How I learned to stop worrying and love being hated

Girl: Dad, why do people want to punch your face in?
Me: Er, I’m not sure that they do, darling. Where did you get that idea?
Girl: It’s on YouTube. Look, here: ‘When Delingpole does that “air quotes” thing with his fingers I just want to punch him. Actually, I’d quite like to punch him anyway.’
Me: Ah, well, darling, you mustn’t worry about that. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing. It means Daddy’s famous.

Actually what I should have said was ‘infamous’. I’d first noticed this a couple of days earlier, at the Caprice, when I stopped by at the table of Daily Mail diarist Richard Kay. As Kay introduced me to his dining companion, I noticed a peculiar expression beginning to appear on the stranger’s face: that same weird mix of appalled horror and amused delight you might experience on meeting, maybe, Jeremy Clarkson or Piers Morgan, or Kim Jong-un. ‘Yep, that’s me,’ I joked. ‘The Notorious James Delingpole.’ Except the moment I said it — and they laughed — I realised it wasn’t a joke at all.

If you wanted to be unkind you could say I’ve become my own caricature. But the way I prefer to see it is that I’ve perfected my brand. I was talking to Toby Young about this the other day, in relation to public speaking. Toby said the thing that tends to go down really badly with his audiences, especially liberal-lefty ones, is when he tries to be reasonable and balanced and moderate. Not only do they despise you for your spinelessness but they feel utterly cheated. They came for the Experience of Toby Young, not the Experience of Having Just Waded Through Another Article In Which Hugo Rifkind Takes A Lighthearted Sideways Look At Something.