My real focus group scorned climate change

If you ever want to get in touch with the real world, try pretending to be a second world war GI. This is what I did the other weekend and it was quite an eye-opener. I don’t mean the stuff I learned about the correct procedure for debussing and advancing to contact from an armoured half-track — fascinating, obviously, though that was. I mean what I discovered about my fellow Living History re-enactors in the pub, afterwards, when we got on to the subject of impending ecological disaster.

‘Oh that? No, it’s a load of old bollocks that is,’ said my neighbour, and I did a double take. It has become something of a speciality of mine — ideological Tourette’s, my wife calls it — winding up friends, colleagues, dinner-party neighbours, anyone who’ll listen with my appalling and deeply outrageous views as a card-carrying global warming denier.

This crowd, though, clearly would be a tougher nut to crack.