James Delingpole reviews television for The Spectator.
Wow! Finally in my life I get to experience what it’s like to be a rock star and I’m loving every moment. OK, so the drugs are in pretty short supply. As too is the meaningless sex with nubile groupies. But what do I care, the crowd love me and I love them. God bless America! God bless the Heartland Institute’s Fourth International Conference on Climate Change!
I know this is going to get me into an awful lot of trouble, but I really don’t think the TV adaptation of Martin Amis’s Money (BBC2, Sunday, Wednesday) was that bad. I know this is going to get me into an awful lot of trouble, but I really don’t think the TV adaptation of Martin Amis’s Money (BBC2, Sunday, Wednesday) was that bad. Of course, though, I do see the main problem — which was neatly described in the Telegraph by Michael Deacon. Deacon quoted two of the paragraphs that made the book the defining English novel of the Eighties: Deafened with caffeine, I was just a hot robot, a ticking grid of jet-lag, time-jump and hangover.
This is a column I never thought I’d have to write. I’d assumed that the conclusions to be drawn from the general election were so bleeding obvious that I could leave all the post-match analysis to the experts, while I distracted you with something more cheerful like, say, a piece about Fergal Keane’s brilliant new book on the battle of Kohima. Apparently not, though. It seems that my job today is to point out an awkward fact that seems to have eluded about 98 per cent of political commentators in the mainstream media and 99.99 per cent of those Conservatives who invested their faith in Project Cameron: Dave blew it. No, really. He did.
The closest I’ve come to seeing a ghost was a few months ago when we went to stay in a haunted house. The closest I’ve come to seeing a ghost was a few months ago when we went to stay in a haunted house. We had a deeply uncomfortable night during which it was cold and hard to sleep, and in the small hours my wife was awoken by a mysterious pressure on her chest, almost as if she was suffocating, and which may have been the tortured spirit of whoever it was who had died horribly there or which might have been the heavy quilt. Dunno. Couldn’t say. I’m itching to have a 100 per cent, cast-iron ‘Yes I saw a ghost and it was definitely a ghost’ experience, but this wasn’t it. Otherwise, this intro would have been more exciting.
How would you like to go on a freebie to the Arctic Circle for a couple of weeks? Here’s the deal: all your travel expenses are taken care of; you stay on a beautiful old sailing ship, most likely in some remote, picturesque bay far off the tourist map; you’ll see killer whales and polar bears, possibly even the odd narwhal; you’ll get to zoom around the pristine wilderness on skidoos; your food is prepared by a top Italian chef; there’s lashings of booze (albeit rather heady North African plonk); almost all your travelling companions will be famous in some way: Vikram Seth, Rachel Whiteread, Ian McEwan, Marcus Brigstocke. Oh all right — I lost you with Marcus Brigstocke. But up until that point it was sounding pretty tasty, wasn’t it?
Science, you may have noticed, has been getting a bad press of late. Scientists losing raw data, scientists withholding data, scientists cherry-picking data, scientists torturing the evidence till it says what they want it to say, scientists acting more like political activists than scientists. And, of all the world’s media institutions, none has been quite so shameless in justifying, excusing or covering up this appalling behaviour than that supposed bastion of neutrality and authority, the BBC. Still, the BBC can’t get everything wrong all the time, and its new series The Story of Science is a case in point.
Some of my best friends are gay — but now I can go one better than that: one of them is HIV positive. Some of my best friends are gay — but now I can go one better than that: one of them is HIV positive. ‘But that’s brilliant news!’ I told my friend when he spilled the beans the other day. ‘Now I can go round claiming victim cred by association. And if anyone makes an Aids joke I can be, like, seriously offended and put on a solemn voice and say: “Actually, you know, if you had an HIV positive friend like I do...”.’ My friend agreed that being HIV positive was a very handy thing to be, in this respect.
I think it’s about time someone explained to women how to watch war films. I think it’s about time someone explained to women how to watch war films. They just don’t get them, in much the same way men don’t get handbags or expensive girl-shoes. They think it’s all boring and that the characters all look the same, so how can you care about them? They think there’s far too much shooting and killing and violence and horror and bang bang bang and it’s like watching paint dry. They’d rather let you watch on your own, if you don’t mind, while they go upstairs and read in the bath.
How odd to think that there was a time when I looked up to David Cameron. From the moment we were introduced at the beginning of my second year at Oxford, I remember being mesmerised by his confidence, his charisma, his looks, that amused plummy accent and — yes — perhaps, also, that slight vibe so many Etonians projected in those days that if you hadn’t been to ‘School’ you really weren’t quite the thing. It all made you want to get to know him better. Which I did. And I very much liked what I found. If you’d told me then that David Cameron would one day be prime minister, I’m sure I would have been tickled pink.
Three reasons why I hardly ever review TV drama: 1) the length, 2) the politics, 3) sheer bloody laziness. I suppose the last one is the main reason but the others aren’t just excuses. It really is too depressing when, three hours into one of those Sunday and Monday two-part dramas, you suddenly realise that you’ve already wasted one evening and you’re about to waste another, but that you can’t bail out now because you’re in too deep — and what if something good and exciting suddenly happens? Almost all TV drama is too long and the reason for this is that the more screen hours you fill the bigger your commissioning budget.
M. ‘I’ve spotted him!’ Me. ‘Where?’ M. ‘Down there. Having a coffee. On his own.’ Me. ‘Hey. Do you think he’d like it if we joined him?’ M. ‘I doubt it. He’s reading a book.’ D. ‘God, is he reading his own book? Unbelievable. He’s reading Yellow Dog.’ M. ‘No it’s not. I think it’s Hitch 22.’ Me. ‘Yeah well, whatever it is, look, he’s almost at the end. You know how it is when you’re nearly at the end of the book. You want to prolong the moment. So we’d be doing him a favour.’ M. ‘You can if you want to. I’m staying here.’ Me. ‘Coward. What about you, D?’ D. ‘Well we’ve come all this way.
