If you want to prove to yourself that the age of the weird and wonderful isn't over, just listen to Radio Four. I keep trying to do this, but eight times a day I get close to chucking the wireless into the street.
The other night they were grumbling that the Conservative Party's newly elected 1922 Committee "...despite all their promises of modernisation is still all white, middle aged and middle class". So what? A lot of Tories are white, middle aged and middle class. That's what Tories are. What did the BBC expect the 1922 Committee to be - yobs in baseball caps and trainers lunging through the streets stuffing themselves with junk food and throwing the wrappers into the gutter?
So there aren't many black, unemployed young women in the 1922 Committee? That is a surprise. There are lots of other surprises if you look around. I didn't see many Aborigines on my recent trip to West Sussex, and hardly any vegetarians turn up at my Smithfield market butcher's shop.
What's wrong with being white, middle aged and middle class? That's what most of the BBC journalists and producers are. Jeremy Paxman and John Humphrys aren't exactly paid-up members of the lumpen proletariat are they? Sue Lawley? - grief, she's almost like the Queen! The truth is that any social group, however hideous, is acceptable in the new "inclusive" utopia concocted by New Labour and aided by their trendy mates in the BBC. Except traditional English people.
You want to get together with a few oddballs, paint your face, dress in pink tights, climb up on the back of a lorry and drive slowly down the high street chanting the glories of buggery and helping to spread AIDS? That's just fine with the "inclusive" BBC. You want to gather with a horde of even more nauseating morons, take over Trafalgar Square for five hours and make a raucous din fit to have you prosecuted by the Noise Abatement Society - and call it "a concert"? That's perfectly acceptable.
Or perhaps you devote yourself to the refined pleasure of trawling lurid nightclubs, take every artificial and usually illegal stimulant and disturb the whole neighbourhood with the audible filth that you call "music" - that's fine too, and just a routine example of "young people enjoying themselves on the club scene".
Or go out for a bit of anonymous sex, get yourself pregnant and have an abortion. That's OK. You're not thereby a member of a hedonistic death squad murdering unborn children - just a responsible person exercising your "right to choose".
It would be nice for a change not to feel that I'm a member of an endangered species. I mean, I'm not one of the million hale and hearty work-shy on disability benefit - thus bribed to ensure New Labour their perpetual majority. I'm not one of the other million public sector bureaucrats created by the Government since 1997: the only group of "workers" to be guaranteed their pensions - pensions paid for by the white middle class men and women who do real jobs in private companies. I'm not a professional homosexual (nor even an amateur one) and I don't like soap operas, football, the cult of the celebrity - or even Radio Four much these days. Help, get me out of here! I'm what used to be known as an Englishman.
* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article