As I suspected, my defects can’t be cured

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.