How I miss Auberon Waugh

Every now and then one suddenly misses somebody. I miss Bron, who died 17 years ago last month. There’s an Auberon Waugh-sized hole in British satirical journalism.

Listening to the radio last week — it was all about famous women, women in history, women’s suffrage, sexual harassment of women, equal pay for women at the BBC, women this and women that — I felt vaguely irritable. Not that I seriously disagreed with anything being said, or wished to rain on any suffragist’s parade, or have ever been remotely sympathetic to inappropriate male behaviour towards women … no, I’d place myself on the ‘politically correct’ side of the argument on every one of these issues.

So why the urge to switch off the Today programme? How can I put this? It was all getting a bit, well, relentless. I’ve never even propositioned a woman. I’m pretty sure I’d have been in favour of women’s suffrage.