Enoch Powell once said to me, ‘I love the humbug of the English. I worship it. But I reserve the right from time to time to point it out.’
Enoch Powell once said to me, ‘I love the humbug of the English. I worship it. But I reserve the right from time to time to point it out.’ I thought of this last week when I took part in Radio 4’s Any Questions?, set up in the nave of Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire. The programme always has a ‘warm-up’ question before it goes live, and this time it was something to do with travel. Jonathan Dimbleby, the chairman, then asked the audience how many of them would be going abroad for a holiday this year. About three-quarters put up their hands. On air, a question about the floods (in which Oxfordshire suffered particularly badly) produced much nodding and clapping when my fellow-panellist Peter Tatchell blamed it all on climate change.
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