Many years ago, when I decided to ‘become’ a novelist, I shipped myself off to a village in south-west France called St Jean de Fos for three months, banned myself from reading any novels in English (lest they corrupt my style) and became an obsessive maker of French dishes like cassoulet because my first book was about a restaurant critic and I wanted to make it perfectly authentic. Many years ago, when I decided to ‘become’ a novelist, I shipped myself off to a village in south-west France called St Jean de Fos for three months, banned myself from reading any novels in English (lest they corrupt my style) and became an obsessive maker of French dishes like cassoulet because my first book was about a restaurant critic and I wanted to make it perfectly authentic.
‘I am Howard Roark in a world of Ellsworth Tooheys…’ I tweeted in a fit of depression the other day, though I rather wish I hadn’t. I’m not an architect — and if I were I definitely wouldn’t be a humourless monomaniac into concrete and influenced by Le Corbusier; I don’t have hair ‘the exact color of ripe orange rind’ (does anyone?); I’m not a rapist; and, to be honest, I’m not even sure I like the novel that much anyway. It’s called The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand, and if you haven’t read it that’s quite understandable as the Russian-born novelist and philosopher Rand (née Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum in 1905) is much bigger in the US than she is over here.
I have been depressed lately and Why Did You Kill My Dad? (BBC1, Monday) wasn’t what I needed at all. I have been depressed lately and Why Did You Kill My Dad? (BBC1, Monday) wasn’t what I needed at all. In it award-winning film-maker Julian Hendy interviewed the families of some of the 100 innocents who are randomly murdered each year by psychopaths. Hendy’s dad was one of them. It was all so sensitively, movingly done, and the ‘Why us?’ testimonies of the bereaved parents, wives and children were so heartbreaking that it made you want to cry. The villain of the piece was the psychiatric establishment.
No it’s OK, I didn’t mind one teeny tiny bit that Matt Ridley wrote an entire Spectator cover story on Climategate and the blogosphere last week without once mentioning the name of the brilliant Spectator journalist who broke the story on his Telegraph blog, and popularised the name Climategate, and got 1.5 million hits in one week, and whose anti-eco-fascist bulletins now have a massive following from readers all around the world who keep sending him emails like ‘Thank you for saving us from the horrors of ManBearPig’ and (I’m not making this up) ‘Someone should put up a James Delingpole statue in Trafalgar Square’. Because if I did it would be really petty, wouldn’t it?
The closer we get to the Great Disappointment — aka the forthcoming Heath administration — the more I miss Margaret Thatcher. The closer we get to the Great Disappointment — aka the forthcoming Heath administration — the more I miss Margaret Thatcher. Just how much I was reminded by Michael Cockerell’s new series The Great Offices of State (BBC4, Thursday). This particular episode was about Surrender Monkey Central — aka the Foreign Office — and featured Maggie in her pomp, eyes ablaze, holding forth on the only way to deal with jumped-up foreigners like Galtieri. ‘I’m not in the business of appeasement. It is not part of my psyche!’ she declared. ‘You can’t negotiate away an invasion!’ she said.
If I’d written the film it would have been called Four Funerals and a Wedding, because personally I find funerals much more fun. Not all funerals, obviously. But the funeral of someone who’s not a close relative and who’s had a good innings can be a very splendid occasion — as I was reminded the other week when I went to Tisbury, Wiltshire, to bid farewell to my old friend John Clanwilliam. John, you may remember, was the earl I killed last summer during a game of human Cluedo. At Christmas, he died for real and though I shall miss him dearly I don’t think anyone could be too unhappy at the manner of his leaving: a few months after two glorious 90th birthday parties (one in London, one in the country), cheery, well-loved and with all his faculties intact.
I’ve got another brilliant idea for a TV series. I’ve got another brilliant idea for a TV series. It’s called MPs Walled Up in Scorpion-Filled, Ebola-Ridden, Plague-Rat-Infested, Acid-Drenched, Radioactive Tower Block of Slow Hellish Screaming Death. All right, so the title does give away the premise, slightly, but I’d still watch it, wouldn’t you? 24/7. Done right — with special feature-length episodes devoted to Ed Balls, Harriet Harman, and the Milibands — I reckon it would be more satisfying than Band of Brothers, The Sopranos, Das Boot, South Park, The Simpsons and University Challenge rolled into one. And from me, that’s quite an accolade.
Bellamy’s People (BBC2, Thursday) began life in 2006 as a spoof Radio Four phone-in show called Down the Line presented by ‘award-winning’ Gary Bellamy (Rhys Thomas) with the Fast Show’s Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse playing the various callers. Bellamy’s People (BBC2, Thursday) began life in 2006 as a spoof Radio Four phone-in show called Down the Line presented by ‘award-winning’ Gary Bellamy (Rhys Thomas) with the Fast Show’s Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse playing the various callers. Now it has moved to TV and its satirical target — not before time — are all those programmes where celebrities drive round the country meeting people and saying, ‘Isn’t Britain brilliant?
The highlight of my Christmas holidays was taking the family to see Avatar. It’s not often a film comes along which wife, Boy (11), Girl (9) and I are able to adore in equal measure. But James Cameron’s $200 million epic ego-fest hit the spot perfectly and for those families out there still wavering, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Whenever I’ve mentioned this to my right-leaning friends, though, the general reaction has been one of appalled horror. ‘But how could you?’ they want to know.