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When I am King

James Delingpole

Wednesday, 17th September 2008

Earth: The Climate Wars (BBC 2); Amazon (BBC 2); Tess of the d’Urbervilles (BBC 1)

A Church of England official has issued an apology to the descendants of Charles Darwin for the Church’s ‘anti-evolutionary’ fervour towards his Origin of the Species.

I wonder if in about 150 years’ time the BBC — presuming it still exists which I won’t let it do, I promise, once I’ve become your emperor — will make similar amends for having been wrong about absolutely everything from Israel, Europe, Islamism and multiculturalism to women, children, animals and, above all, global warming.

‘God, what a bunch of complete and utter ****ers we all were,’ their apology could say as it floats in shimmery holographic form over icy London streets dominated by minarets, wind turbines and huge packs of semi-domesticated polar bears. ‘We could have contributed something useful or interesting to the climate-change debate. Instead we gave you Earth: The Climate Wars (BBC 2, Sunday).

None of you will have seen it because you’ll have been watching Tess on BBC1, either going, ‘Phwooar, I wouldn’t mind a bit of that stuck on my relentlessly turning tragic wheel,’ if you’re a man, or ‘hurry up and die, bitch!’, if you’re a woman. So what, fortunately you’ll have been spared some rather dreary propaganda for the anthropogenic global-warming lobby, funded by you the licence-fee payer, and masqueradering with typically BBC disingenuousness as objective truth only reached after much soul-searching, research and hard thinking.

It’s the last part I objected to most. Every five minutes we had to have shots of presenter Dr Iain Stewart pulling faces and staring contemplatively at old news footage and scratching his chin. This demonstrated he was not just some eco-nutter pursuing an agenda but an ordinary bloke who could definitely be trusted because he was a proper, actual scientist — a doctor of geology at Plymouth University, no less.

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Anne Mansfield

September 22nd, 2008 1:56am

Excellent! You have my voter for Emperor, although voting might not be part of an Imperium.

Nick

September 29th, 2008 5:01am

The laughs Delingpole causes are one of the best reasons to buy the thing

A perfect cadence

Stephen Pettitt

This year, on 11 December — and I wish more people knew about it than actually do — the American composer Elliott Carter celebrates his 100th birthday.

Forgotten wonders

Andrew Lambirth

Byzantium 330-1454
Royal Academy, until 22 March 2009

Out of the ordinary

Carolyn Bartholomew

Carolyn Bartholomew talks to Tilda Swinton, an actor who has made a career out of being unconventional

Life lessons

Kate Chisholm

Talking to my dentist, as one does, we discover a mutual enthusiasm for Radio Three’s Composer of the Week (Monday to Friday) and especially its presenter, Donald Macleod.