My last chance
James Delingpole
Enough TV already! Yes it’s that time of year when I drop all pretence of telly reviewing and talk totally about myself. And anyone who doesn’t like it can b— off right now. Go on! Seriously! Especially you, the mad evil reader whose name I have forgotten who used to send me those horrid emails. I particularly hate you, prat face, and I hope you get piles just like I did this year and it isn’t fun, let me tell you.
Now my immediate thought was to launch another Christmas appeal for needy hacks called Delingpole, but the last one was a disappointment. Not a single one of you bothered to send me any money at all. The only glimmer of a response I got was from Johnny Gill in Shropshire who kindly agreed to sell me two of his old hunt coats at a knock-down rate (‘I could give them to you,’ he said. ‘But then you won’t appreciate them’). Also, I did hear that a rich US reader who lives in South America mused to one of my friends, ‘Do you think I should send the guy some money?’ And my idiot friend said, ‘No. Don’t worry, he’s only joking.’ For the record: I am not joking. If people want to send me money, e.g., to put my boy through Eton, which will only cost you about £26,000 a year — peanuts to those of you in the hedge fund industry, and he’s a really lovely bright boy — I promise I will not insult your generosity by returning your cheques.
Then I thought, what about a reprise of my ‘All the friends whom I used to consider my equals but who are now doing better than me and making me miserable’ list from Christmas 2002? You’d have thought that by now God would have chosen to smite down at least a couple of them for their damned impudence. But He hasn’t. All he’s done is let my famous friends (e.g., Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Alain De Botton . .. ) get even more disgustingly famous, while my life has stayed exactly the same.
So 2007 is my last chance. I know I’ve said it before, but this time I mean it: if the things on my wish list below don’t come to pass in the New Year then there’s no justice and I’m definitely going to have to kill myself. Got that, God? Good.
1. How to Be Right. This is my A to Z of rants about how vile it is living in New Labour Britain — to be published in March — and it will be an enormous success. Everyone will buy a copy for their right-wing chums; every home will keep one in the downstairs loo next to the bog with the wooden seat. And there will be no downside — no ad hominem attacks from the left-wing press; no unpleasantness from Jim Naughtie if I go on the Today programme; no hate mail or death threats — just all-round praise and invitations to pheasant shoots and nice things like that.
2. Column. So popular will How to Be Right become that newspaper editors all over Britain will suddenly find it impossible not to give me a proper column. Flowers will be dispatched by limo to my home as a sweetener; I will receive many begging phone calls. Finally, I will generously allow one of my suitors to give me the column, but only once the money’s right and I have extracted a promise that under no circumstances am I to be bothered at weekends or after 6 p.m. Nor will I have to do rewrites. Or any research.
3. Money. Thanks to my new column, How to Be Right and Coward on the Beach (see below), I will have sufficient money to do all the things that matter: educate my children properly; turn down any work that is demeaning; never have to suck up to people I despise; make my banker and lawyer friends jealous; move to the country.
4. House. There’s a possibility, of course, that I shall be forced to become a tax exile in Ireland, where writers are no longer tax-exempt but pay a lot less than they will here under Brown. If my accountant can work a way round it, though, I shall buy a house in England, preferably a Georgian rectory in good hunt country with views, a nice nearby market town and simpatico neighbours who smoke dope but also play bridge.
5. My children’s education. This will now be sorted either by 3 or — in the unlikely event of God continuing to frustrate my wishes — by the kindly hedge-fund manager who reads of my darling ones’ plight and decides to see them right because, hey, what else is he going to do with all that dosh?
6. Coward on the Beach (Bloomsbury). This is coming out in November. It’s the first in a series featuring my hero Dick Coward and his sidekick Tom Price and it’s a bit like Flashman in the second world war. The plan is for it to sell more than George McDonald Fraser, Bernard Cornwell, C.S. Forester, Allan Mallinson and Patrick O’Brian put together. This may be optimistic, but you can’t be sure you haven’t read it yet.
7. Afghanistan. I will get to go there and experience an intense firefight (possibly winning an honorary MC) but with an absolute guarantee of not being killed or getting any of my limbs blown off.
8. War life. Someone will offer a home to this brilliant, much-missed column.
9. Politics. Dave Cameron will suddenly realise he’s a Tory and promise to drop taxes, bring back grammar schools and scrap the NHS; if not, then there will be a coup and someone proper will take over. Thanks to my book, everyone will finally realise how evil and wrong the Left really is.
10. Misc. The Islamists give up the struggle; lasting peace breaks out in the Middle East; the EU collapses; man-made global warming is revealed to be a PC myth; cars are discovered to be good for the environment, especially 4x4s; special device is invented that flosses your teeth all by itself; new rule is invented by God where you don’t necessarily have to grow old and die after all.
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