Stephen Fry.

Digital Devices Rock My World.

It Is True That I Have a Great Admiration, Sometimes Only Just Short of Reverence, for the Elegances and Brilliances That Have Emerged from My Favourite Address in the World: 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, California, the Home of Apple Computers.

The BBC Enriches the Country in Ways We Will Only Discover When It Has Gone and It Is Too Late to Build It Back up Again. We Actually Can Afford the BBC, Because We Can’t Afford Not To. I Genuinely Cannot See That the Nation Would Benefit from a Diminution of Any Part of the BBC’s Great Whole. It Should Be as Closely Scrutinized as Possible of Course, Value for Money, Due Humility and All That, but to Reduce Its Economies of Scale, Its Artistic Social and National Reach for Misbegotten Reasons of Ideology or Thrift Would Be a Tragedy.

Although, of Course, Anybody Can Talk About Snouts in Troughs, and Go on About It, for Journalists to Do so Is Almost Beyond Belief, Beyond Belief. I Know Lots of Journalists; I Know More Journalists Than I Know Politicians. and I’ve Never Met a More Venal and Disgusting Crowd of People When It Comes to Expenses and Allowances.

John Cleese Said to Me Years Ago That “You Will Never Be Happy Unless You Stop Being so Polite. I Have Spent Much of My Life Trying to Please People, Trying to Be What They Wanted Me to Be Rather Than What I Actually Wanted to Be.

Just as I Was Leaving Prison, Starting Simultaneously My Period on Probation and at University, the Way You Do, the Wind Changed and Margaret Thatcher, the New Mary Poppins, Descended into Downing Street, with New Medicines for Us to Take, but Very Few Spoonfuls of Sugar to Help Them Go Down. I Am Not Going to Blame Her or Make Political Points. the Wind Had Changed and She Blew in with It and Would One Day Be Blown Away by Another Change. but Here She Was and Fundamental Questions Were Asked, Genuinely Radical Unthinkable Thoughts Were Thought in an Age of Privatisation and Anti Dirigiste, Anti Statist Conservatism.

I Grew up in What Seems Now to Me and to Most Cultural and Broadcast Historians to Have Been a Golden Age in Television.

Thatcherism Had Seen the First Concerted Political Opposition, Ideological Opposition to the Way the BBC in Particular Was Seen to Run Itself and to Behave. the Administration Was Perhaps Getting Its Revenge on the BBC for Its Perceived Participation In, and Promulgation Of, the Poisonous Ethos of the 1960S. Liberalism, Permissive Media Encroachments on Decency, Disrespectful Satire, Outright Socialistic Dramas and Documentaries Were All Cited as Proof of the BBC’s Undemocratic Doctrinaire Partiality. the Trick Was Conceived in Which the BBC Could Be Blamed for Being at One and the Same Time Old Fashioned, Stuck in the Mud, Reactionary, Elitist, Hidebound, De Haut En Bas, Patriarchal, Top/down, Patronising and Simultaneously Left Wing, Trendy, Bien Pensant and Unpatriotic, Because Radical Now Meant Right Wing. Modern and Progressive Meant Consumer Led and Market Oriented. the Tebbits and the Thatchers of This World Were Not About to Allow Intellectuals, Artists, Liberals and Oxbridge Nomenclatura of Decadent Self Appointed Cultural Apparatchiks to Decide What Was Good for the Public. the Nanny State Was Bad Enough in Their Eyes but the Schoolmaster State, the Don State Was Even Worse.

Television as the Nation’s Fireplace, the Hearth and the Heart of the Country, the Focus of Our Communal Cultural Identity, That Television Is Surely Dead. It Seems Unlikely Ever to Return. Instead of Being the Nation’s Fireplace, TV Is Closer to Being the Nation’s Central Heating. It’s Conveniently on in Every Room, It’s Less Discernible, Less of a Focus, More of an Ambient Atmosphere.

I Love Television in This Country. I Love the Range and Richness of the Programming. I Love Its Ambition, Its Scope, Its Innovation. I Love the Tradition, the Technological Innovation, the Gossip, the Corporate Drama on the Inside, the Reach and Influence on the Outside. I Admire the Talent and the Commitment of so Many Working in the Field. I Love Everything About What Television Has Been, What It Still Is and What It Might yet Be. If I Criticise Anything About It, I Hope You Will Be Able to See That I Do so as with Nationhood, from the Point of View of Love Not Enmity.

To Be Human and to Be Adult Means Constantly to Be in the Grip of Opposing Emotions, to Have Daily to Reconcile Apparently Conflicting Tensions. I Want This, but Need That. I Cherish This, but I Adore Its Opposite Too. I’m Maddened by This Institution yet I Prize It Above All Others.

