James Delingpole

Just before Christmas I achieved something so totally, incredibly amazing that I think it probably ranks among the greatest things I have ever done. In terms of danger, raw physical courage and menace overcome, it was at least on a par with cage-diving with great white sharks or taking on the ‘Breastapo’ the other week over that incident in Claridge’s. As far as personal satisfaction goes, it felt like getting into Oxford, teaching my children to read, bagging a Macnab and climbing Everest blindfold on the same weekend. What I did was this: there was a problem on my computer — and I fixed it. All by myself! When I took to Twitter to broadcast the fantastic news it didn’t go quite as viral as I’d hoped.

Steph and Dom are the posh-sounding, drunk couple from Gogglebox - the surprise hit programme where people are recorded sitting on sofas giving a running commentary on the TV shows they are watching. If they had been reviewing Steph And Dom Meet Nigel Farage, I like to think, they'd have been very rude. ‘What a right pair of slippery tossers,’ they would have yelled, chucking canapes at the incredibly bad mannered, disturbingly callous pair of smug hypocrites on the screen. ‘Leave the poor sod alone. He's supposed to be your guest.’ All right, so the poor sod can take it. He's Nigel Farage - taking it is what he does.

Have you had the horrid bug that’s going round yet? I’ve got it now and I do hope you get it too. But before I explain why let me describe the unpleasant symptoms. These include: frequent headaches; burning lungs; watery mucus that makes you feel like you are drowning, later replaced by thick phlegm which makes you feel like you’re being suffocated; a raw, ravaged throat akin to swallowing ground tiger whiskers; a cough so tickly your sleep is like the ‘Albanian’ torture sequence in The Ipcress File; general dyspepsia, torpor, achiness and malaise; irrational, impotent rage over absolutely everything. The last symptom is so weird it would almost be amusing if you weren’t in such a bad mood.

Michael Gove was on BBC Question Time the other night, fielding questions about such contentious subjects as education, immigration and benefits. But when he browsed the internet afterwards to see what, if anything, was exercising the web about his performance, he was surprised to discover that his greatest crime had been an innocuous turn of phrase in response to a jibe from David Dimbleby. Dimbleby had idly wondered why Gove was so disliked by the teaching profession, to which Gove replied that this was a loaded question on the lines of ‘When did you stop beating your wife?

The Green Blob which did for Owen Paterson has claimed another victim. Her name is Anne Glover and she was, until recently, chief scientific adviser to the President of the European Commission. ‘I believe her outstanding background and calibre will bring invaluable expertise to the Commission,’ said former president José Manuel Barroso when she was appointed in December 2011. Indeed they did, and that was the problem. As with its chief accountants (see Marta Andreasen), so it is with its chief scientists: the very last thing the EU wants is pesky experts presenting inconvenient truths which threaten to impede it from doing whatever the hell it likes. Especially not if those truths upset its powerful allies in the green lobby.

I have fallen in love with an unsuitable male. My wife isn’t totally happy about this relationship because she recognises how dangerous it is. The problem with Eddie is that his vices are my vices. He’s reckless, an adrenaline junkie who likes always to be up front. Really, a most unsuitable companion for a skinny, breakable family man fast approaching 50. And did I mention how expensive he is? It’s as bad as having a high-class mistress or a serious cocaine habit, but I’m powerless to resist. I love hunting. I love my mount Eddie Stobart. When I’m riding to hounds, all my worldly cares vanish. It makes me feel like I’ve finally discovered the point of existence. Tragic, isn’t it? It’s tragic because I know I could quite easily die — or worse.

Say what you like about the French Revolutionaries but at least they had a poetic imagination. When they wanted a new name for October, they anticipated Keats and named the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness ‘Brumaire’, meaning ‘foggy’. Which is a lot more evocative, I think we can agree, than its current incarnation under the new politically correct Terror: Stoptober. Stoptober. Geddit? That’s ‘-ober’, as in the second half of ‘October’, with the word ‘Stop’ cunningly positioned where the ‘Oct’ would normally be. And what marketing genius was responsible for this rebranding? Why, someone from an Orwellian body which you’d probably much prefer didn’t exist, let alone to have to fund with your taxes. Public Health England.

The last — and only — time I had sex with a whore she was so impressed by my performance that she begged me to do it all over again. I thank the drugs. Before popping out in my stolen car for my rendezvous with my skanky ho, I had smoked a couple of fat blunts which I’d found ready prepared for me by my bitch next to my beer fridge and it put me in just the right mood. But none of this was ‘real’. I was playing the video game Grand Theft Auto V (GTAV) and enjoying the transgressive thrills of living the life of a young black hoodlum in inner-city America.

This week I wanted to tell you about my amazing dad. He hasn’t died or anything. I just thought I’d get in there with my panegyric quick while he’s still got most of his marbles and before he’s lying in a coffin quite deaf to all the nice stuff I’m about to say about him. So: my dad. What prompted this was a chance remark he made the other day about having left school at 15. Fifteen? ‘Well I wasn’t enjoying it,’ he explained. ‘And Dad said he couldn’t afford the fees. So it made much more sense for me to come and work for the family firm as a lathe operator. I loved it. It gave me independence and I was earning money.’ Now if you were to meet my Dad, you wouldn’t guess his education was so basic.

‘Outspoken comic Frankie Boyle has called on the BBC to sack “cultural tumour” Jeremy Clarkson.’ Can anyone tell me what’s wrong with this opening sentence from a recent news report? Clue: it’s that first word. In order to qualify as ‘outspoken’, surely, you need to be the kind of person who fearlessly, frequently and vociferously sets himself in opposition to the clamour of the times. Does demanding that a public figure lose his job for some mildly sexist/racist/homophobic/ableist remark fit into that category? Hardly.