Matthew Parris

Every columnist, broadcaster or writer should, as each year closes, review his or her net contribution to the sum total of national good. It isn’t vain — or, if vain, it’s the vanity demanded by self-respect — that we should ask what we’ve done to change the world for the better. One hundred and ten years ago this New Year’s eve, Emile Zola will have reflected with pride on the total exoneration of Alfred Dreyfus, whose cruel traduction by the French authorities the brave writer did so much to expose. Charles Dickens deserved to spend his Christmases proudly contemplating how his stories, serialised in the daily newspapers, had awakened the Victorian conscience to the sufferings of the poor.

I was due this week to interview a person I much admire, for a publication I respect, and for a fee I could more or less live with. My putative interviewee was my undoubted superior in terms both of intellect and genius: someone who has for many years managed a career with skill and flair. The parameters of the interview were benign: given the surrounding circumstances and the nature of the publication there could be no question of my wanting to embarrass or trap my interviewee. In short, this was to be a friendly interview with a capable adult conducted for the mutual advantage of both parties and (in this case) the public good. There were no imaginable elephant traps for anyone involved.

It hardly struck me, as I set out for a couple of days in Somerset, that they would lead me to Bridport in Dorset, thence to Dame Margaret Drabble, to the history of the jigsaw puzzle, and finally to some melancholy reflections on the meaning of life. But of such apparently random pieces are jigsaws made, and sometimes they do make a picture. We’d seen a day of hurricane-force gales along the south coast last Saturday, when our Somerset hosts remarked that they’d bought tickets for a talk by Margaret Drabble at the Bridport Literary Festival early that evening, and were planning to drive over to the town before supper — and would anyone care to come? Gales notwithstanding, Margaret Drabble was there on time, in a scarlet silk tunic and red shoes.

I have an independent financial adviser. I can recommend him. He gives me expert advice. But I decide, and sometimes I disagree. Nobody would question either the propriety or the commonplace nature of this arrangement. Recently we were discussing what to do with my maturing pension fund. His suggestions looked shrewd but were predicated on a measure of resumed economic growth and the persistence for some years of low interest rates. His assessment was well-informed and would be widely shared.

If you’re me, one of the ways you know that broadcasters are getting desperate for a ‘balancing’ voice to counter a popular point of view is that large numbers of them start telephoning you. You realise they must be scraping the barrel. Never more so, of course, than when what’s sought is that elusive beast, an articulate right-winger who isn’t totally Neanderthal. I generally tell them (always good advice in a tight corner) to try Peter Hitchens or Janet Daley.

I will only ‘Think Bike’ if the bikers can be persuaded to ‘Think Motorist’ ‘29 BIKERS KILLED OR INJURED IN THE LAST 5 YEARS’, says the big yellow roadside sign as I drive along the A515 between Ashbourne and Buxton, on my way to this week’s Tory conference in Manchester. The sign is repeated many times along the old Roman road. It is rather shocking. ‘THINK BIKE’, says another sign, presumably directed at motorists. ‘50’ says the speed limit sign, endlessly repeated, both painted onto the road and displayed on steel poles by the side of it. ‘IT’S 50 FOR A REASON’, say yet another series of signs. And then ‘ACCIDENT ZONE’.

I’m thrilled to the core by the magnificent tribe whose talents shine the world over There’s something about a flesh-and-blood entertainer doing his nut in front of a flesh-and-blood audience that thrills me to the core. I’ve no idea why. Maybe because my great-grandfather was a pantomime dame. Maybe because I’m a far-flung twig on the Littler family tree — the dynasty that includes Emile and Prince Littler, impresarios who dominated music hall and pantomime in the first half of the last century. Whatever the reason, and despite (perhaps because of?

Why at a Ryanair check-in is there always somebody weeping? In this case, at Girona airport in Catalonia last week, she was a respectable, grandma-aged German lady in a white cotton-and-lace blouse. She was standing by the counter where you have to pay extra (only cash accepted) if you didn’t tick the right box for a checked-in suitcase when completing your online ticket purchase; or buy another flight at maximum price if you turned up one minute late for the flight you were supposed to be on. I was in the first category: I had hold luggage, and was stung for E20 extra, which was bearable. Whatever the weeping lady had been stung for, however, was not. She was sobbing uncontrollably while other passengers (including me) shuffled past, helpless and embarrassed.

I was lucky last Saturday at 10.30 to become a West Country pioneer. For some years the Conservative party has been experimenting with open primaries for the selection of their prospective parliamentary candidates. I’ve acted as ringmaster for a few of these, supplementing questions from the floor with my own: a sub-Dimbleby figure, putting them through their political paces. Whatever the theoretical objections, the idea has in practice worked well — tending to discourage candidates from pandering only to the solid Tory core. But these meetings, typically attended by no more than a few hundred people, could in theory easily be ‘packed’. They still feel a narrow base for so important a selection.

Spike Milligan lives. I encountered him last week among the Australian military contingent at Camp Holland: a Dutch-led base in southern Afghanistan, in the province next to Helmand. Corporal Milligan, to be precise. But everyone calls him Spike. And though I’ve no reason to think he is or could be a fine singer or a world-famous comedian, Corporal Milligan has his famous namesake’s enthusiasm, optimism and punch. I met him as part of a small posse of visiting journalists, the guests of ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) and Nato. Our hosts were keen to show us the good work being done by the military to improve the lives of ordinary Afghans, and the Australian-run Trade Training School at Camp Holland is something of a showcase.

It is good that MPs have second jobs — but they should share the proceeds No columnist should read too much into online responses to what he has written. No more than those who call in to radio phone-in programmes are those who post their comments online representative of readers as a whole — let alone the population as a whole. But I try to read properly the letters readers write or the comments they post online, because the sample of those moved to respond, though unrepresentative, is significant. It may tell you something about way the wind blows. So were I a Conservative MP I would have been depressed to scan the online response from Times readers to a column I wrote there last week.

By this weekend most people won’t remember the details of, and some won’t remember at all, the exchange of emails between Lord Mandelson and the former Labour blogger Derek Draper, which took place in 2008 and before Mandelson joined Gordon Brown’s Cabinet, but which was leaked to a Sunday newspaper two weeks ago. What lingers is the vague impression that Mandelson thinks Mr Brown an awkward public performer, and perhaps a conflicted private personality. These impressions will have sunk quietly into that great national collective unconscious where current opinions find their roots without our even knowing it.

We call it ‘antiquity’. And yet, in this imperial Roman city, it seemed like yesterday Call to mind London’s Regent Street. Suppose it straight, not curved. Suppose it about the same width but more than twice as long: a mile and a quarter. Picture it lined on each side not with shop fronts but with richly carved marble columns, more than 2,000 of them, approaching the height of Regent Street’s roof line. Top those columns with supporting massive, decorated stone lintels laid across. Picture the street paved not with tarmac but with stone slabs rutted with the grooves of a million cart and carriage wheels. Imagine it as the Champs Elysées of an imperial Roman city.