James Delingpole

James Delingpole

James Delingpole reviews television for The Spectator.

Saturday

James Delingpole

Communitarianism is a freedom-hating totalitarian philosophy like any other

The most unsettling aspect of modern politics is that the Enemy is no longer plain in view. We may feel in our bones that we are as oppressed, disenfranchised and generally shat upon, in our way, as those who suffered under Nazism, Marxism and fascism. But the actual evidence doesn’t seem to bear this out. We’re free to fly wherever we want on our hols. No one is starving. We can vote. There are no death camps. We don’t dread the small-hours knock at the door. Our politicians consult focus groups because they feel they ought to care what we think. There are lots of channels on TV, not all of which reflect the ideology of the state. Being Jewish, gay or an intellectual are not crimes. (More’s the pity in the case of the last one.

Saturday

James Delingpole

Stuff of legend

A few years ago, my at-the-time-quite-impoverished screenwriter friend Jake Michie told me about this brilliant new children’s TV series he’d dreamed up about the Knights of the Round Table. A few years ago, my at-the-time-quite-impoverished screenwriter friend Jake Michie told me about this brilliant new children’s TV series he’d dreamed up about the Knights of the Round Table. All the male leads would be young and pretty with boy band haircuts; Arthur would be a bit of a rugger-bugger lunk, while the real hero would be a younger Merlin who would use his magic to get his pal out of all sorts of scrapes; and obviously there’d be monsters and demons and suchlike to stop the kids getting bored. I was appalled.

Saturday

James Delingpole

I’m on a cruise with lots of rich, conservative Americans. And it’s brilliant

No, this isn’t one of those articles written after the event, where you only pretend you’re writing from an exotic dateline but you’ve actually since got home. Tallinn, Estonia No, this isn’t one of those articles written after the event, where you only pretend you’re writing from an exotic dateline but you’ve actually since got home. This time I really can see the Ruritanian towers of Tallinn’s old city reflected in the mirror in front of my writing desk. The evening sun — which will go on for hours and hours at this latitude at this time of year — is shimmering on the Baltic.

Saturday

James Delingpole

Is he a genius?

You’ll forgive me, I hope, for coming back so soon to the subject of Adam Curtis, the first part of whose All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace was so ably dissected by Simon Hoggart last week. You’ll forgive me, I hope, for coming back so soon to the subject of Adam Curtis, the first part of whose All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace was so ably dissected by Simon Hoggart last week. Only, no less a personage than Bryan Appleyard of the Sunday Times has estimated Curtis as ‘TV’s greatest documentary maker’ and the BBC obviously agrees. So, really, two Speccie TV reviews in a fortnight is surely the barest minimum this genius deserves. Is he, though? Is Curtis really a genius?

Saturday

James Delingpole

There will never be justice if we leave it to lawyers

The big question this week is: ‘Should Giles Coren be bound, gagged, shackled and sentenced to life imprisonment in the torture block of the sexual offenders’ wing of Black Beach maximum security prison in Equatorial Guinea, there to become the plaything of Mad “Mamba” Mbigawanga, the Man-Rapist Giant of Malabo?’ Well, obviously, when you put it like that, the answer’s obvious. The big question this week is: ‘Should Giles Coren be bound, gagged, shackled and sentenced to life imprisonment in the torture block of the sexual offenders’ wing of Black Beach maximum security prison in Equatorial Guinea, there to become the plaything of Mad “Mamba” Mbigawanga, the Man-Rapist Giant of Malabo?

Saturday

James Delingpole

Big Brother Beeb

For the past few weeks, unnoticed by all but the most sharp-eyed critics, BBC1 has been running a Celebrate Communitarianism season. The first programmes were: Envy of the World!!!, in which children at Great Ormond Street hospital spent a week being forcibly denied vital drug treatment. Then, in a touching scene right at the end, just as they were all on the brink of death, a big pink bunny with NHS printed all over his fur came hopping in with all the medicines and dialysis machines they needed, accompanied by Sir Jimmy Savile saying, ‘Now then, now then. As it ’appens, I have fixed it for YOU to understand why it is we have the best healthcare system in the world.’ So You Think You’re Hard Enough?

