifts mean for businesses, brands and leaders navigating an increasingly volatile information environment.

It also wouldn’t be our Media in Review without casting a light on the heroes and villains shaping Britain and the media in 2025.

Listen to the full episode now.

 

Transcript

00:00:00 Heather Blundell

Welcome the Grayling Media Podcast. I’m Heather Blundell, Grayling’s UK CEO and this week we’re bringing you a very special end of year episode, our media in review, 2025. We shall be picking over the bones of the year, discussing the bigger stories and what implications they could have for clients and business.

I’m joined today by two powerhouses of the British media, Alex Goss and Darren McCaffrey.

Alex, friend of the show, has been Head of News at The Sun for a decade and puts together a paper that quietly sets the news agenda across the UK. Welcome.

Also joining us is Darren, a presenter and prominent figure at Sky News covering general News  anchoring business coverage until a revamp this summer, of which we will discuss more later, but mostly specialising in politics during a hell of a year. Welcome Darren.

00:00:53 Darren McCaffrey

A very good hello.

00:00:56 Heather Blundell

Thank you for coming. So turning us to the big events of the year that have shaped Britain for me. There are several that leap off the page, including the turmoil of the BBC. Small boats and asylum protests. Starmer’s government wobbles, Trump siding with the Russians when it comes to a war in Europe and the astonishing success of Celebrity Traitors. Alex, would you agree? And what have I missed?

00:01:20 Alex Goss

I think the litmus test for us is always ‘what are our readers telling us?’ And we’re lucky enough for The sun to have absolute direct feedback everyday via the news desk and the two things that lit the blue touch paper was the issues surrounding migrants, small boats, the protests outside the Epping Hotel, and not to cut across your professionalism, but the budget as well. Absolutely. You know, in the wake of that Wednesday, the feedback, the number of letters we’re getting, the calls we were getting, the groundswell of anger and questions.

00:01:52 Heather Blundell

People still phone the news desk. Don’t they?

00:01:54 Alex Goss

100%. That’s where 99% of our stories still come from yeah, 100%. And it’s direct feedback to our readers. It’s the most efficient way to chat to everybody. And yeah, that 100%, day after day and everyone saw what happened in the summer following the Epping protests. There was a huge groundswell of emotion across all areas. And that really fed through into the news agenda. It dominated the summer, unlike any other subject, and it put a huge problem in the government’s intraday, and then likewise the Budget that they were stalling it for so long, obviously added one element of hand grenade and then on the other side of the coin they then let us in this situation where most Sun readers work very hard to pay their way and the 99% of them contacting you, saying I just don’t understand what’s happened here. Why am I being hammered in such a way when actually all they had to do was turn up, fire up a growth agenda, get Britain spending, get Britain investing? And it seems to be quite the opposite. Everyone is in it, but some for some readers, certainly those were the two mega issues that filled the letters pages and the phones rang off the hook.

00:03:04 Heather Blundell

You talk about that groundswell of emotion, does that ever make stories difficult to cover?

00:03:09 Alex Goss

Every story involves a human and if you’re someone that contacts us, who have been brave enough to either pick up the phone or at a challenging time of your life, and that is something that we’re very mindful of we always treat things as sensitively and professionally as we can. And you know, 100 people that contact us, they won’t necessarily have a story. But when it comes to those proper issues, that’s why we react in the way we do.

00:03:32 Heather Blundell

It matters. Yeah. And the sun has really led the way on the BBC chaos and exposing the alleged toxic culture inside Strictly and leading the way on the Panorama fake row, do you think the BBC can or even should survive in its current form?

00:03:50 Alex Goss

I think even stripping away the daily rows that could appear and the questions over bias and those other innate institutional challenges, the question is, in the modern world £175 a year and rising, and linear TV’s 55% of that bill. But much like print and other types of, I hesitate to use the word legacy media, but you know that’s an older audience, which is in steady decline. And you think everybody currently has to cough up that Bill. What returns they get on it compared to all the other competing interests and investments in journalism. And I’m all for journalism reporters and investments in it across any political area, wherever it may be, it doesn’t matter who you work for. Britain needs more journalists. It’s the really important thing, and independent journalism. More power can’t get held to account. But as an institution realistically, are my children going to be faced paying £175 to have the privilege of local radio that they may not listen to, a website, which obviously is very measured in how it handles its affairs and linear TV, which they don’t watch.

00:04:52 Heather Blundell

Do you think the new TV can survive?

