The film is called “Muscular Liberal”. The lead character is a mash-up of William Ewart Gladstone (four-time Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) and Lieutenant Colonel William Ewart Fairbairn, a preposterously hard soldier and police officer, whose experiences in the Shanghai Police between the wars led him to pioneer immensely effective hand-to-hand combat techniques and design the Fairbairn-Sykes knife - a stiletto-bladed dagger that will f-k someone right up.

Ethnically, William Ewart is a Scotsman, but having been born and raised in Liverpool, he speaks with a broad Scouse accent. He first comes to public attention as a dazzlingly brilliant Oxford undergraduate. He takes a double-first and wins a bunch of academic prizes and the Presidency of the Oxford Union, although he loses his first race for the presidency. Beside himself with rage and despair, he smashes up his rooms in Christ Church, then apologies profusely to his scout, whom he is also rogering on a casual-but-affectionate basis.

Ewart is from good Tory stock, but he joins the Liberal Party and becomes a very successful politician, going all the way to the Giddy Heights of Prime Minister. (I’m not sure I can’t be arsed with him repeatedly coming in and out of office, but we’ll see.) He has a bracingly enthusiastic attitude to international trade and loathes protectionism. 35 to 40 minutes of Act One will show him giving a spellbinding speech in the House of Commons on the topic.

The casting director will need to find a lot of women who look like prostitutes. However, whereas Gladstone used to help these ladies off the streets and then thrash himself because he worried he fancied them, our William Ewart will be a bit different. In one scene he has a passionate snog with one hooker, ideally played by an A List American actress who can pull off an English accent. The snog is consensual, and there is no suggestion that Ewart is going to hand over any money, but he still feels guilty and stops things from going further, even though the tart-with-a-heart genuinely loves and fancies him, and isn’t doing it because she feels under pressure or through any warped sense of gratitude. She’s actually disappointed that he doesn’t want to pursue a relationship with her.

The other thing that will be different is that Ewart won’t focus on getting the hookers off the street or preaching to them so much as he will focus on finding their pimps and beating the shit out of them, before cutting their throats with his knife. With at least seven or eight such kills, he is technically a serial killer - albeit one with good motives - and the press liken him to a latter day, inverted version of Jack the Ripper, which isn’t entirely fair but sort of makes sense.

He will make a hash of Prime Minister’s Questions one day because he’s still tired from being up all night slaying ponces. A character called Ben d’Israel - the Leader of the Conservative Party - will mock Ewart for being off his game. But as they’re walking out of the chamber, Ewart will fix d’Israel with a thousand-yard stare, causing the latter to shut the Hell up and be terrified. (Maybe he should soil himself.)

Ewart eventually gets caught by a hard-bitten detective, played by Richard E. Grant. But it turns out that the British people really approve of all the pimp murdering! The jury, whose foreman is played by my cousin Mark Heap, lets him off. Ewart and the Liberals are then re-elected with an increased majority. He eventually resigns at the age of 84.

The film should be set in the present day, unless we get a big budget and can afford to set it in the 19th Century and/or on Mars. Once that decision has been made, I’ll come up with a bunch of appropriate political issues to work in as sub-plots. (Intergalactic free trade could be a good one.)

The Pope is an antagonist, hopefully played by the retired Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon. I want him to wear a pair of gloves from his first spell with Parma.

I would like William Ewart to be played by Liam Neeson, Michael McIntyre, Idris Elba, or Simon Bird.

And I want to have a small speaking role, perhaps as a backbench MP or one of the hookers.

Monday 17th September 1956

I thought I had endured my last communal shower when I left school. Alas, the gymnasium where I lift weights and box offers no privacy in that area. Ordinarily, I wait until I get home and then bathe at my leisure, but last Wednesday, Tolkien insisted we go straight to lunch after sparring. So it was that I regressed several decades and found myself cowering under a torrent of water.

It's no way to cleanse oneself, but avoiding ablutions altogether wasn't a viable option. I had worked up quite a sweat bashing up a Welshman who plays lock forward for the university. He was tremendously fit and strong, but he didn't know how to fight. And then I caught him with a stiff jab and his nose exploded. I got a considerable amount of claret on me.

Therefore a shower was unavoidable. Tolkien insisted on coming in with me. He is completely unabashed about public nudity, despite being far from a real athlete. Yet, with tedious predictability, he relentlessly poked fun at my own physique.

Obviously, there was no aspect of my body below the waist which he could mock. But he found my comparative lack of body hair unceasingly funny.

“I bet you couldn't even grow a moustache!” he sniggered, before guffawing like a simpleton.

Well, I'll show him. As you can see from the attached photo, I can grow a very fine moustache in a matter of days.

Monday 10^th September 1956

An extraordinary fellow was sitting in the Eagle and Child when Tolkien, Havard, Fox and I entered the premises following an agreeable lunch at Trinity. Despite being a grown man, he was wearing short trousers. I assumed he was some sort of lunatic or simpleton. I was therefore astonished when he introduced himself as a professor at something called the “London School of Economics”.

“Oh, what’s that?” asked Tolkien. It was a perfectly good-natured enquiry, but the man, whose name was Muircroft, bridled. “We teach history, politics, and economics,” he replied testily.

“To what level?” asked Tolkien.

“Degree level.”

“Really?!” said Tolkien.

“Yes. We are a constituent part of the University of London.”

“Oh right. I’ve never heard of it,” said Tolkien.

“You’ve never heard of the London School of Economics?” said Muircroft, pouting.

“No I have not,” replied Tolkien, “although actually I meant that I’ve never heard of the University of London.”

