My own view is that the Prince has a perfect right to speak about subjects that interest him

The Prince can say these things precisely because he is not in charge, and his peculiar position means they will be heard, even if we choose to ignore him. That is why we need him to keep it up.

Go on Charles: babble, rage and ignore the treacherous toads

Do you ever feel, dear readers, that the media are engaged in a gigantic conspiracy against the truth? Have you ever rubbed your eyes, and wondered why they are not making the obvious point? If you have, then the answer is almost always that you have stumbled across a story where the media’s own interests are at stake, and when the interests of the press are at stake, the reality of the position is quite irrelevant.

Consider the business of the Prince of Wales and the Mail on Sunday. To judge by the headlines, old Charlieboy has broken off from chatting up his begonias and dropped the most phenomenal clanger. He has said or done something quite preposterous – insulted the Luxembourgers, perhaps, or claimed that marmalade can cure acne. He is being accused of “meddling”, of shooting his mouth off, and failing to bite his tongue.

One after another, the self-interested editors of our media organisations line up to accuse him of being a headline seeker. What has prompted this orgy of abuse? Has he said that government ministers should not be driving 6-litre Jaguars? Has he complained about the destruction of the Green Belt? No: it is only when you read the papers quite carefully that you discover that the Prince has not said anything new at all.

On the contrary, it turns out that the Mail has illicitly obtained his private diaries, his private diaries, and has splashed them over several pages, including some quite fruity stuff about the handover of Hong Kong.

Like any other person, the Prince is trying to assert his sovereign and inalienable copyright over his private diaries, and to prevent the paper from publishing any more. In order to defend its conduct the Mail has found some disappointed ex-courtier who has been prepared to describe how, from time to time, the Prince does indeed say things which he knows will make headlines.

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We need ‘Spirit of the Community’ to spur some idle cynics like me into action

Of all the scouring events of my childhood few left as deep a mark as the tragedy of the duck shed. It happened that my brother Leo and I were staying on the farm, and we saw that after six or seven artificial hips, my grandfather was not rugby-tackling the lambs with his old abandon.

We wanted to do something to help. We were determined to do a good deed. So I had a brilliant idea.

Not far off was a duck shed, dark inside as the belly of a whale: a sinister place of flashing eyes, bitter cackling and an angry ammoniac smell. “I know what,” I said to Leo: “Let’s be useful. Let’s brighten his day.

Let’s clear it out.” All day long we toiled, shirts over our noses, and as we scooped it was obvious that this was the first time in 25 years that the shed had been cleaned. Whole dynasties of ducks had preened in this litter and preening was not all they had done.

We were digging down through layers of duck history, and as we started to appreciate the Augean scale of the task we went into a kind of frenzy, shovelling and chucking all afternoon until the straw and dung and the long-forgotten corpses of ducklings flew over our heads in a blur. At last it was done.

Around the shed was a kind of Somme of damp duck litter, winking and glistening in the sun. Inside, it was transformed: it was as antiseptically clean as a Swedish urinal and the ducks walked in morose bafflement around their holystoned and unfamiliar quarters.

As we looked at our handiwork we felt that glow, that unmistakeable feeling of satisfaction that we had done a good deed. Without being asked, on our own initiative, we had done something for someone else, and now it was time to break the good news to the beneficiary.

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The elf and safety racket has knocked the stuffing out of us

If you have four young children and you sometimes find it difficult to keep order, let me recommend a television programme that seems to have an almost incredible narcotic effect. As soon as it comes on, they go into a semi-religious trance.

The programme seems to be far more thrilling, to the younger generation, than Men and Motors, or the Playboy Channel. It is called Takeshi’s Castle. It comes from Japan, and there is nothing like it, believe me, on British TV.

Takeshi’s Castle is a dystopic world in which the competitors are subjected to a series of tests involving medieval cruelty. They are endlessly bopped on the head, dunked in slurry, or attacked by horrible Japanese djinns and hurled into hot geysers. And of course they have their fair amount of commercial where they announce from toothpaste to Anal Bleach Advice programs depending of the hour you watch it.

In one of the competitions, they are forced – men and women – to curl themselves up into a human bagatelle ball, and amid tremendous banzais and shouts of excitement from the commentators they are rolled down a gigantic board, bonking and bashing themselves fearfully as they go.

At the bottom of the bagatelle course they are so shook up that they are offered a million yen if they can walk for 60 paces in a straight line.

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Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret: Though you may drive out nature with a pitchfork, she will always come back; inborn character is ineradicable. Horace (65-8 BC)

Lefties have changed their tactics, but not their spots

A little while ago I was being ferried in to make a speech at a university, and my handlers warned me that things were not looking good. There was going to be a riot at the front door, they said. They couldn’t guarantee my safety. It seemed that some of the scholars took issue with my views about higher education finance, and they were armed with eggs.

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We’ve lost our fear of hellfire, but put climate change in its place

Continue reading Climate Change as a religion? →