00:04:54 Alex Goss

We’ll have both thought about this in, in many ways, wouldn’t we? But I think it’s similar to print. The way it’s funded and the way it’s supported, there’s a loyal audience, but it’s changing, or even family members, I can’t remember watching a linear TV Christmas advert in years, almost just the nature of work and obviously we will do different hours. But that family water cooler moment. Now families have all the different.. everyone streaming something. You know, the options are huge.

00:05:22 Darren McCaffrey

Can I just say on the BBC, I think there’s two things at play here and you know, obviously, it does not help itself. No one is going to claim it does.

Two things. First of all, it is probably alongside the Premier League and maybe the Royal Family, one of Britain’s greatest exports, it is a brand that everyone around the world is very familiar with and that’s important in the world of soft power. I would say for Britain, but more importantly for us at home is it’s essentially probably the last remaining Town Square where I would actually disagree. I think that and by the way, this kind of stats prove this. That almost everyone, even young people, engage with the BBC in some form pretty much on a daily basis. That’s its website, its local news, local radio stations. But the programmes producers, I mean Celebrity Traitors, was bloody brilliant this year. And my concern is, what does Britain look like if it doesn’t have an institution like the BBC where there is a common shared sense of culture?

I think the BBC overreach in many regards, but without it I think people would end up in the silos a lot more and I’m not entirely sure that’s healthy for them. But more importantly, is it healthy for Britain as well, I would say.

00:06:42 Heather Blundell

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And staying with you there, Darren. I’d really like to delve a little deeper into politics with you. And you mentioned earlier the budgets and many commentators have said the Budget last month was all about replicating her idealogical backbenchers with a raft of policies that sound nice on paper but will cost the electorate a fortune and potentially cripple the British economy, she said. It was a budget for growth. What do you think well?

00:07:09 Darren McCaffrey

What I find extraordinary, as this government said, it’s #1 property was growth. It doesn’t really talk about that very much apparently. Now the moral mission of this government is to bring down child poverty, which is very different indeed. Maybe a noble cause, but it’s very different from finding growth. Most extraordinary thing, and I think it feeds into all our politics fundamentally, is living standards have not risen in this country since the financial crisis. The average Brit is now 40% less well off than the average American. Our GDP grew by 2.4%, on average per annum between 1980 and 1997, 2.4%. Do you know what it’s been for the last 18 years, 0.6%, we’re all getting poorer, it’s decline and the government did have an answer to this. This is what they saw the electorate, which is that they would find growth. Growth raises all votes. It means that you can invest in public services. Trying to find that it’s quite difficult. No one’s going to deny that. They were given a pretty poor inheritance. Again, most conservatives would admit that.

But the problem fundamentally I think for this government is two things which is i.e. what is Keir Starmer’s core mission. I just talked about the fact that it’s incredibly confused. I’m not entirely sure he knows what it is, which then means what do you then deliver if you don’t really know what’s motivating for? And the second thing is, are his backbenchers and what’s very clear is they’re just not prepared to continence well for cuts or austerity, or public spending cuts. I mean, many of them worked in the charity sector for councils during the coalition years, when there are big budget cuts. And they’re just not prepared to go there, even though actually, it’s what the Labour leadership initially wanted to do. And that just means we’re stuck in this position where you’ve got backbenchers not prepared to see cutss where the governments going to stick by its fiscal rules, where the debt mountain is ballooning, and the only option, frankly for the government is a very old school, one which is raising taxes, which, by the way, it’s also be honest for it. People did not vote for.

00:09:16 Heather Blundell

Many companies, and you know many of our clients are saying loud and clear, they cannot afford rises in minimum wage and revamped business rates. What arguments should they be using? Do you think it’s got through to the chancellor?

00:09:31 Darren McCaffrey

I think it is on this argument that this government needs to understand that business generates revenue, generates growth. They employ people. We’re already seeing pressure when it comes to the employment rate in this country, simply because it has become more expensive to employ people, particularly younger people as well, at a time in which there will be being in white collar jobs, at least, a lot of pressure from advanced technology like AI.

I and I think that argument is we get that at the end of the day you’ve had to raise taxes last year on business. You’ve done a bit less this year, but it’s no more. Business is lots of different business and I think this is why we might well see a Labour government take Britain back into the customs union by the end of this Parliament. Actually, it’s one quite a lot of businesses would like to see. It will help Britain’s trading ability, Brexit, whatever you think about the political arguments, I think the economics do say it’s been a drag on growth. That might be Labour’s thing that might be good for business, but at the end of the day, the message I think from business to the Chancellor should be that you have to make this stuff easier. And to be fair, Labour have conceded a little bit clearly when it comes to this Employment Bills they, you know, they have rolled back on some of their early rights simply because they will realise their business is in a pretty difficult spots.