Fox sensed things might be about to turn unfriendly and said “What brings you to Oxford?”

“I’m here for a conference,” responded Muircroft, who then grudgingly added “about political theory”.

The conversation flowed like concrete. Muircroft volunteered that he was a devotee of Karl Marx. The thought of fourth-rate minds being filled with such dangerous nonsense troubled me. I fought a strong urge to reach over the table and cut Muircroft’s throat with my hunting knife.

“So you don’t teach any of the sciences at your institution?” asked an incredulous Havard.

“Yes we do. We teach political and economic science.”

“Those aren’t sciences!” spluttered Havard, quite properly appalled.

At this juncture, I was rather hoping things would turn violent, but then Fox posed a question that changed the atmosphere entirely. The fact that he asked it in all sincerity made it all the better.

“Who’s your Dean of Divinity?”

“Our what?” said Muircroft.

Tolkien snorted loudly. The noise he made was somehow guttural yet also high-pitched. He then affected to be having a coughing fit. Havard bit down hard on his own hand, then made a fist of it and shoved it in his mouth. I jack-knifed in my chair and my mouth wordlessly formed the shape it would adopt were I suddenly to exclaim “Ooooooh!”

Muircroft was wrong to assume Fox had been mocking him, but correctly deduced that the rest of us were trying terribly hard not to burst into laughter. He winced and then snapped: “The London School of Economics is a very distinguished institution. And it is superior in every way to moribund universities like Oxford and Cambridge.”

That did it. Without deliberate co-ordination, we each let out the most magnificent howl. Havard laughed so hard that I thought he might choke. Fox giggled uncontrollably, like a schoolgirl who had just discovered pear brandy. Tolkien began crying, just as hard as if he’d been forced to shoot a beloved pet, and snorting like a pig. Still nobody laughed as violently as me. I thought at one point that I might soil my trousers on both sides.

Muircroft got up and marched out of the pub.

When some other Inklings joined us, fully two hours later, they could not believe none of us of was drunk, so heartily did we continue to laugh. With great effort, Tolkien was able to stammer out a brief history of what had occurred with Muircroft, and soon the other Inklings were laughing insensibly too.

Dyson told us that the “London School of Economics and Political Science” was founded by that prize ass George Bernard Shaw. I replied that I had been quite wrong to doubt Mr. Bernard Shaw’s status as a humourist, given that he held responsibility for one of the funniest experiences of my life.

Monday 23rd April 1956

Married Joy. It was nice.

Felt a bit weird having my wedding in a register office though.

Saturday 8th September 1956

I have been deceived by the Inklings. They suggested we meet for lunch in Headington - where I was promised “a nice surprise” - and so I took a pleasant stroll up the hill and joined them in the White Horse.

Tolkien ordered “piss and chips” for everyone. Naturally I asked him what the devil that meant, and he explained that “piss and chips” is a bowl of chips and a pint of beer. I remonstrated with him, insisting that I also needed protein, but he said “You’ll want to have a relatively light stomach.” Dr Havard nodded sagely, so I shrugged my shoulders and did as I was bidden.

The Inklings were giggling like irritating schoolgirls throughout this pastiche of lunch. Finally, they abated my agony by telling me what they were up to. The agony returned when they informed me we were going to the Manor Ground to watch Headington United play association football.

I asked how they could possibly have thought that I would want to spend an afternoon watching soccer. Tolkien retorted that they didn’t think I would, but that it would be screamingly funny to see me at a game. I told him I’d rather read one of his elf books. That was excessively cruel of me. Feeling guilty, I agreed to go, on the condition someone buy me a bag of pork scratchings. Dyson coughed up.

Upon entering the ground, I was relieved to see the crowd was quite sparse. I was less happy about the prospect of standing around in the winter cold watching men chase a ball around a field, and said as much. A friend of one of the Inklings, a tall skinny cove called Jones, said “Don’t worry. I’ve got something that will warm you up.” He held out his hand, in which he was cradling an open packet of what he called “Columbian snuff”.

I’ve occasionally taken snuff after high table and found it mildly pleasant, so I thanked Jones, leant over, and snorted up the lot. He gasped, and I gathered that I’d overdone it.

Anyway, the match “kicked off”. At first I was astonished at how much the proceedings seemed to matter to everybody. They were bellowing imprecations and encouragement, according to which of the teams they favoured. Some of the Headington United supporters burst into song. Tolkien and the others joined in; evidently they knew every word.

And then I found myself joining in, too. There was something about the Headington players - resplendent in gold uniforms - that was truly heroic. I was put in mind of the great classical tales of war and courage. I also developed a deep dislike for the other team, Kettering Town, and found myself lustily adding my own voice to a song that accused them all of being the offspring of unmarried parents.

I was jumping and bouncing around in a manner most unbecoming, yet invigorating. Each Headington goal caused me to leave the Earth in wild celebration. Each Kettering goal felt like a dagger to my heart.

The match ended with the teams having scored three goals each. Neither a victory or a loss, this should have been most unsatisfactory. Yet I loved every minute. The Inklings are so much more sagacious than they sometimes affect to be. They knew this would be my “cup of tea”. And now, as my new favourite song goes, I’m Headington till I die.

When I got home I must have written more than four thousand words. What a wonderful day.

If I’m right about this, then it has very profound implications for democracy…

…my sense is that most of us know almost nothing about anything we don’t know very well indeed…

…and that many / most people’s critical reasoning skills are now so poor that they don’t know what questions to ask…

…and that social media has convinced many of us that we can opine usefully on almost any topic.

