Make time for your inner gloomy grouch

Max Strom, described as a happiness guru, said last week that employees should be allowed to go outside for a number of “breathing breaks” throughout the day. He believes this would increase their productivity and improve their well-being. This has annoyed Miles Godwit, universally hailed as the Prophet of Glum, who said some time ago that employees should be allowed outside to glare at the traffic.

He claims that the craze for happiness takes the edge off our natural creativity and that we need a dose of gloom to help us prosper. He is not advocating depression, but a state he calls “bilefulness”. He has run dozens of bilefulness workshops to help people unlock their inner grouch and discover the cleansing power of crankiness. Godwit’s book, The

Path to Glum, has sold millions of copies. Under five chapter headings, he points the way to achieving inner fury. In “The Hunting of the Snarky,” for example, he tells us how to seek out causes for taking offence. “Don’t Stop the Strop” shows how to guard against being placated and “Chuck that Chuckle” suggests voice exercises to develop an effective derisive snort. “Turn Your Aaaaah into an Ugh” warns of the little things that may catch us unawares and put us in a good mood.

The final chapter, called “Get Your Own Goat,” offers simple exercises to help raise your annoyance levels. It can be really aggravating when you drop things on the floor and have to bend to pick them up. Godwit recommends intentionally dropping six items a day for a week and gradually increasing this to a dozen items. With luck you will also develop a twinge in the back, which will enhance the darkening of your day.

I recently had the privilege of meeting Miles Godwit when I took my copy of The Path to

Glum for him to sign. I will always remember his words to me that day – “If you think I’m going to waste my time signing my name for you, chum, you’ve got another think coming.” Truly inspirational.

Those MPs who complained that the BBC was undermining Brexit with its skewed and pessimistic coverage were concentrating on the corporation’s news and current affairs output, but I can reveal that the real heart of the Great Remain Conspiracy is Radio 3. This is where the strings are pulled.

Here are a few examples of biased programming I have noticed recently. The Composer of the Week “just happened” to be Viktor Tariff (died 1691) and most of his Baroque music was featured, including all his Lamentations and, pointedly, his fifth symphony (in J Major) with its notorious allegro “free” movement.

By choosing to devote a whole 90 minutes to a programme entitled Depressing Agricultural Folk Songs, the Controller of Radio 3 was clearly trying to suggest troubled times outside the Common Agricultural Policy. The point was underlined when, in the next day’s lunchtime concert, we heard a performance of the rousing Strawberry Pickers’ Chorus from the opera Elsanta by the Polish composer Zapiekanka.

And why, I wonder, would they devote peak time to Juncker’s

Negotiations Suite? This is a notoriously tricky piece for the listener, with a disturbingly apocalyptic finale.

For me the programme of lieder, sung by the exciting new tenor RP Index, was ruined by the inclusion of Merkel’s gloomy O willst du nicht

bleiben? (Oh, won’t you remain?) Finally, the EU message was made crystal clear on Friday night in the

Your Classical Requests programme when the presenter Don Tusk flatly refused to play any of the pieces asked for.

Next week: the hidden EU agenda in CBeebies).

In the good old days it was easy to forget to put the clocks forward (or back) and to be interestingly out of sync with other people for a while. You could enjoy the surprise of finding yourself out in the strangely quiet streets or you could celebrate the hilarity of arriving an hour early for Sunday lunch with friends. Nowadays clocks on our phones and radios and other devices simply adjust themselves.

It’s the same with Mother’s Day. Nobody can say they weren’t warned. There has been a three-week barrage of advertising of flowers, chocolates and other vaguely mother-related gifts. You didn’t get this blitz of reminders in the good old days. In fact, you got marks just for remembering. There were beady mothers all over the country just daring their sons and daughters to forget. Maybe some of them quite enjoyed a day of quiet umbrage.