00:11:03 Heather Blundell

Yeah. And what about the Tories? In what? Telegraph. The Telegraph has dubbed Cheminism. Is that an actual thing, or she just had a lucky few weeks and a new speech writer?

00:11:13 Darren McCaffrey

I mean, let’s be honest, but being Leader of the Opposition is probably the worst job in the world. I mean it, particularly when you’ve gone to the worst defeat since 1832. I mean, that’s horrendously difficult, and it’s made even more difficult by the fact that, unlike previous conservative leaders, she’s been outflanked on the right by Nigel Farage. So Kemi Badenoch. He’s in the difficult position. I think she’s done pretty well this year. I would say in many ways, maybe apart from you know Zak Polanski, she’s probably been the most successful party leader this year. Farage may well have peaked, but the question is all the voters listing, I think people in Westminster seem to go ohh. Actually, Kemi’s doing quite well.

Does anyone who reads The Sun newspaper know who Kemi Badenoch is? Probably not, and in a really crowded field in a fractured politics, can she cut through? She might be able to, and I think the Conservatives, focusing on the economy is a good idea, but whether it’s going to work or not, I mean they could. They could do equally as badly as labour next May. We might all be asking the same questions about how long you’ll last again.

00:12:16 Heather Blundell

Yeah, of course. You’ve you’ve mentioned Farage there and Reform so much noise about whether they could actually run the country. So many people have told me they think Nigel Farage could be the next Prime Minister but can’t name three reform policies. What do you think?

00:12:32 Darren McCaffrey

I think where we’re where we’re at with reform, it’s not unique to Britain and it comes back to some of the issues I was talking about, which is people are frustrated. I think migration feeds into this for a very obvious reason, which is whether you agree with migration, regular/irregular migration doesn’t really matter, it’s that every election, at least since 2010, people have consistently voted to bring the numbers down, and they’ve gone in the opposite direction.

And so it’s not surprised people are frustrated and they do feel very let down with this Labour government. I think there were relatively high expectations that things would change and they don’t seem to have done so it is not a surprise that people want a more radical alternative, whether by the way, it’s on the right or indeed on the left. I think the difficulty for Farage is, and I’ve followed him and I know him for a very long period of time and it’s been consistent throughout his political career,  It is always a one man band essentially. And it remains a one-man-band and largely, and this may well change, but and they’re trying to change. But again, it remains largely A one issue party if you ask most voters are out reform, they’ll say two things, which is Farage and immigration and that’s probably it, and momentum. All I would say matters massively in politics and I do think that they probably will do very well next year. They could win Wales, they could come third, maybe even second in Scotland and they could do well, very well in local elections in England.

And that matters because, as I say, it creates momentum. It means more money, more defections, but more importantly, instinctively, people like to back winners. And if people think Reform are doing well, they’re way more likely to vote for them.

00:14:14 Heather Blundell

I’d like to turn your attention a little bit to the media landscape. I often think the world of PR is a wild ride with backstabbing and bitching, and for some the constant.

00:14:22 Darren McCaffrey

Not in this, not in this room.

00:14:25 Heather Blundell

And then I look at the media this year and life in PR seems more chilled than a Jet2 holiday. ITV is currently engaged in a bloodbath of jobs as it downgrades daytime.

Sky, as we mentioned earlier, we can chat about in a bit and its business coverage and announced it was pivoting to paid premium content. The Sun continues to push its own subscription service for premium content. I believe the X-rated version of Dear Deirdre is a particularly strong source of revenue.

00:14:57 Alex Goss

Yeah, that’s for a great value, just with the special off in Black Friday.

00:15:04 Heather Blundell

Reach PLC gauging out hundreds of jobs from their regional papers, the Mirror, Express can the Daily Telegraph really be worth 500 million? And how will the Mail raise the funds to pay for it? And then of course, you know, we touched on a turmoil at the BBC losing a director general and they could be facing a £billion lawsuit from the US president.

Of course, the news keeps coming with Hugh Edwards in the news trying to make his comeback. Alex, what on Earth is going on and why?

