Why should we listen to Benedict Cumberbatch on Syrian refugees?

Because I just don’t know what to think about the Syrian refugee crisis — not even after Simon Schama’s powerfully cogent argument on Question Time the other week, where he explained that if you don’t want to house them all in your guest bedroom you’re basically a Nazi — I thought I might pay the scalps a couple of hundred quid or so to see Benedict Cumberbatch as Hamlet at the Barbican.

Apparently the really exciting bit isn’t anything he does as the Dane but rather Shakespeare’s rarely performed postscript where Hamlet comes back to life in the terrifying form of a preening, hectoring Old Harrovian luvvie to berate the groundlings for their uncaringness. ‘A pox on the politicians!’ this apparition is wont to declare, more frightful than anything glimpsed earlier on the battlements of Elsinore. And even if you didn’t have a strong view before on those Syrians, you will by the time the collection bucket is rattled menacingly beneath your nose. Simply seeing Cumberbatch, all quavery and exquisitely modulated and indignant, is enough to dispense any doubt. As Homer Simpson almost once said: ‘Luvvies. Is there anything they don’t know?’

Well I can answer that. No there isn’t. I’ve learned from the newspapers, from the TV and social media that there’s not a single problem in the world, great or small, for which the luvvies don’t have the definitive answer.

Ever been struck by the fact that from Jane Austen adaptations to Poldark to Pointless, there aren’t nearly enough black and ethnic minority characters on TV? Well you’re bloody right. Former New Faces and Tiswas star Sir Lenny Henry says so. And it’s not about ‘tokenism’, God no. It’s simply about ‘driving up quality’.