Whenever I discuss the (very) few topics in which I’m an expert, I’m staggered at how confidently wrong people are about them.

It might be worth all of us - very much including me - to think about this.

Tuesday 24th January 1956

I am contorted with rage that I recorded 19th January as being a Friday, when it was in fact a Thursday. I bought my diary from a Dubliner in a pub in east Oxford, along with four pencils and seven pork chops. Initially I thought I must have been sold a duffer. But the fault is mine. I was tempted to do a Gladstone and thrash myself, but I decided to take my annoyance out on a punchbag. I smashed the granny out of it, as Tolkien would put it, and felt a lot better afterwards.

I had a most convivial visit from Greeves. It’s so heartening to be with someone who truly understands one. It’s rather as though we are on the same radio wavelength. And yet I didn’t feel quite as sad as usual when he left. The truth is that Joy also “gets” me. Thus the absence of Greeves, though poignant, isn’t compounded by loneliness.

I’m in danger of philosophising, so enough of that.

I’ve been making models of English cathedrals out of used matchsticks. I’m currently “doing” Salisbury, which is just the sort of challenge I need. It’s totally absorbing. The painstaking nature of the task is precisely what will purify my soul. If any of the Inklings gets squiffy and damages one of my matchstick cathedrals, they will feel my wrath.

Tolkien wants me to make some Roman churches, but I’m unconvinced. Still, he was nice enough to come to my own church the other day, so it might be a kind gesture. The Vatican could be beyond my skills, though.

I started this hobby by making Christ Church a few weeks ago. I was all fingers and thumbs - and managed to stick said appendages together several times. I now wear thin white cotton gloves, so that problem has been mastered. However, the glue expresses powerful fumes, which turns me delirious. I thought perhaps it was the spiritual nature of the task - that I was pleasing God so profoundly by making matchstick cathedrals that I could feel his love coursing through me. It took Joy’s robust common sense to make me realise otherwise. “You’re off your tits on glue,” she told me, affectionately.

I ate a whole plucked chicken for lunch today, with my bare hands.

Sunday 22nd January 1956

To church this morning, on a lovely crisp winter day. Alas, the sermon was most unsatisfactory. It was given by a visiting curate, who was altogether far too trendy. His homily seemed to owe more to socialist doctrine than to the Bible. I dissuaded Tolkien from throwing bread at him, but I was tempted not to do so. The curate smiled unctuously at Joy as we left, so I gave him a thousand-yard stare. He wilted, inevitably.

More happily, we had a fantastic Sunday lunch at the Eagle and Child. That barmaid was back. Joy, troublingly, said she was “cute”. Tolkien kicked me under the table and I returned his kick with interest. However, the food, wine, and even company were most convivial. Once again, dear Joy kept up intellectually. This continues to astound and delight me in equal measure.

Joy is devoted to Tolkien’s elf books and asked him a series of enormously insightful and knowledgeable questions. Tolkien was thrilled and deeply appreciative. I feared he might even become lachrymose. “I never imagined that a woman would read my books,” he said in a hoarse whisper. It was a very touching moment, the pathos strangely heightened by him adding, “And then I farted.”

Lunch has morphed into drinks, and we remain in the Bird and Babe. Fox who, lest we forget, was Dean of Divinity at Magdalen, is squatting on top of our table, downing a yard of ale. He is being cheered to the rafters by undergraduates and the bar staff, but the loudest cheers are emanating from a group of tourists, who hail from somewhere or other in the Orient. Joy is laughing like a schoolgirl. The old me would have been profoundly irritated; indeed I would have asked her why on Earth she was here, but I find that I am charmed. I am endlessly surprised by Joy.

Barfield nudges me in the ribs and whispers “Aren’t you glad we’re not the sort of Christians who consider alcohol to be the devil’s buttermilk?” For some reason this remark does far more than merely amuse me, and I start laughing violently, resembling a hysteric.

Right on cue, my old Belfast pal Arthur Greeves enters the pub. He smiles wryly at the sight of me looking more like a woman than he has ever done. He joins the throng and fits in perfectly. Good old Greevesie.

Friday 19th January 1956

I don't care if Monday's blue, Tuesday's grey and Wednesday too. Thursday, I don't care about you. It's Friday I'm in love.

I cannot shake this extraordinary sequence of words from my head. I have no idea how they got there, yet they play repeatedly. I imagine them being sung, not by me, but by a bear-like figure with huge black eyes and a vast mess of hair. The good Lord alone knows what it means.

This strange phenomenon has coincided with me feeling more sentimental about Joy. I really do feel quite drawn to her. Is this romantic love? It's unnerving, whatever it is.

I'm getting a bit fed up with the Inklings. They're good lads, of course, but every serious discussion is punctuated by boorishness. I miss Williams, who was fanciful but never juvenile. Tolkien has decided that every personal anecdote - every single one - can be improved by adding “And then I farted.” Barfield and Dyson cannot stand more than three pints each without challenging each other to a “one-on-one” scrimmage.

I too engaged in physical pursuits yesterday, but it wasn't to show off. I have been feeling a bit light in the pocket, so I went to Cowley and challenged a group of men at the car plant to put up their best man for a scrap.

Dr Havard held my coat for me and I went several rounds with a tall fellow called Hodson. He had a vicious jab and a cut opened up above my left eye. That will be awkward to explain to Joy. It looks a proper mess.

However, I triumphed. I had been very clear - and Havard backed me up - that this fight should not be a boxing-style straightener but “all in”. I lowered my fists and used an esoteric Japanese technique to neutralise and defeat my opponent. All due credit to the car-workers. They paid up with no dissent.