There Is as Far as I Know No Profession in This Country That Likes to Talk About Itself More Than Broadcasting.

I Love Britain, Like Most Britons I Get Desperately Upset at Her Failings: When It Goes Wrong, When It Gets It Totally Totally Wrong, When It’s Shoddy, When It’s Inefficient, Incompetent, Rude, Vulgar, Embarrassing, When It Slips into National Torpor or Boils into Bouts of Embarrassing National Fever. I Can Moan About Health and Safety Gone Mad and Leaves on the Line, Rail Networks and Crap Service and Crap Weather and Crap Sporting Achievements and Crap Politicians and Crap Newspapers and Crap Attitude. I Can Do All That. in Fact It’s the Defining Signature Quality of My Britishness to Talk Like That, to Complain and to Self Castigate but Does It Mean That I Don’t Love This Damned Country? Does It Mean That I Don’t Get Weepy When I Think of Its History, Its People, Its Countryside, Its Richness, Its Plurality, the Cultural and Artistic Energy, the Good Humour, Tolerance, the Ability to Evolve for Good, Achingly Slow as That Ability Might Be? Does It Mean That I Don’t as It Were Stand to Attention When I Think of the Sacrifice of Our Military, the Selfless Good of so Many Working in Hospitals and Schools and Rescue Services and the Million Acts of Unremembered Kindness, Decency and Good Fellowship Practised Every Day by Unsung Heroes and Heroines in Every Walk of Life? of Course It Doesn’t Mean That I Don’t Love and Respect That. One Carps and One Criticises Because One Loves.

I Don’t Pretend to Be a Businessman. Spreadsheets and Powerpoint Presentations Make Me Want to Scream, Gouge Out My Eyes and Stab My Ears. I Have Never Been Able to Read a Profit and Loss Account or a Balance Sheet, and I Go Swimmy and Feel Sick If I Have to Read a Legal Document Because on the Whole I’d Rather Watch Television.

Happiness Is No Respecter of Persons.

It Is a Cliché That Most Clichés Are True, but Then, Like Most Clichés, That Cliché Is Untrue.

I Feel Sorry for Straight Men. the Only Reason Women Will Have Sex with Them Is That Sex Is the Price They Are Willing to Pay for a Relationship with a Man, Which Is What They Want. of Course, a Lot of Women Will Deny This and Say, Oh No, but I Love Sex, I Love It! but Do They Go Around Having It the Way That Gay Men Do?

To Repatriate a Power Takes Treaties, Rows, Enmities, Alliances and Betrayals. to Repatriate a Collection of Stolen Marbles Take Good Will, Moral Courage and a Decisive Belief That Right Can Be Done. How Can We British Be Proud Until We Sit Down with Greek Politicians and Arrange for the Return of Their Treasure? It’s Time We Lost Our Marbles.

Will We Never Learn? Who Knows? Religion. Shit It.

Most Sodomy, Most Anal Intercourse Takes Place Between Men and Women.

We’re Human Beings Like Everybody Else and We Believe First and Foremost in Love. at Least 260 Species of Animal Have Been Noted Exhibiting Homosexual Behaviour but Only One Species of Animal Ever, so Far as We Know, Has Exhibited Homophobic Behaviour and That’s the Human Being. so Ask Which Is Really Natural. There Are Other Faiths Like Quakers and Congregationalists and Unitarians and the Liberal Reform Part of the Jewish Faith Who Are Actually Extremely Keen. They Feel Their Communion Won’t Be Complete Unless It Includes Gay Marriage Because They Believe in Social Justice and Equality Too. It’s Wrong, in a Country Like Ours, Which Has an Established Church, Just Because Their More Extreme End Is Screeching with Outrage at the Idea of This, That We Are Not Allowed to Be Married. It’s Unfair on Plenty of Other Religious People and It Is Misrepresenting What We Require, Which Is Only the Same as Anybody Else, and That’s to Express Our Love in the Fullest Possible Way of Commitment.

Homophobia Is Still a World Problem. Homosexuality Isn’t and Never Has Been. Homosexuals Are Not Interested in Making Other People Homosexual. Homophobics Are Interested in Making Other People Homophobic.

I Have a Great Interest in Zoology. There Are 480 Species of Animal That Exhibit Homosexual Behaviour but Only One Species of Animal on Earth That Exhibits Homophobic Behaviour. so Which Is Normal?

What Is the Point of the Catholic Church If It Says, We Didn’t Know Better Because Nobody Else Did? Then What Are You For?

Gosh. Elliott G Spencer and I Go into a Room as Two People, Sign a Book and Leave as One. Amazing.