I’ve just finished making a one-hour documentary about character for Radio 4 that’s due to be broadcast on Saturday at 8 p.m. It starts with the premise that there’s been a decline in what we think of as British values — honesty, fortitude, duty, modesty, charity, hard work, good manners, a sense of fair play, etc. — and asks whether anything can be done to restore them. Should they be taught in schools? Do parenting classes help? Or is the younger generation doomed to sink into a morass of indolence and vice?
I was originally commissioned to present it because I’ve written about character before, as well as helped set up some schools. But that was before my spot of bother at the beginning of the year when the Prime Minister appointed me to the board of the Office for Students, a new public regulator. My detractors started to trawl through everything I’d ever written dating back 30 years to prove I wasn’t a fit and proper person to serve on this board. I went from being a participant in the debate about whether the British character has declined to Exhibit A in the case for the prosecution.
Luckily, that didn’t mean Radio 4 ditched me in favour of someone more anodyne. All I had to do, explained the excellent producer Pauline Moore, was address the issue at the top of the programme — acknowledge that I have some character defects and give the impression that it was this disability that gave me a vested interest in the subject. Almost as if it was a programme about the search for a hair loss remedy that I was well-qualified to present because I’m bald.
As Pauline and I delved into the subject, I was worried that we might encounter a psychologist who claims to be able to help with the sort of problems that got me into trouble, such as an irresistible urge to provoke and enrage.
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