That said, they were less than happy that I had finished the match by punting Hodson very hard between the legs. Hodson was the least happy of all, but he shook my hand. Good man.

Tuesday 17th January 1956

To Slough, where I recorded a radio monologue about the problem of pain. I had a tremendous toothache, so my immediate problem with pain was stammering out the words. But an angel gave me a tonic of some kind and the agony has entirely dissipated. Miracles exist.

Slough is a desperate place. I was put in mind of Betjeman’s poem and told him so. He was rather chuffed and the ice between us thawed. We ended up having a most convivial afternoon. He showed me some sketches he’s been working on. He draws in pencil, with not inconsiderable skill. Really quite a lot of the sketches are of lithe, leggy women in short tennis skirts, but he has a real talent. We drank pear brandy and made some nuisance phone calls. I had to wrestle the receiver from Betjeman shortly after he successfully “got through” to a secretarial college in Banbury.

I’m back in the Eagle and Child now. Joy is meeting a girlfriend in London. I need to soak up the pear brandy, so I am tucking into a very hearty beef pie. The chips here are excellent. I’ve got quite a thick head, so I’ll content myself with no more than four pints of bitter.

The Inklings and I got our tattoos. I had a cross done, too. Agony. My arms are both still sore. Maybe I should have joined the others, who had theirs drawn on the fundament. I’d need a cushion now, though.

Tolkien insists on showing all and sundry his own tattoo, which involves an elaborate ritual of dropping and then hitching back up his trousers - no mean feat when he’s had a few.

Alongside writing this diary entry, I’ve had an idea for a light comedy about working in an office in Slough. I think its quotidian nature could be the making of it. The trick would be to infuse the characters with a heroic quality. The point must not be to mock them.

I have a new trainer. He’s a former prize-fighter and tough as old boots. He has promised to hurl a medicine ball repeatedly at my stomach tomorrow. In anticipation of this further agony, and safe in the knowledge that I will burn a tremendous number of calories, I will eat lavishly this evening. The beef pie will be followed by a sizeable cheese plate.

Before the cheese comes, I must walk over to the other side of the room and correct a loquacious adolescent who has confused Socrates with Horace. He will lose favour with the girls he is currently impressing, but it simply must be done.

It looks so peaceful and sane when viewed from space. Here on the ground, everything seems to have gone crackers.

Herewith a collection of headlines taken from the front page of today’s Telegraph - a UK newspaper of record. They read like a desperate Alan Partridge pitching TV shows to a BBC commissioner.

“Police investigate whether A-level students behind wildfires”

“Is it ever appropriate to sunbathe topless with your father?”

“Plans to ban white swimmers from public pool trigger backlash”

“The Democrats are having a ‘sexy socialist summer’”

“The British cowboy using tough love to help despondent teenagers”

“Government bans disposable barbecues”

“Six unforgettable wine holidays to take in the US”

“I’m not proud of my holiday affair, but I’ll always understand the allure”

“The summer shoes wrecking your feet and what to wear instead”

“Introducing the world’s poshest podcast”

“Britain’s 16 greatest walks”

“No potatoes? Here’s what to use instead to make chips, mash and roasties”

I do hope that there isn’t a World War III, as we will certainly lose it.

Sunday 15th January 1956

Lunch in the Eagle and Child with Tolkien and some of the other Inklings. I describe the new barmaid to them, how she appeared to be charmed by an oaf, and how it wasn’t clear to me whether she was genuinely charmed. (She isn’t here today, for some reason.)

“What about the arse?” asks Tolkien.

“I don’t know what became of him,” I reply.

“NO, you imbecile! What’s her arse like?!” shouts Tolkien.

There’s no point trying to get any sense out of him when he’s in one of these moods. “I take it that your trip to Wales didn’t go very well,” I say, and then immediately regret being spiteful. He glowers at me.

It was a cardio day this morning, so I can have a big plate of potatoes to go with the other vegetables and my roast beef. I’m drinking rather a good stout with it. It’s making Tolkien belch, which is strange as well as unpleasant, as I find it very smooth.

I had a game of darts with a college porter when I came into the pub - and won a pound from him. I almost didn’t have the heart to accept it, but nothing could be more shaming than being told that one did not have to pay up having lost a bet. I’ve switched to a pencil-style grip when throwing the arrows and it really helps. I finished on a double 16, which I hit first time.

The Inklings have persuaded me to join them in getting matching tattoos. Tolkien wanted us to get a nude woman each, but we have settled with a heart and the word “Mum”. I only ever addressed my own mother as “Mother”, so it’s not very fitting, and I’m more than a little worried that it will hurt. However, it means so much to the chaps and one needs to rub along a bit with one’s fellow man. But I think on my other arm I’m going to get a cross tattooed, just to balance things out.

Tolkien is explaining to the others, at punishing length, the significance of some fellow called Gandalf. I’ve completely lost the thread of the conversation, having been distracted by a pretty girl when it began, and I can’t for the life of me remember if Gandalf is a graduate student or one of the goblins from Tolkien’s books.

Alas, I had better put down my pen, leave the comfort of the lavatory, and re-join the fray. I might put Tolkien in his place by challenging him to a thumb war.

Saturday 14th January 1956

I am scribbling this while having a pint of bitter and a bowl of chips in the Eagle and Child. Tolkien is away flogging one of his elf books in Wales. It’s nice not to have to “be on” conversationally, as I’m rather tired. I had a good session in the gymnasium this morning. I benched three plates and deadlifted 500lbs. Then I hit the punchbag for twenty minutes - non-stop and very hard - imagining that I was pulverising the face of that ungrateful little swine Betjeman.

