The fourth and last time I debated at the Oxford Union was three or four years ago, and it was a total disaster. The motion was that Katrina’s aftermath was Bush’s fault, and I was against it. A quarter of a century before that, Auberon Waugh and I had wiped out the opposition under the leadership of a very young — in his twenties — Charles Moore. Another victory followed some years later, though the subject escapes me as if in a dream. A beautiful young student asked me if it was true that I went to Annabel’s every night and whether I would take her there — which I did, and we spent the next week hiding from her outraged father. Charlie Glass and I made mincemeat of Lord Parkinson and Nicholas Soames about five years ago, and then I hit a snag with Katrina.
I was up last, and blaming Louisiana’s crooked politicians for having pocketed the federal funds allocated for flood protection, when an extremely obese African-American student asked to be recognised.
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