00:15:35 Alex Goss

Well, I think if you zoom out, in the next five to 10 years, we are going to see the most transformational period in how people consume media. And you know, advertising, PR in any way, shape or form. Our children, now the first generation to grow up with screens constantly by their side, just today Australia of course are fighting back against that, in terms of what social media does, but with AI, which is the giant elephant in the room, all bubble questions aside, in the short term, in the long term, as you touched on, it will absolutely transform white collar work. And then if that’s going to happen from that area, we already see it with media consumption. You know, the big bet previously was on volume traffic. You had SEO, search, social, everyone’s looking. I don’t know what the Sky percentages were, but huge volumes of national newspaper publishers traffic could come from those types of stories which aren’t necessarily immediate breaking news, lifestyle tips, that type of thing and reach, I know, obviously they’re a huge central hub that focused on that and they’re very rapidly discovered we’re approaching Google Zero, that day where we already sitting with the AI rollout. It answers the question for you. You don’t need to ask it what times the game on can I get a parking space, anything like that? How do I clean my windscreen with a lemon. That’s all there. AI can answer those questions. So actually the shift’s going to come back to and it’s happening very rapidly. Original, genuine quality content because anyone can generate it. Look at recruitment. Now I can write you a perfect work, perfect CV tailored to a job and then you submit that obviously in three seconds. It’s then read by AI at the recruiters. Recruiters now come back, so they got to interview people face to face again and actually talk to them because it doesn’t work that way. And it’s the same in consuming media now and AI can RIP off and write the slot. If you look at the coming back to PR and consumer land, our news inbox we probably get. There’s a timeline between 8:00 and 11:00 in the morning where we’ll get 4-500 identical AI press releases, which are essentially written by different firms who will set up a different name. So it looks like it’s a real human. Whatever the real story may be, all nothing based on any facts or particular research.

But passable for an intro, they’ll file them into the inbox constantly, and you can see an immediate glances. That’s ChatGPT, because even the formatting you can see that there’s no phone number to talk to a human on it, and most of it is nonsense. But they’re clearly billing clients to do this work. Well, it’s not going to take long for clients to work out that you know a) nothing gets in and this level of spam, this industrial slop that’s driven out has the opposite effect. And now the way you would you break through to any of these things is talking to other human beings as we said earlier.

00:18:05 Darren McCaffrey

Can I just add to that. I think there’s actually an opportunity here, as you’ve only pointed out, which is around actual premium content, so actual original journalism and their people can have to up their game effectively. You know, I think if we end up in a world in which we’ve got a lot less clickbait rubbish, let’s be honest, and better stories that originally sourced that will be a good place, though there will be a big question about how that’s going to be funded and who’s going to pay for it. But second of all, I think there’s also an opportunity here that in a world where we’re going to get almost a tsunami of information every single day, a bit like your inbox is that, and this is the great hope, maybe the only hope for legacy media that people will return back to names they know and trust. If we live in a world in which Kier Starmer’s made a speech and there are three different versions of it that look exactly the same, that you/I/no one else could ever decide which one is real, and he’s saying wildly different things that actually big media brands that people trust, actually could really become quite important again.

00:19:10 Heather Blundell

Yeah.

00:19:10 Alex Goss

We’ve already seen that with Google, obviously, and there before AI roads our authors have to have much like you would have was different. Obviously, being literally on television, but the digital authors will all have their profile a small blurb than Google would surface that result more efficiently because it proved it was a huge real person. That’s not been churned out, that comes back.

00:19:31 Heather Blundell

Darren. What about Sky News? Do you see it dropping business news because there were not enough people watching it? Are people not interested in business and corporate affairs?

00:19:43 Darren McCaffrey

No. For formal actually, genuinely I would say this. Obviously someone who presented it and it. No, I mean in terms of ratings, most days actually tend to do better than the general news.

I think in all these things and I, you know, I can’t really speak for the why the decision was ultimately made, but things change and Sky has decided. Probably someone understanding some we talked about in your television, you know, fewer, fewer people are watching the new television. I think there are different ways to tell different stories. Sky is involved now in a strategy of essentially focusing on premium content primarily online, the TV channel will exist because lots of people still do watch it and they want to, particularly for what Sky now going to concentrate on, which is live and breaking news. So when things happen, people turn on Sky News. The rest of the time, I think there’s just better, better places for a bit more bespoke news and use that in the end. Also, was going to have to pay for itself. And you know that is ultimately going to be in the future less and less in terms of leaving your television just because the same newspapers elsewhere that advertising market is shrinking and it’s much more online. So if you can have a podcast or a newsletter or innovator socials, or indeed YouTube, where Sky’s concentrating a lot on. If you can make that work as a better use of resources. So guys absolutely still committed to business news.