It’s a comparatively small crowd today. There is a handful of American tourists and some undergraduates are catching up after the vac. It’s the start of a new term, this being Hilary of Poitiers’s feast day. I smile in an avuncular manner at those who meet my eye. One of the Americans asks me to sign a book for them. It isn’t one of mine, but I don’t bridle.

A cocky young swell is “chatting up” the new barmaid. His patter is unoriginal and moronic, but it seems to be having the desired effect. Her eyes are dancing with light. Or perhaps she is simply flattering him. Maybe the flirtation will end here. Or maybe he will take her to a flophouse and roger her. If so, the joke will be on him, for he will burn in Hell for all eternity, unless he repents of his sins.

I won five pounds at the greyhound track yesterday. It was the last race of the evening. I must confess that I didn’t study the form. Nor did I pay attention to which traps seemed to be generating the most winners. And I didn’t seek advice from Joy about which cur she fancied. My reasoning was much more prosaic. The mutt in question shat magnificently at the side of the track. Thus liberated, I thought that perhaps he might thrive, and so it proved. It was rather cheering. I treated Joy to an ice cream (with cone) and bought myself some good pipe tobacco.

One of the Inklings wants me to try smoking marijuana. Reportedly, it can induce a mellow feeling. Yet it is also claimed that “dope” can stimulate creative thought. These two qualities seem to me to be utterly inconsistent. I write in a state of unhinged frenzy, half-shouting all sorts of imprecations as I smash the typewriter keys. If children knew how manic I was when I wrote The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, they’d be far too frightened to read it. Nevertheless, I might give “pot” a try. I wonder if you can snort it.

Some rugger players have entered the pub. I think I’ll go and make a few more quid by challenging the biggest one to an arm wrestle. And then I’ll have another couple of pints and some pork scratchings.

It is, to put it mildly, rather startling that the Conservative Party has literally sought the services of a former neo-Nazi. Joshua Bonehill-Paine had been due to stand for Somerset Council for the Conservatives in next year’s local elections. The Guardian reports that:

‘He was jailed in 2015 for more than three years after posting “vile” antisemitic material online before a planned neo-Nazi rally.

‘In 2016, he was found guilty of racially aggravated harassment for abuse directed at Berger, who is Jewish, which included posting messages to his blog calling her a “rodent” and an “evil money-grabber”.’

The BBC adds that he “also holds previous convictions for assaulting a police officer, burglary of a police station and malicious communications.”

This is, shall we say, an unconventional background for a politician. All non-morons aged ten and over might have predicted that it would cause upset. Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch sought to reassure voters that Bonehill-Paine would not have a national platform and would only deal with bins and parking.

However, as anyone with an ounce of political sense would have guessed, the media furore did not die down and Bonehill-Paine withdrew his candidacy. Badenoch has chosen to make him an adviser to the party, which some might interpret as being given a national platform.

This raises two big questions.

The first is the matter of forgiveness and rehabilitation. There is no doubt that the fight against evil is hugely aided by talking to those who have flirted with it. John Douglas of the FBI radically improved the organisation’s understanding of and ability to catch serial killers by talking to convicted ones. Former extremists do vital and brave work in condemning what they once embraced and educating others who are vulnerable to it. As well as launching a career as a satirist, Bonehill-Paine has renounced Nazism and reportedly works in the fight against antisemitism. How arduously and effectively I don’t know, but it does seem to be an established fact that he has turned his life around.

He is not alone in being a rehabilitated public figure. Maajid Nawaz is a former Islamist extremist turned liberal commentator, who stood for Parliament for the Liberal Democrats in 2015. Maria Gatland, a Conservative councillor in Croydon, was exposed as a former member of the Provisional IRA. She resigned, but was later reinstated.

I’m a Christian (and a Conservative) and I believe in forgiveness. I also believe that people can change. And it’s vital that we offer people a way out and a way back. That is emphatically in all our interests. But I also believe that forgiveness does not mean there should be no permanent consequences for aberrant behaviour. A man with a history of hitting children might genuinely repent and cease to reoffend. He might also make a major contribution to society. That doesn’t mean that teaching should remain open to him as a career choice. Joshua Bonehill-Paine harassed another politician - grotesquely and contemptibly. He may be truly sorry. But not being able to become a politician himself is not an unjust punishment.

This brings me on to the second question, which is about Kemi Badenoch’s judgement. The selection and support of candidates can’t just be a matter of fairness. Perception matters, and if someone is going to cause you lots of grief, they have to go. This is a fairly basic principle of British politics and it’s remarkable how bad recent leaders have been at grasping it. Keir Starmer allowed several politicians to cling on for days and days of terrible media when it should have been obvious that they were toast.

Having a former neo-Nazi as a candidate is utterly toxic for the Conservatives. Put in a clinical, mercenary way, it was never a risk worth taking. Giving him a formal advisory role isn’t worth it either.

The Conservatives should be leading the charge to make Jews feel safe in this country, and this saga has undermined that greatly. Belittling the importance of what a local councillor does was also stupid. Finally, imagine being one of the people Kemi Badenoch has recently blocked from being a parliamentary candidate for the Tories and then reading about Bonehill-Paine.

Reports that Kemi Badenoch is finding her feet and doing a good job (which largely seems to be the result of a few good speeches written by other people) have been greatly exaggerated.