Saturday

James Delingpole

Magnificent young men are ready to die for us, but that doesn’t mean we should let them

I’m in Dallas, Texas, for a Heritage Foundation conference when who should march into my hotel but a battalion of US marines, ahead of their deployment to Afghanistan. I’m in Dallas, Texas, for a Heritage Foundation conference when who should march into my hotel but a battalion of US marines, ahead of their deployment to Afghanistan. I watch, agog. The marines all look desperately young, even the ones who’ve done several tours of duty. Interestingly, though they all must have bonded intensely in the field, off duty they still socialise by ethnic group — blacks with blacks, Hispanics with Hispanics, and so on. Later, I ambush a senior NCO and a rookie smoking in the garden. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ ‘Yes, sir!’ says the NCO.

Saturday

James Delingpole

Farewell, Sarah Jane

There’s a brilliant moment in the 1975 Doctor Who storyline The Ark In Space when Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen), on a vital mission to save Earth from the evil insectoid Wirrn, gets stuck in a ventilator shaft. There’s a brilliant moment in the 1975 Doctor Who storyline The Ark In Space when Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen), on a vital mission to save Earth from the evil insectoid Wirrn, gets stuck in a ventilator shaft. The Doctor (Tom Baker) hits on the ingenious ruse of goading her across the last few inches by telling her how thoroughly useless she is. At least, brilliant is how I remember it being when I saw it aged ten.

Saturday

James Delingpole

If only I’d known when I was younger that my background was my greatest strength

One of the things I’ve belatedly realised now I’ve acquired the wisdom of age is that I’ve always been anti-establishment. One of the things I’ve belatedly realised now I’ve acquired the wisdom of age is that I’ve always been anti-establishment. If only I’d known this at school I would have had far more fun than I did because I wouldn’t have wasted any of my time trying to smarm and behave my way into pointless jobs like ‘library prefect’, ‘group leader’ and ‘head of house’. I could have got drunk and smoked fags and got to at least third base with the naughty girls, like all the cool kids did, instead. My problem was — and still is to some extent — that I am way, way too trusting and naive.

Saturday

James Delingpole

Blogging’s not a job – it’s an expensive addiction

It’s about two years since my old friend Damian Thompson approached me with a couple of yellowish rocks and a pipe and said: ‘Have a puff on this. It’s about two years since my old friend Damian Thompson approached me with a couple of yellowish rocks and a pipe and said: ‘Have a puff on this. I think it might really suit you.’ No, of course not. What Damian actually introduced me to was something far more addictive, expensive, energy-sapping and injurious to health than crack cocaine. He asked me to join his elite team of bloggers at the Daily Telegraph. And now I’m having to go cold turkey and I don’t like it one bit. The reason I’m going cold turkey — i.e.

Saturday

James Delingpole

Cultural surrender

When I was a teenager I used to upset my father by telling him I thought it would be really glamorous to die young in a car crash. The stupid thing was, I believed it. The corollary of feeling immortal is that you have no real understanding of the finality of death. That’s why you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of 40-plus suicide bombers. In My Brother, the Islamist (BBC3, Monday), a likeable Dorset tree surgeon called Robb Leech set out on a quest to discover why the blond, perfectly normal-seeming stepbrother Rich with whom he’d grown up in Weymouth had ended up as a member of the group Islam4UK.

Saturday

James Delingpole

Britain’s state school system is a conspiracy against the public

The other day Girl’s class found themselves with time to spare in the vast play area behind the Imperial War Museum. The other day Girl’s class found themselves with time to spare in the vast play area behind the Imperial War Museum. The children looked wistfully at the swings, roundabouts and climbing frames. ‘I’m not sure we can go there,’ said the teacher. ‘I haven’t filled in a risk assessment form.’ Stories like this explain why I almost never go into Girl’s primary school these days. I can just about do those gourmet PTA fundraiser evenings where you stand around eating high-grade sausages and drinking chilled Czech beer, congratulating yourself on how aspirational and nicely spoken your fellow parents are.

Saturday

James Delingpole

Our island story | 26 March 2011

I vividly remember the moment when I saw my first black person. It was December in either ’68 or ’69, so I would have been three or four at the time, and my father’s works had arranged some kind of coach outing to meet Father Christmas. Seated near me was a black child a bit older than me, and I recall gazing fascinated at the blackness of his skin and noticing that it had white blotches on it like a mirror image of the dark freckles and moles on my skin. ‘Daddy, what are those white things?’ I asked, pointing at the boy’s skin. ‘Pigment,’ my father explained. I vividly remember the moment when I saw my first black person.

Saturday

James Delingpole

Why don’t we stand up for our freedom to drive?