I think it’s just a change of environment where a programme format just got to the end of its life as things do. I mean things just change.

00:21:22 Heather Blundell

We did some research earlier this year that found that trust in politicians is now so tightly bound up with authenticity. You spoke about this a little bit earlier, Darren. But Starmer can often lose because he’s either too polished or too plastic, whereas Farage blustered and less measured style may attract enemies, he’s more convincing. This has huge implications for we work with a lot of you know C-Suite and we spoke just now about Business Media and then you’ve interviewed leading politicians, leading business figures. You know is it OK to sound a bit rough and not too polished and can you tell if someone’s been overly media trained and what would your advice be to CEO’s before doing those interviews.

00:22:05 Darren McCaffrey

I think it’s difficult, you know, CEO’s are not politicians. I mean, politicians at the end of the day are sales people really, when it comes down to it, you know they’re either selling the policy of they’re selling themselves and that’s not the case for a lot of business leaders. And I think a lot of journalists need to understand ultimately their primary job as CEO is to run a company, to make profit and bring a return for shareholders. It’s not necessarily constantly talk to the media, but the media should be part of that because as most companies know, obviously they’ve got customers and the customers are the people out there on the streets watching and listening to these things and all I would say is absolutely be yourself. And by the way, if that means you’re ridiculously geeky, that you hopefully know the inside out of your business and you love it and whatever or you’re a bit wooden about it. Don’t try and perform. You’re not. it reminds me of Gordon Brown. I mean, back in the day. But you know, when he started doing a huge, huge channel and he’s just this enormous fixed grin on his face because someone told them that’s what you need to do. And he was like, what’s your favourite soap? It’s The EastEnders.

I mean, who calls it the EastEnders but he’s not being honest, he’s not been himself. Was Gordon Burnett, who actually is quite a nice guy and cares about the holds. I mean the best bits.

00:23:26 Heather Blundell

But they’ve become a lot more popular now because he’s being totally authentic himself.

00:23:29 Darren McCaffrey

Precisely. And so all I would say is, I mean, you know, unless you’re mad or evil and just be yourself and people might not be able to relate to it, but they’re far more likely to like you.

00:23:42 Heather Blundell

Yeah. And believe you.

00:23:44 Darren McCaffrey

Believe you and that is so, so key.

00:23:46 Heather Blundell

Looking ahead to next year and some of the trends, Alex, The Sun used to be obsessed with stunts and there’s been a lot of industry discussion in our world about the PR stunt being dead, and all the all that we need to do now is hand out freebies at railway stations rather than floating something down the Thames. Have you seen any consumer stunts that have caught your eye this year and genuinely made you smile? How many weak ones do you reject every day, and do you think the format’s dead?

00:24:18 Alex Goss

Well, I think it’s now a challenging format because of the way people engage with readers and their own consumers. I think it’s kind of transcended from the stunt. It’s more the campaign now that is where you have the most impact and the most engagement pursuit of it rather than try and rubber duck floating down the Thames or whatever it may be, it’s actually getting behind an issue that’s important. Supporting that issue exactly. And that is where you get the engagement and support and all the other network that comes behind me. So I think the stunt is not dead. It is transformed into campaigns, which is for the benefit of everybody, obviously ultimately.

00:24:53 Darren McCaffrey

And I said the problem was stunts. They did someone, a holiday company, was a Tui did one with The Traitors guy in a box quite close to the city recently. I think the problem is in a world of AI, which can generate loads of bad videos at all times. And even if you did a great stunt, a lot of people wouldn’t be convinced by it. It’s just that thing now that we’re almost all made now to question things and stunts are a bit out of fashion because that I would suggest.

00:25:23 Alex Goss

Well, again, it comes back to authenticity as well in terms of what you want to put, unless it’s a genuinely comedy, hilarious guy. But then that that’s what you need to nail on the dartboard, which is a very tricky thing to do in challenging times.

00:25:36 Heather Blundell

Yeah. And thinking about the year ahead, Darren, business and across the UK and Europe has been very rocked by the unpredictability of Trump. And there seems perhaps no sign of stability ahead. What do you think?