There’s a terror no-one knows

Unless they’ve been a keeper

A striker on the charge

Can resemble the Grim Reaper

Which will be the shot

The keeper will not catch

Which will be the cross

That they fail to snatch

There’s one thing we know

And really one thing only

It’s very far from easy

If you choose to be a goalie

You will drop some balls

And suffer the nutmeg

And when it gets too much

You’ll be tempted to beg

To move onto the wing

Or maybe to defence

Or to play up front

Or leap over the fence

And run away and not come back

For life has got cruel plans

For the player at the back

Who’s allowed to use their hands

A penalty denied

And the keeper wins the day

But more often than not

We dive the other way

One mistake can mean

That the ball goes in the net

Agony awaits

And yet and yet and yet

We come back for more

For the goalie is a trooper

The worst thing to befall someone

Is not some foolish blooper

It’s failing to stand up

And not daring to dream

For the goalie is the heart

Of every single team

So strap on the Reusch

Step up and do your duty

Show your team and fans

The magnificence and beauty

Of a cross plucked from the sky

Of a shot tipped o’er the bar

Of flying through the air

Show them that you are

Someone who is brave

Someone who is true

To play between the sticks

There isn’t a long queue

But you will win the game

If the other team score zero

And to be a keeper

Is to be a real hero

I write and read quickly, a product of what was once a professional necessity, through being a speechwriter and ghostwriter of media articles for politicians. Yet it seemed clear to me that I needed to take my time with Alain Mokbel's book Steady When It Counts.

I wanted to take it all in. The side effect of that approach was I got to savour it.

I've been subscribing to Alain's Substack - - for a while and interacting with him on here. I like him a lot and I always find him well worth reading. I was moved to buy his book in part to be supportive and in part because it covers something that both fascinates and intimidates me: how to handle conflict.

The book is a deep but highly readable exploration of the issue and replete with hard-won practical advice. Hard-won because it comes from experience, which Alain writes about beautifully and with rare humility.

Like perhaps all of us, I look back at situations I could have handled better. Yet some situations that objectively I handled very well have really gnawed at me. Alain's book helps explain why - and reminds me that what counts is that we got home safely. Satisfying one's ego must never be one's priority.

Alain is a martial arts expert. I'm not, but I flatter myself that I know how to recognise one. One thing they all have in common is that they are teachers, not gurus, realists and not fantasists. Modest claims about what a martial art can do for you are a good sign that you're in good hands. The one claim that sounds hyperbolic which need not be is that they can change your life radically for the better. But multiple assailants only attack one person in single file in the movies.

Self defence and martial arts are related. They are not the same thing - anymore than bodybuilding and competitive weightlifting are the same thing. Being Steady When It Counts is about a whole lot more - and less - than knowing how to throw a good cross or how to throw another human being.

As Alain anticipated of his readers, the book took me to some challenging places in my imagination and memory. It was profoundly worth it. The world is dangerous, everywhere. This book will make you more prepared to face those dangers. Even better, you'll be able to avoid more of them, without wrapping yourself or your loved ones in cotton wool and failing to live.

I recommend this book with total commitment.

M'great mate wrote a very fine piece about The Office the other day, as it turns 25 (yikes!).

Simon is a brilliant essayist - this generation's Clive James. And I'm . . . me. Nevertheless, a further thought about the show occurs to me, about a very particular detail.

Let's talk villainy.

Several characters are in the frame to be The Office's biggest villain. Yes, David Brent is an anti-hero, not merely flawed but often selfish. Not until the movie Life On the Road, which arguably isn't Office canon, do we really come to understand that his heart is probably in the right place. But he's still far too sympathetic to be a villain.

So too is Gareth, who may be maddening but isn't bad. Jennifer is haughty and unsympathetic, but she's also a much-needed professional. She's no villain. Nor is IT Simon. He's just a dickhead. Finchy and Taffy are unpleasant, boorish oafs, but no worse than that. Brilliantly played oafs, but oafs. Both worthy of a punch in the face though, natch.

We see a nasty side of Neil as the show develops. He isn't merely more confident and suave than Brent, it turns out. Neil knows how to play the game, but his willingness to indulge Finchy shows that he's a shit. Yet while he might be Brent's personal nemesis, there's someone else in The Office who is worse. Far worse.

Lee is evil.

It's a banal kind of evil, to be sure. Lee isn't a controlling boyfriend in a conventional sense. There are hints of that, things like agitating that Dawn should leave social events with him before she's ready, but they're pretty small beer.

Yet I hate Lee - just as I enjoy the character and salute Gervais and Merchant's writing, and Joel Beckett's portrayal of Lee, and Lucy Davis and Martin Freeman's on-screen responses to Lee.

Lee isn't good enough for Dawn. It's not about his looks; Joel Beckett is a handsome man. It's not about Lee's social class or his job. This isn't body fascism or snobbery. I hate Lee because he doesn't cherish Dawn and discourages her from pursuing her dreams.

The discouragement is worse than an excess of caution. It's not just “I don't want you to get your hopes up, Love.” It's “I don't want you to do this thing you love [illustrating] at all.”

Lee wrongly treats objections to his narrow horizons as snobbery. This comes out in a beautifully written and acted interaction with Tim. It's all the more superb because things don't quite kick off. Lee doesn't get too angry because he doesn't understand the stakes. Like an “antizionist” who doesn't think he's antisemitic, Lee doesn't think of himself as evil. But he is. He's one of the most evil characters in the history of television.

Tim is a better fit for Dawn, of course, but it's far more serious than that. Lee isn't an uninspired man who's trying his best, the best he knows how. He's a scumbag.

