My big worries
James Delingpole
Have you ever noticed how the Islamist terror threat has been ridiculously overplayed by the government? I have. I’ll be standing with my kids on a crowded Tube, looking at the 20-year-old with the beard, the knitted cap and the classic Bin-Ladenstyle salwar kameez/combat jacket combo and thinking, ‘Well, he’s a lovely devout bloke from the Religion of Peace, so he’s definitely not going to blow us up.’ And I’ll read those depressing MI5 estimates that there are at least 2,000 home-grown Islamist terrorist plotters dotted around Britain and not be depressed at all. Why? Because I get my facts from the BBC.
When, for example, I’m watching an episode of Spooks and threatening to nurture the heinous suspicion that this week for once the bad guys might finally turn out to be of a Muslim persuasion, the script will soon put me right. I know that, soon enough, the real villains will prove to be rogue elements in Mossad cynically trying to gain publicity for the evil, all-powerful Israel lobby. Or maybe fundamentalist Christians, who are at least as extreme and dangerous as anything the Islamic world has to offer. (We learnt this on the BBC’s The Power of Nightmares, remember?) Jesus, they’re a menace those fundamentalist Christians.
They popped up again the other day in the first episode of Bonekickers (BBC1, Wednesday), this time in the form of a loony Knights Templar sect who kidnapped an innocent Muslim bloke and chopped his head off. Some might have thought this bizarre storyline a bit distasteful, broadcast as it was a day or two after the 7/7 anniversary. But I’m with the BBC on this one. If only we pesky Christian types would stop decapitating Muslims and demanding the restoration of the Caliphate and the conversion, whether by honey or by the sword, of the Dar Al-Harb ... No wait, hang on, oh, never mind.
Unfortunately, one or two viewers have been saying unkind things about Bonekickers. Most viewers, in fact: ‘All the Playschool enthusiasm of Time Team and none of the intellectual rigour’; ‘Is this The Da Vinci Code for the under-eights?’; ‘I have never watched such utter drivel. Who the hell is that woman? She cannot act. If it lasts all six episodes I will be amazed’; and ‘Oh my God! This is the worst programme I have ever seen on BBC1.’ Those quotes all came from the official BBC Bonekickers fan site so I can scarcely wait for the I Hate Bonekickers counterpart. But I’m sure the people who made it — the same team responsible for Life on Mars — know what they’re doing. By cunningly splicing Time Team, The Da Vinci Code and Torchwood, then filming the whole thing as if it were an Armstrong and Miller comedy pastiche in the manner of Nude Practice, they have ingeniously created what may well indeed be the most risibly inept programme in the history of TV. And therefore a dead cert for cult, so-bad-it’s-good viewing by stoner students and the unemployed.
I particularly like watching that fine actor Hugh Bonneville’s inner torment as he slums it as the boffin in the cut-price Indiana Jones outfit, whose job is to impress the viewer with historical factoids, but then undercut the high seriousness at the end by saying things like: ‘That’s enough burning True Crosses. Where’s the nearest pub?’ But I also like: the feisty Glaswegian woman with the thatched hair and the Mysterious Backstory; the fact that anyone white, middle class and male is either a drunk, a prat or a psycho; the fact that anyone black is bright, perky and committed; the hilarious action scenes at the end so gloriously bathetic they make Scooby Doo look like North by North West; the spurious air of diligently researched authenticity: ‘We want a strontium 87 to 86 ratio of about 7.08. No. Hell’s tits, it’s 7.05, which suggests volcanic activity’; the fact that, despite being crack archeologists, they seem accidentally to destroy almost every object they find.
The other big thing I worry about, apart from Christian fundamentalism, is Climate Change. Has anyone else heard about this major threat to world civilisation? I don’t think it has been given nearly enough attention — so, well done the BBC, writer Simon Beaufoy and a cast including Rupert Penry-Jones for giving it the prominence it deserves in the two-part thriller Burn Up (BBC2, Wednesday, Friday)!
Here was a drama that didn’t pull its punches. The oil industry, we learnt, is corrupt, dirty, evil, profit-obsessed and quite incredibly oily. Environmentalists are brave, dignified, selfless, but often kinda sexy too. And they need to be tough, what with the oil industry’s typically evil tactic of smearing them at every turn — even bumping them off if it has to — just for the crime of telling the truth. I was so upset and moved and overwhelmed that after 40 minutes I had to stop watching.
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