Freedom starts with plain speaking

The Jeremy Vine show (BBC Radio 2) rang the other day to ask whether I’d come on and talk about the newly ennobled Tory peer Howard Flight’s remarks about ‘breeding’ and the underclass.

The Jeremy Vine show (BBC Radio 2) rang the other day to ask whether I’d come on and talk about the newly ennobled Tory peer Howard Flight’s remarks about ‘breeding’ and the underclass. As usual, my immediate answer was, ‘No. You just want me to come on and be your token hate figure.’ ‘Oh pleeeeze,’ they said. ‘We’ll send a car. A really nice one.’ ‘Oh, all right then. But not because of the car. You’d have sent the car anyway. I’m doing it because I’m a whore, that’s all.’

So on the way to the show I got talking to the driver. I asked what he thought of the Howard Flight business and he said: ‘Ooh, I think it was wrong of him to say what he did.’