Lee doesn't love Dawn. He wants her to be less than she could be, less fulfilled, and less happy. That is pure evil.

I like to imagine Lee utterly broken at the end of The Office. He deserves it.

Responsible parents will send their children to bed at the normal time tonight and then pack them off to school in the morning, right? There can be no question of allowing them to stay up and watch a mere football match - even a World Cup knockout match in which England face Mexico - in the middle of the night. Education matters more than fun and young people need to learn about turning up on time and meeting their obligations, yes?

No.

What a joyless, un-nuanced screed.

Firstly, it’s a false dichotomy. The World Cup has a profoundly educational purpose. It’s perhaps the largest cultural event on Earth (yes, really) and many children’s first introduction to various other countries and their people. (My knowledge of English geography comes primarily from football.) How much does your child know about Mexico?

The World Cup also has a great deal to teach everyone about teamwork, politics, winning and losing, and not just scoring goals but setting them. Some of the best life lessons anyone can learn come from sport.

Secondly, the strict approach colossally overstates the importance - and quality - of schools. Years ago, an otherwise excellent education minister was speaking about the vital nature of school attendance. He said that because he was ill the week his classmates were taught binary, he had never learned it. That was, obviously, a risible argument. The point is that his schooling equipped him with an ability to learn. Had he felt the need or inclination to learn binary as a grown man, he could have got to grips with the basics in an evening.

I once walked out of a metalwork lesson early. I genuinely believed we had been dismissed. I explained this to my outraged teacher, who replied, “What you thought and what you did are two different things.” I duly apologised.

What I should have done is point out that I was on course to win a place at Oxford University, he had been to neither of England’s universities, he had no businesses issuing instructions to me of any kind, and time spent learning how to weld or to make a boot scraper was time sinfully wasted. I should then have dismissed him from my presence like the thick pleb he was. There is a natural order to life, and people like him have no business telling people like me what to do. I should have flogged him for his impudence.

But we all have regrets.

A good conservative understands the balance between respecting institutions and laws and not being slavishly devoted to authority. The correct balance includes a little bit of naughtiness. Raising your children to kick against the pricks a bit is a good thing.

However, we all need to make something of an effort to fit in, otherwise it’s chaos. Being a male who doesn’t like football is massively deviant. Eccentricity is one thing, but schools have a moral duty not to allow outright perversion to flourish. Encouraging young men to believe football doesn’t really matter is a sure-fire way to set them on a trajectory that leads to playing badminton, voting Liberal Democrat, being a vegetarian, and stealing women’s knickers from clotheslines.

Conservatism is not about stagnation. Good conservatives want to expand opportunity. I’m therefore very pleased that many women and girls watch and play football now, and that females who don’t like football also increasingly look like appalling weirdoes.

Not all patriots are conservatives, but all conservatives are patriots. A good conservative will encourage national pride - and even a healthy dollop of jingoism - in their child. We have so few television water cooler moments these days. It matters hugely that we should stir passion in the next generation. Tonight, we need the nation to come together in a shared experience, whether we win or lose.

School should put fire in a child’s eyes, spark their imagination, swell their heart, and prepare them to be a good citizen. It’s not meant to be some grim processing factory. Nor is it the only place where education happens; learning is a lifelong pursuit and happens everywhere. Any given school day really isn’t terribly important. Hell, whole subjects aren’t terribly important. Naturally, I hated French. Studying it has proven to be of no help even in learning Italian.

I think your kids have a bit of a cough and a sniffly cold. It’s only responsible to let them sleep in tomorrow, or maybe stay home altogether. Or perhaps not. Perhaps it’s time for them to learn a social development lesson to prepare them for parenthood: sometimes you have to get by on too little sleep.

Stay up with your kids tonight and watch the game. Eat crisps and drink fizzy pop. Punch the air with delight. Cry tears of unbridled joy or bitter disappointment. Win or lose, hug your children and make a cherished memory. England don’t even have to win for your child to look back years later and say that watching tonight - and then bunking off school or going in bleary-eyed but excited to talk about it all with their mates - is one of the best things they ever did.

I did an experiment today. I read the script for John Hughes’s 80s classic The Breakfast Club, and then I rewatched it.

I last saw it about a year ago, I think. I can’t remember if I’d seen it before then, oddly. Certainly it wasn’t a seminal moment in my adolescence. I may well have seen the very good Dawson’s Creek homage first. Yet at an age when perhaps I should have grown out of such things, Hughes’s films fill me with yearning. I don’t wish that I were a teenager again - DEAR GOD, PLEASE, NO - but I find his films to be very profound works of art.

I know a lot of people who turned 18 in the 1990s who speak or write about music from that era as though it were a lot better and more enduring than I think it is. That isn’t what’s happening here. Hughes was kind of operating before my time. It says a lot about how great he was that even if I see one of his pictures for the first time as a middle-aged man, and they’re not part of my folk memory, I’m still flooded with something very meaningful and overcome with nostalgia.

It’s partly Hughes’s conservatism, of which P. J. O’Rourke wrote so memorably:

“I have no idea how, or if, John voted [...] John and I never bothered to talk much about our politics. What we did talk about was the 20th century’s dominant scrambled egghead bien pensant buttinski parlor pinko righty-tighty lefty-loosey nutfudge notion that middle-class American culture was junk, that middle-class Americans were passive dimbulbs, that America itself was a flop and that America’s suburbs were a living hell almost beyond the power of John Cheever’s words to describe [...] we were becoming conservatives—in the most conservational sense. There were things that others before us had achieved and these were worth conserving [...] family was the most conservative thing about John. Walking across the family room in your stocking feet and stepping on a Lego (ouch!) was the fundamental building block of society.”