The Fawn came up to me the other day in a state of extreme agitation: she’d been listening to George Monbiot on the radio. The Fawn came up to me the other day in a state of extreme agitation: she’d been listening to George Monbiot on the radio. My ears pricked up. I do so love it when the Fawn gets cross about the same things as me. It makes me glad that I’m not married to one of those leftie wives — we all know the sort — who drag their more right-wing husbands down the siren path of bien-pensant foolishness. Monbiot had been on the Today programme with Tiff Needell, the likeable racing driver who used to co-present Top Gear.

Saturday

James Delingpole

Triumph of the West

If at the beginning of the 15th century you’d had to predict who was going to dominate the world for the next 500 years, the answer would surely have been China. If at the beginning of the 15th century you’d had to predict who was going to dominate the world for the next 500 years, the answer would surely have been China. From the sophistication of its sanitation system to the size of its fleet, China — under the Emperor Zhu Di and his eunuch naval commander Cheng Ho — was a country going places. Its mighty, 400-foot-long ships sailed as far as Malindi on the East African coast and probably Australia. It had invented the clock and, of course, gunpowder. Europe, during the same period, was — relatively speaking — a stagnant, backward mess.

Saturday

James Delingpole

Liking the cut of Rommel’s uniform doesn’t make you a Nazi

‘Oh Daddy, please can I have that Nazi eagle badge. ‘Oh Daddy, please can I have that Nazi eagle badge. Oh please, oh please.’ We’re standing in the gift shop of the Baugnez ’44 memorial museum outside Malmedy, Belgium — me, Grandpa (aka my dad) and Girl — and we’re peering longingly into the original second world war memorabilia display case like Tiny Tims at Christmas. There are so many things we’d like if only we had the money: original GI helmets (€400 for a good one, with decent leather strap), packets of vintage Camels, tins of delousing powder, camouflage sticks, Wehrmacht pay books and, yes, Nazi eagle badges of all shapes and sizes. Inevitably, it’s the German stuff we covet most.

Saturday

James Delingpole

Shameful bias

So you’re the leader of the Netherlands’ youngest, and now second-most-popular political party — and the reason you’re doing so well so soon is that your policies strike a chord with many Dutch. So you’re the leader of the Netherlands’ youngest, and now second-most-popular political party — and the reason you’re doing so well so soon is that your policies strike a chord with many Dutch. You believe in smaller government and lower taxes; you believe nuclear power is a safer bet than nuclear energy; and you believe that creeping Islamisation poses a serious threat to your country’s national identity. And now someone wants to make a guerilla documentary about you.

Saturday

James Delingpole

If homeopathy is just water and sugar pills, why do doctors get so upset about it?

Just because you’re a hypochondriac doesn’t mean you’re not suffering from an obscure and terrible disease which is going to kill you very horribly. Just because you’re a hypochondriac doesn’t mean you’re not suffering from an obscure and terrible disease which is going to kill you very horribly. That’s why, high on the long list of osteopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists and other alternative practitioners I spend fortunes on every year, is a miracle worker called Fiona Gross. In another age, Fiona would surely have been burned as a witch: the things she does with her array of potions baint natural. Just recently, for example, she cured a woman (a successful author) of a mysterious respiratory illness acquired on holiday in Greece.

Saturday

James Delingpole

Grandfather’s footsteps

In the good old days, when Hackney still had a proper swimming pool, I used to do lengths every morning with an old boy called Bob. And, because I recognised him as a man of a particular generation, I used to prod him in the changing room afterwards to tell me his war stories. But Bob only ever told me one and it was rather depressing. He’d served in Palestine and one day his convoy had been ambushed by Irgun or Stern gang terrorists. Among those terrorists he and his fellow soldiers had shot while defending themselves was a young pregnant woman. ‘They called us the Baby Killers, after that.’ What a terrible time to have been called up. There are your slightly older mates having all covered themselves in glory in the great heroic war to defeat the Nazi menace.

Saturday

James Delingpole

I thought I was having a Nobel laureate for tea. Instead, the BBC had me for lunch

Last week I was stitched up like a kipper by the BBC. Perhaps you saw the programme — a Horizon documentary called Science Under Attack. Perhaps you were even among the dozens whom it inspired to send me hate emails along the lines of, ‘Ha ha. Think you know more about science than a Nobel prizewinner do you? Idiot!’ Perhaps it’s time I set the record straight. Last week I was stitched up like a kipper by the BBC. Perhaps you saw the programme — a Horizon documentary called Science Under Attack. Perhaps you were even among the dozens whom it inspired to send me hate emails along the lines of, ‘Ha ha. Think you know more about science than a Nobel prizewinner do you? Idiot!’ Perhaps it’s time I set the record straight.