James Delingpole

My prize for the best thing on TV this year goes to the comedy Rev (BBC2, Thursdays). I know Simon Hoggart disagrees with me on this  — he finds it all a bit predictable. But in the spirit of Christmas I should like to point out that Simon is a wine-soaked pinko Guardianista who hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about, whereas I am world-famous for being right about everything, so there. Why is Rev so good? Let us count the ways. Its alpha and omega — as with all the best sitcoms — is character. Apart from Perry and Croft’s various masterpieces and The Simpsons, I’m hard pushed to think of any other TV comedy with quite so extensive a cast of well-drawn, plausible, compelling major and minor characters.

To the Manor Reborn (BBC1, Thursday) is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant programmes in the history of television. But then I’m biased for the Rat is in it, and what a splendid, handsome and talented young fellow he has turned out to be. If you looked very carefully about halfway through episode one, you’ll have caught him standing facing interior designer Russell Sage, holding a sheet of wallpaper or something. And then later, you’ll have caught him again being told by Sage to remember something he’d forgotten. Superb! The boy is a natural, he’ll go far, and as his proud stepfather I shall accept nothing less than the highest offers for his services.

Fact: in 1963, air travel was so new and exciting that the awed gasps of the passengers as the plane took flight frequently drowned out the noise of the jet engines. Fact: in 1963, air travel was so comfortable that passengers emerged from long-haul flights even more refreshed, relaxed and cheerful than when they boarded the plane. Instead of taking their suits to the dry cleaners, canny travellers of the day would often just take a plane journey instead, knowing that their clothes would emerge at the end more pressed and immaculate than before. Fact: in 1963, every woman looked and dressed like Jackie Kennedy, especially air stewardesses, all of whom could have doubled as models because they were just so hot.

One of the useful things about having teen and near-teenage kids is discovering what the vulgar masses watch. Last week, for example, during half-term, I got to see two hugely popular programmes which I would probably never have bothered watching on my own: Undercover Boss USA (Channel 4, Wednesday) and The X Factor (ITV, Saturday, Sunday). Yes, I suppose it is a terrible indictment of my lackadaisical attitude that it has taken me till now to watch a full episode of the most talked about programme on TV. Thing is, though, I’ve been right all along. The X Factor just isn’t as good as University Challenge. Or The Simpsons. Or South Park. Or even, frankly, Downton Abbey.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall thinks it’s time we all went veggie (River Cottage Veg; Channel 4, Sunday). Coming from a man whose favourite dish is human placenta marinaded in fruit-bat extract, who slaughters his own pigs with a pocket knife and dances naked in their gore as he turns them into 2,058 varieties of artisanal black pudding, and who recently confessed he wouldn’t mind eating the odd puppy if push came to shove, I suppose this is something we should take quite seriously. Personally, I feel betrayed. As betrayed as I felt all those years ago when my most heavy-duty smoking friend Ewen gave up fags, which was so unfair because I’d been relying on him to die of lung cancer, not me. ‘Et tu, Hugh?’ it made me think. Because I like my meat, an awful lot.

Whenever I find myself dreaming about how awful things would be under a red/green dictatorship — increasingly often, these days — the one person who gives me a glimmer of hope that I might get out of the hell alive is Stephen Fry. He’s a leftie, of course — but, like Frank Field and Kate Hoey, he’s the right kind of leftie. Even when appointed Minister for Culture in the new regime, as he inevitably would be, you just know that he wouldn’t indulge in either the gloating triumphalism or bullying sadism of his fellow Nomenklatura. It would be more a case of: ‘Yes, my dear, dear chap. How perfectly awful for you to be caught on the wrong side of history.

When future historians sift through the wreckage of Western Civilisation to try to find out where it all went wrong, I do hope they chance upon at least one episode of The World’s Strictest Parents (BBC3) and one of Deal or No Deal (Channel 4). The World’s Strictest Parents is another TV variant on the Lad’s Army/Wife Swap theme. Unruly, selfish, vile teenagers are sent from their grotesquely overindulging middle-class British homes to far-flungplaces, there to spend two weeks under the kind of old-fashioned parenting regimes where they still uphold traditions like family meals, respect, discipline and a strict moratorium on dope, booze and the wearing of nipple rings. They return transformed.