June 2026

New album, lots of interviews and thoughts about the unintended effects of anti-racism

I have finished my fifth album as The Kev. I didn’t expect to finish it this quickly, so will probably wait till after the Fringe before holding any promotional activities.

It is available on all major platforms, on YouTube, and best of all Bandcamp, the only platform that gives a half-decent deal to artists.

Activities

It has been a very good month for media appearances. The most in-depth was this interview with RGM (Reyt Good Magazine). I also spoke to The Martin Talk Show about the Edinburgh Fringe.

On Salford City Radio, I spoke to Ian Rothwell about The Greater Manchester Fringe and shared the elevator pitch for my show. I also made my regular appearance on Hannah’s Bookshelf on Radio North Manchester, in the What Are You Reading section.

I have always maintained that almost all jobs are unpleasant, but being unemployed is even more tiring. I am employed, working with people who need it, and am just about a net positive for society (I think). But I have been applying for better paid jobs all over the place and making no progress.

Output

I finished the last song of Album number 5 and uploaded it at the start of the month. It is an unapologetically over-the-top skewering of modern weddings:

And as a monthly cover I recorded ‘Magic in the Air’ by Badly Drawn Boy:

This month’s Substack posts were on the long side, as you may have noticed. As a teenager I was convinced (not least by the song ‘Magic in the Air’) that having a good time required debauchery. I pick apart that idea in the essay ‘Beyond the Bottle’. And I wrote a similarly long piece about celebrity worship, and ways of being cured of it.

Wider World

In Southampton, England, Vickrum Digwa (23) was found guilty of the murder of Henry Nowak (18), after falsely claiming that Nowak had racially abused him. As Nowak lay dying, police at the scene dismissed his claim that he had been stabbed and could not breathe.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Texas teenager Karmelo Anthony was sentenced for stabbing to death Austin Metcalf after an altercation. In reaction to Metcalf’s father’s victim impact statement, professor Stacey Patton wrote a Substack titled ‘Dear Jeff Metcalf: Your Son Is Dead Because You Failed to Teach Him That Black Boys Have Boundaries’.

When asked to comment on the case, politician Jasmine Crockett told a reporter that ‘black women, especially women who have black male children, live in fear and agony every single day’. In other words, both Patton and Crockett unnecessarily made race an issue when promoting ‘anti-racism’.

Both women are like Robin DiAngelo, author of ‘White Fragility’ in that their ‘anti-racism’ is having the opposite to intended effect. Although it is doubtful that these people really want a post-racial society.

Doctor and author Theodore Dalrymple, as is often the case, put it best: “having spent years denying that there is any objective reality to racial classifications, liberals start sifting people into racial categories with an obsessiveness that puts South African policemen under the old regime to shame.”