I’m a sucker for Tucker Carlson

I was asked on Tucker Carlson Tonight only once, while in New York about two years ago, and I turned the invitation from America’s most popular cable news commentator down. Did I worry that while discussing my previous Spectator column, I might put my foot in it? The subject of immigration is always a minefield. No, I believed computer modelling of the astonishingly high number of illegal immigrants really living in the US had attracted far too little press, and a sympathetic host would have given these staggering figures a wider airing.

Obviously, then, I was instead loath to appear alongside a notoriously racist, far-right, xeno-/Islamo-/homo-/trans-phobic purveyor of deceit and disinformation who panders to the basest instincts of a white-supremacist underclass and threatens American democracy. Bravely resisting the lure of the national spotlight, I was displaying my moral backbone.