Jeremy Clarkson brings Yuletide joy to the Delingpole household

So I’m looking at the seasonal TV schedules trying to find something — anything — to watch.

Britain and the Sea? Probably very well done, but David Dimbleby is such a dangerously feline, OE-manqué, Flashmanesque, living-embodiment-of-the-BBC closet pinko that reviewing it would feel wrong, somehow, like chipping into a fund to buy Chris Huhne an eighth home.

The Doctor Who Christmas Special? But it always makes me want to kill myself. I hate the idea that a Dalek garlanded in tinsel might burst into the Cratchit household with a fat goose dangling from its exterminator gun while the White Witch’s frozen heart melts and all the crippled children are released from the snowy mountain — or whatever mawkish crap they’ve got planned for us this year.

Two films about The Great Train Robbery: A Robber’s Tale; A Copper’s Tale? Yeah, but we already know what happens, don’t we? They steal lots of money but then one by one they all get caught.

PQ 17: An Arctic Convoy Disaster. What? Wait, this is more like it. And who is presenting this very promising-sounding documentary on one of Britain’s biggest wartime cock-ups? Jeremy Clarkson?? Hallelujah! Thank you, Father Christmas. And you, Baby Jesus. Maybe there will yet be some Yuletide joy in the Delingpole home, after all…

Most of you, I imagine, know the basic story. In July 1942, 153 merchant seamen on the Arctic Convoy were sent needlessly to their deaths as a result of an ill-judged order by the First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound.

Pound had been spooked by reports that the Tirpitz, pride of the German battlefleet, was on its way to engage convoy PQ 17. Had this been true, it would have been disastrous for the Anglo–American convoy — not only for the ageing, rustbucket merchant ships ferrying supplies to the Soviets, but also for their destroyer and cruiser escort.