(Oh God, I feel so mediocre whenever I read P. J. O’Rourke. Those of you who think I should be a political satirist are WRONG.)

Andrew Sullivan called himself a South Park conservative. I’m a John Hughes conservative.

It’s also partly that John Hughes painted pictures of adolescence that knock far more celebrated, supposedly worthier literature into a cocked hat. The notion that his are fundamentally insubstantial, flimsy movies is nonsense.

I wonder if most non-screenwriters have the same reaction as me when reading the script of a film they know well. It still amazes me how short scripts are. I am always struck by how few words can and indeed must say so much. We learn what we learn about the protagonists of The Breakfast Club from snatches of dialogue. Even the characters who seem verbose are saying less than it seems - quantitatively, that is, emphatically not qualitatively.

My admiration for anyone who is good at assessing a script has gone through the roof today. Even the most obviously brilliant lines from the movie could fail to leap out from the page. Other material that merely seems good or solid when read is rendered fantastic on the screen. Of course that is a tribute to Hughes’s skill as a director, to that of the actors and actresses, and to other people including the set designers. There was a bit of ad-libbing, too.

And yet, when all is said and done, John Hughes created the thing, with a remarkably small number of words.

And if parts of it turned out not as he’d planned, if parts of it turned out better than he’d hoped, if the whole thing ended up MUCH better than he could ever have imagined…

…it seems to me that makes him even more of a genius.

It also makes him immortal, by the way.

It is so seductive to think that a film script could be 90 per cent completed over a weekend. It is a lot less writing work than demanded by a novel. Getting a film commissioned and made is obviously far more work, but seemingly endless rewrites require a lot less man hours than writing a book.

It must, of course, be a lot harder than it seems. And the thing about a genius is that their speed isn’t really the impressive bit. I’m not particularly impressed that Elton John wrote the music for most of his songs in an hour, or that The Bee Gees wrote three hits in one day. I’m impressed that anyone could write those songs at all.

Do I want to give writing movies a shot myself?

What do you reckon?

I don’t need to spell it out. Screenwriters show and don’t tell.

And I don’t want to grow out of these things.

“I need those dauphinoise potatoes in the next minute.”

“Coming up, Chef.”

“And where are my crackers and cheese?”

“Right here, Chef.”

“Good.”

It was an eccentric meal all right. Crackers and cheese are conventionally a snack or a pudding, yet the client had insisted on having them as a starter, along with dauphinoise potatoes. Then, absurdly, he wanted as his main course Chateaubriand with fries and a McDonald’s cheeseburger. Ordering in food from elsewhere – let alone from a fast-food chain – offended the chef’s sensibilities almost beyond endurance. His staff felt the same way. And requesting Coca-Cola and a big bottle of prune juice instead of red wine was just bizarre.

“Look,” the chef had told his team, “this is a very special client. We need to do whatever he wants, however he wants it. Got that?”

“Yes, Chef,” they had chorused.

This was a major departure.

Ordinarily, the chef treated the wishes of his diners with outright contempt. He knew what they wanted better than they did, after all. At least the client said he would trust the chef to cook the Chateaubriand as he saw fit. In that regard he was a lot less vulgar than many of the visitors to the chef’s restaurant.

And in a way, it was quite an honour to be asked to cook for what was a very special occasion. The client could have had any chef he wanted - such was the power he wielded. Being crammed into an unfamiliar and inelegant kitchen for the evening was worth it. This would be one for the memoirs.

“Right, get that all plated up and take it out there, Steve.”

“Yes, Chef.”

The chef had prepared the Chateaubriand with great care. He had chopped it up using his finest knife, a Japanese number that he treasured. Cooked to perfection, the steak lay resting – the better to give the juices a chance to flow around. The chef had been given free range to add a variety of vegetables to the plate.

The client was going to be full to bursting before he even began tackling his pudding, but this is what he wanted. It was clearly a total contrast with how he usually ate, in volume as well as content, as his frame was covered in lean muscle. If anything, he looked under-nourished.

Once the main course was out of the door, the chef relaxed. His clipped speech became more voluminous; his authoritarian tones softened into gentle banter with his staff. They tolerated his barking because he was a genius, because they learned so much from him, because he had a softer side, and because he actively encouraged them to go off and start their own restaurants when they were ready and then supported them to the hilt. Everyone agreed: he was a hard taskmaster but a good person.

The chef delivered the home-made ice cream to the client himself. Four varieties and a lot of it. Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and salted caramel.

“Here we are, Sir!”

“Oh, right on! Thank you kindly!”

“How have you found the meal so far, Sir?”

“Absolutely great! You are an artist, Mr Chef!”

“Well thank you, Sir.”

“No! Thank you! I really appreciate it. As you’ll have seen from my empty plates!”

“Where do you put it all, Sir?! You are commendably trim.”

“Ha! Yeah – well, this ain’t a typical meal.”

“Indeed not, Sir.”

“Indeed not! Nope, I’ve never had a meal this good – and I never will again!”

The chef smiled awkwardly.

“Hey, don’t be embarrassed. I’m at peace. And tomorrow, when they strap me into that chair and flick the switch, I am gonna void my bowels with all the ferocity of a bull elephant. I ain’t gonna stop until I have shat myself blind! And those bastards are gonna have to clear it up! What are they gonna do about it? Sue me?!”

The client laughed so hard he almost puked, but he managed to keep it down. He was ready to go.