James Delingpole

Gosh, I can’t tell you how lucky you were not to have been brought up in the Delingpole family. There were nine of us in all — not counting the cats, iguanas, fleas, lice and one-eyed pugs — and the scene every day in the rambling Old Rectory where we lived was like the second half of Lord of the Flies only without the restraint, civility and gentle charm. It was a dog-eat-dog world where no quarter was given and none expected. It was like Florence in the era of the Medici (only without the culture and art part: unless you count the huge mural of Judge Death my brother Dick did in his bedroom) — an era of constantly shifting alliances, betrayal, backstabbing, torture, humiliation and perpetual war. It made me the hardened street-fighter I am today.... ....

How many of you reading this were abused by Jimmy Savile? Few if any, I would hazard. And while I don’t wish to play down the misery wrought over four or more decades by that loathsome perve, the BBC scandal I’m about to describe has resulted in damage, pain and destruction far more widespread than anything Savile managed.

Did you know that the badger is one of the most charismatic creatures in our countryside? It says so on an advisory leaflet produced by Scottish Natural Heritage called ‘Badgers And The Law’. The document doesn’t make clear which aspect of badgers is particularly charismatic. Perhaps it’s that they are prone to collapsing during evangelical church services and babbling in strange tongues. Or perhaps it’s that with their rakish stripes and their dusk-till-dawn social hours they’re widely known to be the life and soul of every party. But the more likely explanation, I fear, is that the author of those words is doing what psychologists call ‘projecting’.

For me the only useful fact to emerge from the otherwise immensely tedious Leveson inquiry was this: that messages on the phone of Milly Dowler were not erased by News of the World journalists. Of course, it would have been a much, much better story if they had been. Eavesdropping on the phone messages of a murdered schoolgirl may be creepy and unpleasant but it is essentially a victimless crime. Actively interfering with those messages, on the other hand, might have had serious consequences. Perhaps false hope might have been given to Milly’s distraught parents. Perhaps the police inquiry might have been jeopardised.

God, it’s a bore getting older: all those things you used to be able to do but can’t any more and will never be able to do again. Grow hair, for example (except in all the wrong places); recover quickly from hangovers; vault fences; climb high up trees without getting vertigo; be looked at with anything more than indifference or disgust by attractive young females; and so on. But it’s not all bad. Sometimes you can buck the trend. A few months ago, my friend David Hearsey — who flew Halifax bombers in the war — emailed to tell me that he’d recently taken up flying again. How amazingly impressive is that in your late eighties/early nineties?

They say that moving house is the third most traumatic thing after death and divorce and they’re right about that, I reckon. For the past few weeks and months I’ve been treating our London house not like the beloved home where I’ve spent 12 happy years but more like an anonymous shell where I just happen to eat, sleep and work. I used to enjoy having new friends round and hearing them wax lyrical about the niceness of the wallpaper or the size of the bedrooms or the delightfulness of the view over the park, but not this year. I used to spend hours in the garden, but I’ve scarcely been out at all — not to weed, not to grow tomatoes, not even to smell the scent of my favourite Souvenir du Docteur Jamain.

Every speech day at Boy’s prep school for the last five summers I’ve watched the Year Eight leavers and their parents troop off to the dining room for their final farewell lunch with the headmaster and staff. This year it was our turn and I didn’t enjoy it one bit. In fact, I was so cut up I had to nip off for an uncharacteristic daytime fag round the back of the dustbins with the only master (‘Why do you call them “masters”? They’re called “teachers”, Dad!’) I knew smoked. ‘This is it,’ I thought miserably to myself. ‘The last time I’ll ever come to Papplewick. Probably the last time ever I’ll see most of these faces I’ve come to take for granted, all these strangers who became my friends.