Celebrities: get them out of here

Britain’s premier political discussion programme Question Time turned into what Iain Dale has rightly called ‘car crash TV’ last night as former Blur drummer Alex James attempted to comment on the week’s events. He was dreadful. This is not some outstanding artist with radical views or a gritty sense of what people on the street really think. This was a self-regarding middle-aged grammar school boy who has a house – a very big house – in the country where he plays at being a farmer. A kind of pop Prince Charles. And like HRH, James is obviously not very bright and rather confused. But he is a celebrity and so for some reason the licence-fee payer should give him a platform. It’s not that I disagreed with what (I think) he was saying all the time. I thought it was good to hear someone refusing to panic about street crime, for example. Though how someone who lives in a mansion in Oxfordshire can know about this I am not sure.