Would I still hate actors’ rants if they all agreed with me?

I feel a bit sorry for Piers Morgan. On Tuesday, Ewan McGregor was due to appear on the sofa with Piers on ITV’s Good Morning to talk about the Trainspotting sequel, but he failed to turn up. Later, the actor explained on Twitter that it was due to the journalist’s remarks about the women’s marches that took place last weekend, in which he described some of the participants as ‘rabid feminists’ and suggested he should organise a men’s march in response.

I had a similar experience about five years ago when the actor Matthew Macfadyen pulled out of an interview he was due to do with me. Like McGregor, he said he wouldn’t have agreed to it in the first place if he’d known the journalist in question was a right-wing bastard — or words to that effect. This was for the in-house magazine of John Lewis, in which I had a regular interview slot. I think the editor had been having difficulty persuading anyone famous to sit down with me, because after Macfadyen’s bombshell I was sacked.

I thought about writing a thunderous op ed for the Daily Mail, pointing out the irony of a socialist depriving a working man of his livelihood as a matter of principle, but decided against it on the grounds that Macfadyen would probably be delighted to discover his little ‘protest’ had been so effective. Let’s hope the same fate doesn’t befall Piers.

I do find it intensely irritating when celebrities engage in political posturing, although I’m not sure why. I like to think it’s nothing to do with the fact that the opinions they’re spouting are so different from mine. No, it’s because they’re straying into areas they usually know very little about.