Diary – 4 March 2006

I was revolting from a very early age and more than once thought of taking over a radio station and starting a revolution. In those days the wireless exerted far more influence than the newspapers, at least in our house. I can still remember the opening sentence of my call to arms. Rise up, rise up, the moment is at hand. At this distance I can’t recall what particular cause provoked the necessity for an uprising, but I do know I’d been reading Red Eagle by Dennis Wheatley and that in my satchel I had a picture of Marshal Budenny, a man with a moustache straight out of a pantomime. Recently I have again felt a surge of rebellion owing to various issues that occupy both airwaves and press, among them smoking, sex, the amount of water we put in the bath, the emerging Channel Tunnel rail terminal at King’s Cross, and the use of ‘unnecessarily insensitive’ language.