Radio 4 seems to have moved its entire broadcasting output to Hay, presumably because they realised that a book festival attracts a similar demographic to their own. In fact, apparently only seven regular listeners of Desert Island Discs are still at home this week. I attended the live broadcast of Any Questions last night (repeated today) and, along with the rest of the audience, was taken through the warm-up exercises as we practised our polite applause, enthusiastic hollers and finally disagreeable jeers. Are new MPs taken through a similar training by the whips?
On the panel Jeanette Winterson sat stage left with Bob Marshall-Andrews, a man capable of making the most basilisk faces at anyone he disagrees with. The right side of the stage had Michael Gove and James Delingpole. Sat to reflect their politics, you see.
Despite the extra-erudite Hay audience, the show, of course, proceeded in the same manner as ever. People don't like the prime minister; they don't fancy the next one much either; the NHS is in a pickle; freedom is stolen by the government under the guise of stopping terrorists. Boo, hiss to all this. So far, so Cif.
The largest thrill for the audience was measuring the madness of James Delingpole. It all started when John Reid was described as a bit odd for his latest outburst against the European Court of Human Rights. Delingpole, suddenly terrified a Labour minister might appear nuttier than himself, quickly threw in the reactionists' favourite cliche about never minding this civil liberties rot and tell me what ever happened to the right not to be blown up on a bus? The ECHR, he explained, was put together to ensure hardened terrorists weren't exported to countries that don't give out "extra large Pepsis and a bucket of KFC" on arrival. Yes, this is Europe's dastardly plot. Later he told us that they were also behind the sinister fortnightly bin collection scandal that lately rocked the nation and added, just to make sure everyone knew that he had indeed been beamed in from the distant planet of Bollocks, that landfill sites don't create environmental damage but in fact make for quite pretty countryside hills. He then compared dustbin men to the Stazi and declared wind farms the greatest environmental threat we face in the world today before taking a short bow, giving stage left the finger and riding off on his broom with a malicious cackle at the shocked audience of bearded, Monbiot-reading festival goers. One can only hope for more such controversy over the next week.
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