The BBC is like a goldfish. Just as we have no way of communicating to the poor creature that it is confined by a bowl, experts of the utmost skill and renown have sought in vain for years to explain to the corporation that its ethos is slanted towards the left. It knows no other world but that of the Guardian, in which it lives and moves and has its being. It would die, more of shock than anything else, if it were removed from it.
And so it swims round and round, opening and closing its mouth and burbling that such accusations are fanciful. But now at last I believe I have found a way to signal across the vast divide that separates the BBC and the rest of us. This is thanks to what turned out to be a rather amusing thing which recently happened to me.
A friend telephoned me, in a state of mild shock, to let me know that I had been the defendant in a six-minute show-trial on a Radio 4 programme called Feedback. I often listen to Feedback, engagingly presented by Roger Bolton. It sometimes voices important criticisms of Radio 4 and occasionally persuades its executives to defend themselves.
As my appearances on Radio 4 are limited to the occasional slot as token right-wing maniac, I couldn’t quite see how I had come under the searching gaze of Feedback. I soon found out. I had dared to criticise and challenge Professor David Nutt in a discussion on the Today programme. Worse, some listeners might have thought I got the better of him.
Professor Nutt is a hero to those who think our laws on cannabis are too strict. Presumably, I had been asked on to Today in order to make the professor look good by comparison.
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