Category: Culture

Why Is Every Celebrity Suddenly a Novelist?

Shahzad Sheikh reacts in disbelief as a celebrity promotes another novel on a television chat show
Actors, presenters, DJs and reality stars keep showing up on chat shows with suspiciously polished debut novels. Meanwhile, unknown writers are still fighting to get anybody beyond their immediate family to read chapter one!

Have you noticed that every celebrity is suddenly a novelist? It used to be mildly intriguing. A television presenter, newsreader, actor, actress or radio DJ would reveal that they had written a book and you might think, “Oh, they can write as well. That’s interesting.” Now every other Tom, Dick and Harry celebrity appears on a chat show clutching a freshly printed novel and announcing, with tremendous sincerity, that writing it has been “such a journey”.

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Inspector Jamshed Trailer: Did I Copy Pakistan’s Legendary Hero?

Inspector Jamshed Trailer: Did I Copy Pakistan’s Hero?
Inspector Jamshed is heading to cinemas in IJ: The Secret Parchment. There is just one complication: I created another Pakistani action hero called Jamshed in 1996. Here is how that happened

So apparently there are now two Pakistani action heroes called Jamshed. One is Inspector Jamshed, a detective who first appeared in Ishtiaq Ahmed’s Urdu novels more than half a century ago and is now becoming the star of a major international action movie. The other is Jamshed Khan, a Pakistani ISI intelligence agent whom I created back in 1996 and who is now the hero of my thriller novel, Silent Ruin.

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Top Gear and The Grand Tour Are Coming Back… But Why?

Top Gear and The Grand Tour Are Coming Back… But Why?

Amazon has replaced Clarkson, Hammond and May on The Grand Tour, and the BBC has just confirmed the revival of Top Gear. But has anyone stopped to ask if we really need these car shows?

Top Gear is coming back. The BBC has officially confirmed it, although there’s no word on when, what form it will take or who will present it. Meanwhile, Amazon is relaunching The Grand Tour next month with an entirely new trio: Thomas Holland and James Engelsman from the hugely successful Throttle House YouTube channel, joined by trainspotter and social media personality Francis Bourgeois. All six episodes arrive on Prime Video on 4 September 2026.

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How to Write a Believable Muslim Character (Without Falling for Tropes & Clichés)

How to write a Muslim Character without cliches
Being one myself, I find most Muslim characters in popular fiction – books, TV or movies – to be superficial, unrealistic, forced, highly unlikely, laughable – or, worst of all – hell-bent stereotypes. So once and for all, here’s how to do it right!

Whether you are writing a fast-paced spy thriller, a mystery, sci-fi, or contemporary drama, crafting authentic characters from underrepresented backgrounds can be one of the most rewarding – and intimidating – parts of story development. Get them right, and you’ll win new friends and appreciative fans. Get them wrong and there could be derisive boos, or worse still – you could be cancelled!

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The Government Could Change Your YouTube Feed Forever. Here’s Why You Must Act Now

Independent creators finally found a level playing field online. Now the Government is considering tipping it back towards the biggest media organisations

For more than thirty-six years I’ve made my living in the media. I’ve written for newspapers, edited magazines, presented television programmes, hosted radio shows, produced online content, attended hundreds of international launches and interviewed some of the biggest names in the automotive industry. I’ve seen the media world from almost every angle imaginable. Then, six years ago, I started BrownCarGuy on YouTube, not because I had to, but because I genuinely believed something remarkable had happened. For the first time in the history of broadcasting, ordinary people had finally been given a chance to compete with the biggest media organisations on the planet.

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The Future of Motoring: Driverless Cars vs Restomods. Has Driving Become So Miserable We’re Ready to Give It Up?

Driverless Cars vs Restomods
Artificial intelligence is bringing us closer than ever to autonomous cars, yet at exactly the same time classic cars and restomods are booming. Coincidence? I don’t think so

The other day I found myself driving around London. Well, “driving” might be stretching the definition somewhat because most of the time you’re crawling along, staring at the back of somebody else’s hatchback while trying to remember whether this particular road is still 30mph, has become 20mph, or was quietly changed last Tuesday while you weren’t looking. And it got me thinking that perhaps the future of motoring isn’t going to be electric versus petrol, hydrogen versus batteries or even SUVs versus saloons. Perhaps the real battle is going to be something entirely different. Perhaps the future is going to be driverless cars versus restomods. Bear with me, because the more I thought about it, the more it actually started to make sense.

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I Don’t Want to Make You Eat Halal Meat or Wear a Hijab

In the wake of anti-Muslim violence and racist unrest in Britain, a personal plea to stop swallowing propaganda and start seeing each other as human beings

I do not want to convert you to Islam.

I do not want to conquer you. I do not want to enforce Shariah law in Britain. I do not want to make all women wear burqas, force halal meat down your throat, groom your daughters, change your language, erase your culture, turn your churches into mosques, or ban pork and alcohol.

And, for the avoidance of any doubt, terrorism, murder, violence, maiming innocent people and killing children are abhorrent, evil and utterly indefensible.

Yet I am a practising Muslim.

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Enfield Pageant of Motoring 2026: The Maddest, Coolest & Most Brilliant Cars We Found!

2026 Enfield Pageant Videos! | Mad Builds, Cool Classics & Muscle Cars | BrownCarGuy
From 194mph Bonnevile-bound Jensens to chopped V8 Vauxhalls, hot rods, rat rods and roaring Merlin engines, the Enfield Pageant delivered automotive chaos in the best possible way

The 2026 Enfield Pageant of Motoring turned out to be an absolute treasure trove of weird, wonderful and wildly creative machinery, reminding us why grassroots car culture remains far more entertaining than yet another identikit crossover launch with mood lighting and an app subscription for heated seats. This year’s event was packed with everything from beautifully preserved classics to utterly unhinged custom creations, including a chopped and Audi-powered Vauxhall Victor FB, stunning American cruisers, rat-look survivors proudly wearing decades of scars, and hot rods that looked ready to drag race Satan himself.

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The Internet Wants You to Hate the World. Drive It Instead

The Internet Wants You to Hate the World. Drive It Instead. If you want to hate the world watch the news, if you want to love the world, travel it!
In an age of outrage, fear and division, perhaps the answer isn’t arguing online at all. Perhaps the answer is to get in a car, hit the road, and rediscover humanity for yourself

There’s a heaviness hanging over the world right now, a constant low-level hum of hostility and hysteria that seems to seep from every screen, every scroll, every headline and every furious finger-pointing debate, to the point where it increasingly feels as though humanity itself is splintering into suspicious tribes glaring angrily at each other across digital barricades. Fascism, prejudice, racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, anti-immigrant sentiment, political extremism, culture wars, endless outrage, all of it amplified and accelerated by algorithms that have quietly learned one brutally simple truth about human beings: fear keeps us engaged. Fear keeps us scrolling. Fear keeps us clicking. Fear keeps us angry.

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