Alas Vine & Hitchens
Episodes
Tony Blair Trotskyist and Stop Stupid Smartphones
10 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode, Peter wonders if it ever matters that Kier Starmer and Tony Blair were once Trotskyists? As well as addressing some rec...
Loss of Hair, Life and Liberty
05 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode, Sarah Vine addresses her thinning pate and loss of hair that has plagued her most of her adult life and why she’s now fina...
An Audience with Vine & Hitchens at St Peter’s College, Oxford
03 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode, Sarah and Peter travel to St Peter's College, Oxford, where Peter ruminates on an increasingly unlikely peace deal...
Puberty Blockers, Save Our Juries and Tea with the DG
26 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode, Sarah and Peter are asking why new trials for puberty blocking drugs in children have been announced after a government...
Piggy, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the late Leon Trotsky
19 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode, Peter, once described as ‘godless Trotskyist’ by The Guardian, will be ruminating on the legacy of one Leon Tr...
Cancel Culture and Something Rotten at the BBC
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode, Peter and Sarah ask why crazed ideologies seem to have taken root at the heart of both the BBC and the publishing world...
(Prince) Andrew, Useless Architects and Awful Airport Security
05 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode, Peter wants to know if the government really going to strip Andrew of his Falkland campaign medals and, in the light of...
The Hopeless Home Office and A Cosmic Car Crash
29 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode, Peter will be asking why Britain’s infrastructure is so very awful and why are we concreting over so much over the co...
The Covid Legacy and Now Is Not The Time
22 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode, Peter is rejoicing in the news that the clocks revert to true time on Sunday, whatever that might mean, and Sarah is as...
The End of Prince Andrew and What Did Thatcher Ever Do for Us?
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode, on what would have been Margaret Thatcher’s hundredth birthday, Peter and Sarah tussle over the former PM’s legacy, char...
Singing Bob Dylan on a Steep Hill and Health & Safety Gone Mad
08 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode, Peter and Sarah ask why parks shit down at the first sign of inclement weather? Why do under twenty-five-year-olds feel the ...
Digital IDs, Dinosaurs and Class A Drugs
01 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode, Peter and Sarah debate the idea of Digital ID cards, wonder at the minutiae we’re obsessed with as a nation, also, what di...
The Cost of Health Tourism and Why Do We Kill?
24 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode, Peter and Sarah tussle with medical tourism and bloody murder. Peter wants to know what drives an assassin to kill and ...
Our Submarine Fleet is Sunk and what to call Camilla
17 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode, Peter, and Sarah struggle to think of Camilla as Queen but for quite different reasons, though Sarah did very much enjoy her...
Fly the Flag, Sea Fences, and I Dream of Peter
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode, Peter and Sarah discuss vexillology, or flags for the layman. Not least how Peter was once saved by flying a rathe...
Nadine Dorries says Boris and Nigel should work together, if their egos allow
06 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this exclusive episode, Sarah Vine & Peter Hitchens managed to grab lady of the moment Nadine Dorries, fresh from her unveiling at Reform’s c...
Digital IDs, Daddy Issues and Dude, What’s My Car?
03 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode, should we be worried about Keir Starmer’s digital IDs when, according to Sarah, we’re a slave to the digital idiom as it...
Headscarves, Hijabs and Underperforming Politicians
27 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode, Sarah wonders if Kier Starmer’s perceived weakness in leadership might have kicked open the door for Nigel Farage to ...
Porous Pension Pots and Please Appease Me
20 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this week’s episode, Sarah wonders if it’s worth putting into your pension pot anymore as new government policies promise to make your golden y...
The Not So Great War and Does Counselling Really Work?
13 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Peter would like to know why Britain slept walk in to the First World War and what our country might look like if we’d never stumbled into that nati...
The Case For and Against Lucy Letby and Rise of the Robots
06 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In light of the recent documentary, Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt? Peter reiterates his call for a retrial of the convicted nurse.Elsewhere, Sar...
Nanny State and Made to Measure
30 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Peter is up in arms – who knew? – over Sarah’s use of centimetres over inches even though she was raised on the continent and it’s all she kno...
Up In Smoke and I Predict A Riot
23 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Peter is inflamed! Why, he wants to know, searching around him in vain for an ashtray, does smoking seem to be on the rise once more in the UK? Is it ...
