James Delingpole

‘Shh! Cricket!’ my grandfather Ken Delingpole used to say whenever the cricket came on the wireless. ‘Shh! Cricket!’ my grandfather Ken Delingpole used to say whenever the cricket came on the wireless. It was a family joke, indicative of just how boring Delingpoles all found the world’s most boring game. But then my father bred with a Price and the Prices are the exact opposite — county squash and tennis players, decent golfers, sporting nuts.

I’ve got this brilliant idea for a Sunday night TV series. I’ve got this brilliant idea for a Sunday night TV series. It’s called Inspector Fluffy and His Agreeable Pipe. Every week, Inspector Fluffy (Stephen Fry) will travel to a picturesque corner of Britain in his battered Morris Traveller, giving tearaway gypsy children clips round the ear, discovering that it was a magpie that really took the silverware, judging marrow competitions in vicarage gardens. While cogitating on the latest mystery, he will suck on his agreeable pipe, with lots of stupendous Apprentice-style aerial shots showing the English countryside in all its gasp-inducing majesty.

The phone rang last night, I picked it up and it was our friend Tania. ‘God, I hate my ****ing husband,’ she said. ‘Oh, Tania, don’t be silly, Jamie’s a sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Oh, shut up, I don’t want to be talking to you, you’re a man. Pass me to your wife, she’ll understand,’ said Tania. So I handed the phone to the wife and she made all the right noises. It seemed that Jamie had arrived home late and hungry to discover that Tania had eaten all his sausages. Jamie had called her a ‘****ing bitch’. I felt similarly divided loyalties watching English Heritage (BBC2, Friday).

On the posters in the Tube at the moment are these adverts for Argumental, which is the Dave channel’s first self-generated panel show. On the posters in the Tube at the moment are these adverts for Argumental, which is the Dave channel’s first self-generated panel show. I don’t want to knock Dave too much because it’s generally a good thing: the reliable stand-by you end up with if there’s nothing on the terrestrial channels, BBC4, BBC3, Sky One or the Military History channel. It’s got repeats of Top Gear. It has repeats of QI. What’s not to like? Well, Argumental would be my slight problem. Take those poster ads.

Is it really a six-figure salary? Only, this time last year it wouldn’t have seemed worth it, but now it’s looking almost as attractive as a job in the public sector. I think I might have to go for it. ‘Step up to the plate,’ as I must learn to say, if I’m to stand any chance whatsoever. There’s a place going spare at the moment, too, so it’s not totally unfeasible. I could actually be Sir Alan’s new Apprentice. Then again, no. For a man of such tremendous supposed business acumen and shrewd character judgment, Sir Alan has never been much cop at picking the right candidate. He’s unhealthily drawn to spivvy chancers like Michael Sophocles, and rough diamonds like the CV-tweaking Neanderthal who won the last series.

Did you know that in 1970s and 1980s Yorkshire there were death squads of heavily armed policemen whose job it was to assassinate anyone who got too close — be he witness, investigating officer, or informer — to unmasking their mysterious bosses’ sinister web of lies, deceit, corruption, betrayal, wife beating, torture and serial killing? No, I didn’t either. Did you know that in 1970s and 1980s Yorkshire there were death squads of heavily armed policemen whose job it was to assassinate anyone who got too close — be he witness, investigating officer, or informer — to unmasking their mysterious bosses’ sinister web of lies, deceit, corruption, betrayal, wife beating, torture and serial killing? No, I didn’t either.

Iran And The West (BBC2, Saturday); Terry Pratchett: Living With Alzheimer’s (BBC2, Wednesday) Just in case you needed another reason to loathe and despise the French (I mean, as if Olivier Besancenot wasn’t enough), there was a corker in Norma Percy’s characteristically brilliant new documentary series Iran And The West (BBC2, Saturday). It concerned the Lebanese hostage crisis of the 1980s when the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia (‘practitioners’ as Jon Snow would no doubt call them) kidnapped dozens of Westerners, among them American journalist Terry Anderson, Archbishop’s envoy Terry Waite, and various Frenchmen and seemed determined to hold them indefinitely.

I’m sorry, really I am, but I don’t love The Wire as much as I know I should. I’m sorry, really I am, but I don’t love The Wire as much as I know I should. It’s not that I can’t see that it has huge amounts going for it. I love McNulty’s cheeky chimp face and that the actor playing him went to Eton; I like the lesbian; I like the way one quickly becomes so well informed on the nuances of drug-dealing in the Baltimore projects that one could easily set up shop there oneself; I sort of like the fact that only about 50 per cent of the dialogue is comprehensible, which must mean it’s edgy and echt and cool. But here’s my problem: it makes me fall asleep.

If you don’t mind — yeah, like you’ve any choice in the matter — what I thought I’d do for this New Year column is to do just enough TV for the editor not to want to sack me, then move swiftly on to the stuff my hardcore fans prefer, namely the rambling and shameless solipsism. If you don’t mind — yeah, like you’ve any choice in the matter — what I thought I’d do for this New Year column is to do just enough TV for the editor not to want to sack me, then move swiftly on to the stuff my hardcore fans prefer, namely the rambling and shameless solipsism. First, The Devil’s Whore (Channel 4). I know it finished a few weeks ago but it was definitely one of the year’s TV highlights.