Leng, peng, and the enjoyably bizarre slang of Gen Z

When Rolls met Royce

May 4 is “perhaps the most auspicious date in British motoring history”, says Nik Berg in Hagerty. It is the day, 120 years ago, when Charles Rolls met Henry Royce. “The hyphenation was almost immediate.” Rolls was an aviation enthusiast and early racing pioneer who had set up one of London’s first car dealerships, selling imported Peugeots and Minervas from France and Belgium. The cars were perfect for his posh clients in Fulham, but he longed to sell them something made in England.

In Manchester, electrical engineer Royce was thinking along the same lines. He had bought a top-of-the-range 10HP Decauville from France and pulled it apart to see if he could improve it. He could. The Royce 10HP had its first road test on 1 April 1904, and its inventor set about lending it out to potential customers. One, Henry Edmunds, happened to be a friend of Rolls, and “waxed lyrical to his chum about the new motor car”. Rolls went straight to Manchester for a test drive. The “aristocratic Cambridge graduate” could hardly have been more different from the “northern engineer” he met, but they instantly bonded over their passion for the car. That very day, Rolls declared he would sell every car Royce could build, and to mark their partnership he would form a new company: Rolls-Royce. More than a century later, the business still lives by Royce’s mantra: “take the best and make it better”.

Le Pen’s smooth-talking protégé

Jordan Bardella is “the new face of the French far right”, says Angelique Chrisafis in The Guardian. The 28-year-old is president of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party, and leading its campaign for the European elections in June. He seems to be making a mark: National Rally is at “unprecedented heights” in the polls, averaging 31.5% compared to a miserly 17% for Emmanuel Macron’s centrists. Smartly dressed and softly spoken, Bardella represents “the final phase of Le Pen’s decade-long drive” to distance her party from the racism of her father Jean-Marie’s tenure as leader. The “hardline anti-immigration message” is as undiluted as ever, but Bardella wants to convince people that, as he puts it: “We are reasonable people.”

Unlike Le Pen, with her “bourgeois upbringing” and the baggage of her name, Bardella is a “blank canvas for voters to project themselves on to”. He grew up on a poor, multi-ethnic housing estate in the northern Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis, the son of Italians who arrived in the 1960s. He presents himself as the “good immigrant” who embraced French culture and civilisation, which he now warns is under threat from “Islamist ideology”. After joining National Rally at 16, he became a member of the European Parliament at just 23. And whereas Le Pen favours mockery and sarcasm, Bardella delivers his put-downs calmly – and has won the adoration of many French voters. During a visit to a country fair where he’s mobbed for selfies, one fairground worker says: “This man could save France.”

🗳️ Has Britain moved to the left? Read our explainer here

Living in the country is awful, honest

I always thought Country Life was about an “attainable bucolic nirvana”, says Kevin Maher in The Times. How wrong I was. In a recent podcast, the magazine’s editor, Mark Hedges, “warned” city folk of the “many hardships” they might endure if they move out to the sticks. First up is the smell of manure, which is apparently getting worse as farms switch to environmentally friendly agriculture. It’s a fair point. Who on earth would want to “suffer the occasional whiff of cow poo”, when they can stay in the city and gulp down a “deadly urban cocktail of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, ground-level ozone, sulphur oxides, lead and particle pollution”?

Another problem, apparently, is coffee. “You won’t get a latte,” says Hedges. “Village shops can’t make lattes.” This is rubbish too. The only reason you won’t get a latte in the countryside is because the cafes are now so filled with “tattooed, heavily pierced, neatly bearded” hipster baristas that they’ll laugh you out of their cafe for ordering such a passé drink. Hedges also warns that you’ll probably end up getting a dog, which doesn’t sound too awful, and that there’s no Uber Eats, which presumably means there are “none of those little jerks in mopeds trying to mow you down”. Why would he be spouting this nonsense? I reckon he’s trying to keep the hordes at bay. It feels like St Peter at the pearly gates saying: “Nah, mate, you don’t want to come in here! There’s annoying floaty clouds and things, and way too much harmony and bliss.”