00:25:50 Darren McCaffrey

There was one bit of good news this year if you live north of the water, that Scotland’s going to be in the World Cup. For a lot of Scottish people, that’s probably the best thing that’s happened this year. I feel that we’re on the carousel of news or the whack-a-mole of news of essentially, largely the same stories coming up over and over again, you know whether it’s Nigel Farage, the bumbling labour government, Donald Trump, it does feel that lots of our, I would say, on any given day, the stories that we cover are often quite similar to what we’ve done in the past. And I think that’s going to carry on to next year. I mean, obviously, politically we’ve got the elections in May.

Absolutely crucial for Starmer, I mean genuinely it could make or break for Starmer. I mean, I think there’s little doubt about that. There really isn’t. And there’s talk about Angela Rayner returning which is massively part of that and obviously that could feed into what we talk about Jimmy Bain because, well, so politically, I would say the first week of January, it’s all going to be about Scotland, Wales and local elections domestically here in the UK.

I think internationally, if you’re in any doubt about where Donald Trump stands in the world and what he thinks about it, or indeed JD Vance, I mean it was written in almost Hollywood-esque sign last Friday with that national security documents. Things are going to get, I would say, pretty tricky with Europe over the next year. I mean it’s pretty clear that they’ve just had enough and they’ve absolutely worked out that ideologically, Europe is in a very different place from where macro America is. And I think it’s going to  get very, very strange. That’s even with Keith Thomas in, because I think one of the reasons Donald Trump like he’s done because he wanted something, majority, given the fact that that doesn’t seem to matter much more any more for him. And I mean for Keith Starmer it is going to make that relationship tricky, and I think we probably will see an end to the war in Ukraine, but probably not in favour of Ukraine. So I think next year could get really weak and will that embolden Putin and Russia? I mean it, next year could internationally, at least very, very tricky indeed. I would say for us here in Western Europe. Yeah, sorry. Sorry to be a diner.

00:27:59 Heather Blundell

No.

00:27:59 Darren McCaffrey

We’ve got the World Cup we’ve got the World Cup.

00:28:01 Alex Goss

The only two words that matter.

00:28:08 Heather Blundell

Alex. Last time I saw you over a fabulous dinner in the Shard, you said the most exciting development of this year would be the new Whetherspoons opening in London bridge, has it lived up to expectations?

00:28:20 Alex Goss

Do you know what? I was lucky enough. Thank you, Sir Tim and all your team, to pour the first pint. And at 8:00 in the morning. Bit of a sharpener before morning conference. We don’t do it everyday, but the breakfast is actually better value than our staff canteen. So I don’t know if that’s going to get me in trouble at work. I mean, I’m a big fan of spoons.

00:28:41 Darren McCaffrey

We called up the spoons Press Office. Because it’s a fascinating business on many, many levels earlier on this year we said we want to go to the nicest Spoons in the country. Where is that?

Well, yeah. Have a guess. Well, now it’s in Harrogate and it is very, very nice indeed, but it’s great. And the thing about Spoons, to be fair to them, what I love is it’s, you know, we talk at the pub being the centre of the community. Mm-hmm. I mean, we were there all day and there were people who were there for hours and sometimes they would just sit in their own in the paper having a pint or a cup of coffee, but also just talking to locals. And for a lot of people is a lot of people, millions of people, the local spoons or the local pub is, you know, it’s well, it’s a big part of their life. It’s almost a necessary part of the budget.

00:29:30 Alex Goss

Absolutely, hammering every element of their business, you know, just from the Knicks last year alone, as you seen, that could have cost 8090 thousand jobs in hospitality. All those part time work, that beating illegally. And I’m from rural Suffolk there.

And there is nothing else other than the pub park is still open, and that’s where your you know, your child’s going go and do the pot wash on a Sunday where everyone does their growing up drinking culture changed, obviously, but I’m sure for the better in many healthier ways. But ultimately as a the community service it provides is getting hammered. You know, it’s £7 a pint and people are thinking well, Oh my God.

00:29:55 Darren McCaffrey

It’s mad, it’s mad. It is mad. I mean, it’s notable that drinking, the scenario has become everywhere in the country, by the way, it just, I mean almost to levels that it feels kind of slightly unsustainable, not sustainable.

00:30:06 Heather Blundell

Yeah, yeah. Well, it wouldn’t be a Media in Review without our punchy end of year awards for our final section. So at our first award coming to you first, Alex.

What was the most shocking story of 2025 leaving the nation stunt?

