History lesson
James Delingpole
This week, for a change, I've decided not to review a single programme about war. No — just kidding. For a start, how could I possibly not mention the History Channel's fascinating new series on the history of the SS (Sunday)?
Perhaps you're all experts on the subject already, but what I hadn't quite realised was that the Waffen (weapons') SS had no connection with the Wehrmacht whatsoever — rather, it was the fighting wing of the Nazi party. To become an officer in it, you had to demonstrate the genealogical purity of your family line going back to at least 1750. Candidates with blue eyes and blond hair were, unsurprisingly, the most favoured.
And what an evil bunch of tossers they all were, especially the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler unit responsible, inter alia, for the massacre of those British prisoners at Dunkirk. This was why the SS were so fearless and merciless in battle: they knew that if they were captured they would almost certainly be executed for atrocities past. Apparently, though, in tactical terms they were often pretty useless. The Leibstandarte's unit commander, Sepp Dietrich, was a former first world war NCO who had never had proper officer training, so all he knew how to do was point at the positions he wanted attacked and hope that his thugs' aggression would carry the day.
Every minute, two people are killed in conflicts around the world. One Day of War (BBC2, Thursday) explored a day in the life of 16 fighters in 16 of these wars — everyone from the captain of a rusty old motor gunboat in the Georgian navy to a conscript in the trenches of NagornoKarabakh to a pretty 18-year-old Filippina called Comrade Grace, shown earnestly lecturing her comrades from the New People's Army of the Philippines on the real truth behind 9/11. It turns out that it wasn't Osama bin Laden at all, but an American conspiracy. Which got me thinking: isn't it only fair, given his remarkably similar views, that millionaire film-maker Michael Moore should be given the chance to restore his proletarian credentials by being parachuted into the Philippine jungles and enlisted into the NPA forthwith?
The ones I felt sorriest for were the lovely Hmong people of Laos, who have spent every day of the past three decades being hunted to extinction by the 100,000-strong forces of the Laotian government. And all because, being fierce anti-communists, they made the mistake of supporting America during the Vietnam War. Unable to settle anywhere long enough to farm, they live in the deepest jungle on a meagre diet of tiny river crabs, grubs and sawdust which they have found a way of processing into edibility. When the camera crew came to film their plight — the first foreigners they had seen in 29 years — the whole village of 200 burst into tears of gratitude. What's so depressing is that you just know, in the end, they're all going to be wiped out. They're too unfashionable — and too right-wing, probably — to gain the necessary sympathy from Western bleedinghearts.
My father-in-law urged me to catch Vincent: the Full Story (Channel 4, Thursday) and rightly so. Provided you're not too distracted by Waldemar Januszczak standing in his heavy-framed glasses in a variety of windswept locations and booming demotically at you as if you're a dear old mate who's a bit hard of hearing, you'll find his lively, illuminating, personal guide to the life and work of Van Gogh just the ticket.
Given the choice, there are lots of painters I'd rather own than Van Gogh (a Samuel Palmer, maybe; a Holbein; the Wilton Diptych. ), but what's so great about Van Gogh is that he lived the life: starving in garrets, co-habiting with whores, catching gonorrhoea and syphilis, losing all his teeth, smoking too much, ruining himself on absinthe with ToulouseLautrec. Imagine being the tart who had to shag him, though.
Vexed issue of the week: should Diarmuid Gavin's head be stuck on a pitchfork and his body thrown to slugs or do we think he's a jolly good fellow and a breath of fresh air, what with the way he has cut through the petty snobberies and bureaucracies of the Chelsea Flower Show with his expensive Camelot-funded, colourful-ball-on-stick-motif Lottery garden (see Diarmuid's Big Adventure, BBC2, Tuesday)? Personally, I'm torn but I do think he lays on soulful Irishness a bit thick: if he were a pub, he'd be adorned with shamrocks and Gaelic script saying Cead Mile Failte and occupying the site where your friendly local used to be. And you wouldn't want that, would you?
Finally, a brief word about Gordon Ramsay's dismal new series Hell's Kitchen (ITV, all week), in which he has a week to train a team of minor celebrities to run a fancy restaurant. Gordon, it's utter toss, it makes you look a fucking twat and completely undoes all the good you have done yourself with Kitchen Nightmares. Back to the kitchen with you, quickly, and don't darken our screens for at least another two years. There is such a thing as too much publicity, you know.
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