City to City and Walk A Mile In Our Shoes
16 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Peter has a five-year plan for the five pairs of identical shoes he owns, buy in bulk, rotate diligently, but another set in five years times. Sarah, ...
Terrorism, Extremism and Rubbish Rock Stars
09 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The love of cinema, Peter’s sonorous baritone, Sarah’s hatred of hot weather, the case for changing the way we adopt in the UK and does Peter ever...
Going Off the Rails and Too Hot to Handle
02 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From Lord of the Rings lesser liked characters to the ‘deep state’ of government according to Dominic Cummings, and drinking beer beneath the Nort...
Abortion Bills and Nuclear Bombs
25 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah and Peter wrangle everything from the latest abortion legislation to how to purge the world of nuclear weapons (Sarah suggests we move them to t...
Marshmallow Totalitarianism and the Beauty of the Real Iran
18 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Flared trousers, the fate of Northern Ireland, free speech, swimming with Gordon Brown and childish children’s books. All human life, as they say, i...
How Not To Be A Political Wife
11 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As Sarah’s book sends shockwaves through former political grandees and the corridors of power, Sarah and Peter sit down to ponder listener questions...
With Friends Like These… and is Poland the new Ukraine?
04 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
To paraphrase Randy Newman, you’ve got a friend in me, but for just how long? Especially when you’re Sarah Vine and you’re supposed best friend’...
The Mental Malaise of Marijuana
28 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As rampage killings are on the rise both here and abroad, we ask if the long-term effects of drugs are impacting on our societal norms and encouraging...
The Menopause Superpower and some Sibling Rivalry
21 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Books, plays and films have been written about it, its onset feared in some quarters, pilloried in others, and it will, eventually, affect almost all ...
The Death Penalty and What I Did (or didn't do) On My Holidays
14 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
To Peter Hitchens, the idea of capital punishment (at least at home here in the UK) could make for a country that is less vengeful and, he goes so far...
The End of Education and Did We Really Win the War?
07 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah’s two children are currently at university, which is rather handy as a regular listener has asked that Peter and Sarah chime in on the current...
Applying Udder Cream and the End of Civilisation
30 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah’s brother was at home in Madrid this week when Spain underwent a blackout, alone in the dark with the only the thing in his house still workin...
Turn off your TV and Bloody Taxes
23 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Not unlike the Rolling Stones, Peter Hitchens is ready to toss his TV through the nearest window. He’s in accord with the late, great Groucho Marx ...
Birmingham’s Bulging Bins and the end of the Toby Carvery Tree
16 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah Vine wants to bin it off. Though given the decline in public services nationwide, that’s getting harder and harder to do. As the Birmingham bi...
Drinking Swamp Broth and why our Police Forces are Failing Us
09 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Hitchens hates to be blunt about these things, well, not really, but he’d really like to know why the police are so useless. And not in one sp...
Keep Your Enemies Close and Cross My Palm With Silver
02 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Hitchens puts forward his defence of ‘Whataboutery and asks why does the west delight in attacking its current enemies like Putin for things i...
Power Corrupted PMs and Peter Hitchens almost meets Prince Charles
26 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
All human life is here.Dogma, closed minds, modern slavery, net zero and why Peter will never enter the House of Lords - though he will take tea there...
Does My Bomb Look Big in This?
19 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
To paraphrase Edwin Starr; work, what is it good for, absolutely nothing… At least according to Gen Z. Reports suggest that a whole generation migh...
Covid Tomatoes, Diplomatic Camels, and Our Kind of Despot
12 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Lockdown saw Peter Hitchens riding through Hyde Park in a Polish gas mask hissing the word ‘virus’ at strangers.Sarah Vine spent hers in Waitrose ...
Drugs, Depression, Diet, and a Dutch Utopia?
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Peter Hitchens is so anti-drugs, and so engaged with his moral compass he won't even consider taking the fictional recreationals, while Sarah Vine ha...
Trump, the Rise of Europe’s Far Right and what now for NATO?
26 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When viewed from above the North Pole, the Earth rotates from left to right and now some of its inhabitants appear to be headed the same way. From Gi...
Introducing... Alas Vine & Hitchens
18 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What's the Big Idea?Finally, Sarah Vine (once memorably described as being ‘like and loathed in equal measure, divisive, but never indecisive’) an...