00:30:27 Alex Goss

I think when they let the Epping Attacker out inadvertently of all the things that you could have done wrong, and I appreciate 400 people accidentally released every year. It’s prisoner states 80,000. It’s maxed out. You know, they’re hugely up against it. But by Lord, honestly, it was just silence when that came out. And then it was a really, really this can’t have actually happened, can it?

Staggering. And again, that’s caused a huge reaction from our readers.

00:30:54 Darren McCaffrey

I mean not only that, but they he hung around the prison for four hours trying to get back in.

Yeah. And they give him money to get on a train ticket, though I don’t know why. Seemingly they all end up in Finsbury Park, but that’s a whole other discussion, I think for me, I mean, again, not.

00:31:04 Alex Goss

Off he went.

00:31:12 Darren McCaffrey

Not to be too, too serious. Well, to be serious. But also, I think, was the attack on the synagogue in Manchester and this is a reminder of.

You know, we’ve got a problem in and it’s not just here, but with anti-Semitism in this country and it’s a really, really big issue and you know it’s just a reminder of how you know we need to get on top of it. Effectively, we need to get on top of it and how, you know, a lot of people in this country feel very uneasy, actually, about things today.

00:31:44 Heather Blundell

Yeah, you probably answered this one already actually with your first answer, but Alex biggest gaffe of the year blunders.

00:31:51 Alex Goss

Oh, it’s gotta be the OCR. How the IT guy there, feel sorry for him. But everything OK, Gary? And then Bing. Whoops. And then, yeah, that’s got to be the one. I’m sure that would be up in your awards list as well. But yeah, publishing the entire budget. Who has a the most market sensitive document?

That’s gotta take gold for me. And extraordinary. It was outsourced. IT wasn’t it. And they’re preparing for the big surge. And then it turned out 38 people at Reuters had already downloaded before it happened. I don’t know.

00:32:19 Darren McCaffrey

Yeah, absolutely right.

00:32:22 Heather Blundell

That, I mean, it was shambolic that the staff had, but it wasn’t it.

00:32:26 Darren McCaffrey

Yeah. I just, I actually because it was a gaff, it wasn’t gaff, but it was notable in the sense of it was kind of Rachel Reeves crying at PMQ’s. And I say that because I we still don’t know why and.

I mean, everyone kind of thinks it’s because she kind of went these things are really, really fast. I couldn’t. It’s my job, which, by the way, is a very understandable reaction. And again, I just think in those situations kind of own it like, that’s what makes you. But what she has done by the way and what she did do is let’s be honest about it, she saved her job because the way the market reacted.

And by the way, she’s so now wedded to Starmer and it’s a bit like when quasi quoted to this trust when they get rid of, when you get rid of me. They’ll come out to you.

00:33:20 Alex Goss

It was a bit like, if your pilot came on the tannoy sobbing, you are running the economy and I have every sympathy for what happened there. I could see why markets were nervous.

00:33:33 Heather Blundell

Alex best the best interview you’ve done this year? What was what has been most Memorable?

00:33:38 Alex Goss

Obviously I’ve got to go in house and I’ve got to praise Stephen Morris, who’s one of our most talented reporters, and he did an interview with the Premier League referee, David Coote, who we now know lately obviously has been in court for very serious offences. But as he talked about his sexuality, his career will led him into those difficult situations as he’s leaving everything aside from the court case, of course. I implore everyone to watch it, it’s a really powerful half an hour of proper journalism there from Stephen, so hopefully it gets all the porters he deserves for that..

00:34:07 Heather Blundell

Yeah. Amazing. Darren. What about you?

00:34:09 Darren McCaffrey

Ohh. I’m gonna go completely left field here. You’ll probably not guess. I wanna say Bonnie Blue.

00:34:15 Heather Blundell

Ohh, that documentary.

00:34:17 Darren McCaffrey

The reason I say this is because it is, I’d say, the interview is a fascinating view of the year because everyone’s got a view on it, which makes it a great interview. I mean, she’s a fascinating character, and I think in many ways it gets the heart of loads of discussions and loads of sense of morality and what it means in the society we live in. It’s endlessly fascinating.

00:34:41 Heather Blundell

I certainly didn’t come away from it not liking her.

00:34:44 Darren McCaffrey

No, I mean in many ways, you know what?

She’s an incredible business person. I think you should think ask this question of yourself the way that you react to that interview actually tells you an awful lot about the person that you’re talking to.

So if you want to work out how they feel, just ask them that question, how do you feel about Bonnie Blue? You’ll get a general sense of what they think about lots of things, I would suggest, in life.

