James Delingpole

There’s a game you have to play at the BBC and Jeremy Paxman plays it very well — which is why he is currently still the most famous Old Malvernian after C.S. Lewis whereas I’m way down the list at maybe fourth, fifth or sixth. The rules are very simple: no matter how great your sympathies secretly might be towards the British Empire, Tory values, climate-change scepticism, Israel, the idea of national sovereignty, Margaret Thatcher or any other manifestation of what the BBC would consider WrongThink, you must suppress, suppress, suppress, using the mental equivalent of that spiked metal ring the late Victorians devised to discourage young men from masturbating. With Paxo, this self-administered therapy has been extremely effective over the years.

Only this morning I got an email from an evidently very bright 17-year-old at a certain nameless public school. ‘I’m so sick of having to study “environmental ethics” for hours on end, being split into “study groups”, and making lovely colourful mind-maps for presentations; the syllabus is infantile, and I feel increasingly infantilised by my relativist, happy-clappy and downright incompetent teachers,’ he wrote. Amen, brother. I’m not sure who I feel sorrier for: the poor kids being force-fed this drivel; or the poor parents who probably imagined that for the price of £30,000 a year they’d bought the right not to have their beloved ones indoctrinated with all this specious eco-propaganda.

Masterchef (BBC1) is a total waste of life — and I should know, because I’m addicted to it. It came to me suddenly and I’m still not sure how it happened. All I know is that one year I was like: ‘Masterchef. Ah, yes, it’s that foodie programme Loyd Grossman presents, which critics always call things like “Moaasterchoif” and “Mxxrgrghstrchrrxff” to show how amusing they can be about the presenter’s pronunciation.’ And the next I was: ‘Noo! Noo! No way was cloudberry coulis on calf’s brain carpaccio an ejection offence! That boy’s got talent. You should have got rid of the woman with her crappy tarte au citron...

One of my resolutions this year is to make a lot more money. But how? In fact, I’ve noticed recently, it’s very simple: all you have to do is take a popular character with enormous worldwide brand recognition (e.g., King Arthur, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes) and shamelessly reinvent him for the youth demographic. So, for example, you dress up Dracula in Abercrombie & Fitch, emphasise the sublimated but not consummated sex angle, throw in a werewolf to complete the platonic love triangle, and suddenly you’re Stephenie Meyer selling trillions to pubescents.

To the Manor Reborn (BBC1, Thursday) is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant programmes in the history of television. But then I’m biased for the Rat is in it, and what a splendid, handsome and talented young fellow he has turned out to be. If you looked very carefully about halfway through episode one, you’ll have caught him standing facing interior designer Russell Sage, holding a sheet of wallpaper or something. And then later, you’ll have caught him again being told by Sage to remember something he’d forgotten. Superb! The boy is a natural, he’ll go far, and as his proud stepfather I shall accept nothing less than the highest offers for his services.

Fact: in 1963, air travel was so new and exciting that the awed gasps of the passengers as the plane took flight frequently drowned out the noise of the jet engines. Fact: in 1963, air travel was so comfortable that passengers emerged from long-haul flights even more refreshed, relaxed and cheerful than when they boarded the plane. Instead of taking their suits to the dry cleaners, canny travellers of the day would often just take a plane journey instead, knowing that their clothes would emerge at the end more pressed and immaculate than before. Fact: in 1963, every woman looked and dressed like Jackie Kennedy, especially air stewardesses, all of whom could have doubled as models because they were just so hot.