The Fearless interrogator's must-read Saturday column

. . . and it’s no laughing matter, says our new star columnist who’s so often fallen foul of today’s ‘woke’ thought police

NeArLY 62 years have passed since I wrote my first newspaper column. Admittedly, I had marginally fewer readers (three thousand on the Penarth Times as opposed to more than three million on the Saturday Mail), plus pimples and black hair instead of wrinkles and white hair.

A few other things have changed, too. The Today programme on radio 4 was a stripling — just five years old — which had only just ventured into the tricky world of current affairs from the safe territory of ‘topical talks’.

We didn’t even have a word for what we now call ‘the media’. This vast agglomeration of individuals and organisations clamouring for our attention, desperate to sell us their views or just sell themselves, simply did not exist. Let alone ‘social media’.

The internet made it all possible. And we have gained a lot. Many thoughtful people with sensible things to say have been given a pulpit. But I reckon we’ve lost even more.

What might have become a great global symphony of voices, rich and varied, has been drowned by the shrill and the judgmental and sometimes the downright threatening.

There is a case for saying people in the public eye who can’t stand the heat should simply get out of the kitchen — I’ve never sent a tweet — but there’s a stronger case for making our public discourse reasonably civil. Because there is something much more worrying going on here.

relentless, instant rushing to judgment is costing us our national sense of humour. Self-censoring is becoming a reflex action. Humour is being driven underground — or at least onto WhatsApp groups. We are entering an era of joke prohibition.

This might seem an almost trivial thing to single out, but if we lose the right to laugh at each other, we lose something even more precious: the right to offend.

At the heart of Orwell’s dystopia in Nineteen eighty- Four was the Ministry of Truth. It controlled what you said and, ultimately, what you thought. Free speech — the ability to ridicule official diktat and fashionable views — is what keeps our broad, tolerant culture alive. Above all, perhaps, on the BBC. ONe

example from my final days on the Today programme: The former Brexit Secretary, David Davis, was my 8.10 interviewee. The last item in the news bulletin was about a tango competition in Argentina; a leading couple were disqualified because of a punch-up.

Half listening, I registered there was something absurd about a tango competition descending into a brawl. David then joked that he hoped our interview would not end in the same way. I responded that I didn’t want to tango with an SAS trained killer.

A chuckle, and we moved on. But the Twittersphere did not. How dare Humphrys make light of domestic violence! Does he really think it’s a matter for mirth!

In a court of law, the motivation and purpose of the accused significantly affects the verdict. On Twitter, context is irrelevant.

Another example of the selfappointed guardians of conversation versus real people: Michael Gove came on a special programme in front of a live audience to mark the 60th anniversary of Today. We were talking about the nature of the political interview.

Gove said: ‘Sometimes, I think that coming into the studio with you, John, is like going into Harvey Weinstein’s bedroom.’

Another guest, Neil Kinnock, joined in: ‘John goes way past groping.’

There was a slight intake of breath from the audience, then laughter.

Comedy on the edge. Nicola Sturgeon was the first to tweet that rape is not a laughing matter. Apologies demanded of all of us.

Let’s examine why the audience laughed. It was the ridiculous notion of me chasing Michael Gove around a hotel room. That’s what was funny. No one was laughing about women being abused.

The response — which inevitably led to newspaper headlines — thought otherwise. Men making jokes about anything that involves women is off limits.

I got into trouble again last year for straying outside my permitted territory.

There had been complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority about a television advert which included a shot of a mother sitting with her baby’s pram in a park.

They weren’t from viewers — not one complained — but the virtue signallers said it demeaned women by showing them in this context.

I asked my interviewee how. I dared to suggest that, on balance, most women are probably better at caring for babies than most men. And that’s demeaning? It’s hard to think of a more crucially important role in any society than bringing up children.

A generation ago, that would have been an entirely uncontroversial point to make. But I was condemned as a dinosaur. Yet the personal correspondence from listeners was on my side.

The same goes for gender. Imagine, even ten years ago, any serious figure in public life being vilified because they believe that — with some rare medical exceptions — men and women are born biologically distinct.

The policing of language — and meaning — to engineer a different society, indeed a different kind of humanity, is something that all supporters of free speech should be on their guard against.

The barriers against the tyranny of woke should be manned by organisations such as the BBC. They have a privileged position as interpreters of the national conversation and they must ensure they are listening to it. All of it. Instead, they have let themselves be captured by the metropolitan conversation — obsessed by identity, shutting down more diverse views from other parts of the country.

ReMeMBerhow cross people got during the election over some of Boris Johnson’s dubious jokes and references? ‘Girly swots’ for instance? Great indignation among Westminster circles. It turned out the rest of the country didn’t care a jot. They are relaxed about jokes. They have a higher threshold over what is offensive. They find the conversation in BBC circles ridiculously woke.

So how might the BBC deal with this? Well, let me offer a suggestion — only partly tongue-in-cheek.

When I joined Today, my regular sidekick was the great Brian redhead. He was a proud northerner who always said the programme’s job was to ‘ drop a word into the ear of the nation’. The whole nation. He had copresented the programme from Manchester for some years before moving to London.

We now have another proud northerner presenting Today: Nick robinson who, as it happens, was a very close friend and huge admirer of Brian. Why not move Nick to Manchester? In one fell swoop you counter the charge of London bias, include the north of england in the national conversation and, with it, a little northern humour and realism. What about it, Nick? As for this column, if occasionally you find my thoughts offensive . . . well, good.