It was a great interview cause it’s one of those things. As you say, absolutely engage with it and you absolutely think about it afterwards.

00:35:30 Heather Blundell

Alex, hero of the year?

00:35:30 Alex Goss

For me, it would be Jimmy Mizen’s parents. Do you recall the case of poor Jimmy Mizen, who died in the bakery. He was fatally injured by his killer with a broken glass and we had the great exclusive earlier this year that his killer was out performing as a rapper, breaching bail conditions. We got him ready to send back to prison, but they have not ever taken the side of anger against him. Their level of forgiveness was incredible and inspirational, and their true anger obviously again was at the **** up in terms of justice and the ministry and what had gone on there to allow that to happen. If again, if you watch their response, there’s something being really proud of you. Definitely watch it.

00:36:09 Heather Blundell

Absolutely. Darren, hero of the year other than Bonnie Blue.

00:36:15 Darren McCaffrey

I was not going to say that. I’m actually not going for a person because I’d actually thought of a campaign, and I think the one that’s massively stood out. Also, because I love travel, is Jet2. I think they’ve played an absolute blinder this year. I mean, I literally have heard like 7 year old kids on the street.

00:36:38 Heather Blundell

My yeah, my boy does, is this actually thing?

00:36:40 Darren McCaffrey

Yeah. It’s so incredibly saying, they’re selling T-shirts. They’ve have the woman who’s the voiceover for the ads singing to DJ songs at concerts. I mean, what a phenomenal thing for what is essentially a family budget holiday airlines to do. They have played an absolute blinder. If you know if anyone wants to look at how to do a really great campaign and it’s a proper campaign on TV, online, socials, billboards, they do it so bloody well.

00:37:25 Heather Blundell

Your villain of the year?

00:37:27 Alex Goss

That’s going to be the Prince formerly known as Andrew. it’s an obvious accolade, I think.

00:37:33 Heather Blundell

It’s not gone away, has it? It’s going to rumble on from now on.

00:37:35 Alex Goss

It’s not going away. It’s going to rumble on. The royal family, of course, have been dealing with this issue for years. They knew more was coming from the States, that was unquestionable. Whatever’s developed publicly, clearly the King has been thinking about this for many, many months and years beforehand.

Lots of questions remain. It’s another issue which touches the readers a lot about what he’s going to do with the rest of his life, and the long lasting effects he could have had on the great name of the Royal Family.

00:38:07 Darren McCaffrey

Yeah, particularly internationally as well, right? Yeah, I’m going to say my villain of the year, because he is a villain in the end, is Alan Carr, Chatty Man. And from Celebrity Traitors. I’m genuinely quite obsessed by Celebrity Traitors.

00:38:09 Alex Goss

Hmm.

00:38:21 Darren McCaffrey

And obviously, being a traitor makes him a villain, even though he’s played for the biggest winner from that series. I actually went to see Graham Norton being filmed last week, which I’ve never done before. It’s quite fun, and he was the main star, and it’s also very clear that, I’m sure he’s getting sick talking about it, but he is going to live off this. I mean, his career will now have taken off for the next 10 years.

He was the most entertaining character on that programme and it was a great TV series. I completely agree about the death of linear television and the death of, certainly when we were kids, the next day everyone would talk about it.

00:39:05 Alex Goss

Water cooler moment.

00:39:05 Darren McCaffrey

Yeah, the programme you watched. You come home and go, “Oh, God. Did you see that?” And we just don’t have that very often. There are even hotter months for it.

I remember the likes of Pop Idol, the final between Gareth Gates and Will Young, 2003. I think it felt like the whole nation was watching that night and that so rarely happens. With rare exceptions and sport being one of them, Celebrity Traitors has been this which felt that essentially almost everyone’s been watching it.

And as someone who works in television, I’m pleased it’s still just about the time. But Alan Cole, what a star. And he deserves some milk because he was genuinely the stand out from that. And so yeah. And he’s played it so well so.

00:39:47 Heather Blundell

And that reacted at the end as well it was.

00:39:53 Heather Blundell

Alex. Darren, thank you so much for joining us and for your insights. It’s been a whirlwind of a year and your perspective makes it even more fascinating. And to our listeners and from everyone at Grayling, we wish you a very happy Christmas. We will be back in 2026 with more stories, more insights and maybe a few surprises along the way. Thank you for listening.

00:40:13 Darren McCaffrey

Thank you very much. Merry Christmas.

00:40:16 Alex Goss

Thank you.

 

Back