There was similar outrage on display yesterday when a group of protestors charged into the BBC car park over the Corporation’s decision to allow BNP leader Nick Griffin to appear on Question Time.

Those wishing to see Griffin denied a platform, like those calling for Moir to be muzzled, no doubt act with good intentions. However the cost of denying either their right to speak is too high, even in the face of an almost inhumanly callous article or the political views of an odious right-wing bigot. 

The demonstrators, there to publicise their antipathy towards Griffin’s politics, trampled over barriers as they forced their way into Auntie HQ.

Unfortunately, they were also trampling, whether knowingly or not, over one of the most sacred traditions in modern political thought.

It’s exactly 150 years since John Stuart Mill published On Liberty, the treatise which, alongside the writings of the French Revolution, lay the foundations for freedom of speech. It was a radical idea at the time, now commonplace, almost banal.

Yet the tenet appears to be increasingly under attack, whether it’s Muslims ordering the death of a Danish

• Read Full BLOG

Yet since the Eighties, millions have travelled to an island in the Balearics looking to subvert the paradox.

For many, the island of Ibiza is the contemporary pursuit of pleasure. In a world in which the social boundaries lay under constant siege – secularists push out and the religious push in – Ibiza remains aloof, not only an island geographically, but a place set part from social mores, somehow above the moral bickering of everyday life.

A recent trip for the closing party of Pacha, one of the island’s main nightclubs, was my sixth and perhaps my last visit to the small, acorn-shaped strip of land just off the coast of Spain. Did I say my last? I’ve said that after every single visit. One day I’ll mean it.    

It was a two-day jaunt, a surgical strike. In and out, starting with the customary 4am taxi to Stansted and a monstrous two-hour flight on easyJet (made worse by a flight attendant on the microphone reading excerpts from what I presume was The Bernie Winters Holiday Gag Book).

The thrust of the trip was to interview David Guetta, the prominent French DJ currently dominat

• Read Full BLOG

That’s not to say I stroll into the office looking like Timmy Mallet. 

Nor do I plump for the sheep-like suit. I wear nice clothes, often hastily purchased from whichever John Lewis happens to be closest.

Yet when it comes to the cutting edge, I seem to dress mainly on the wrong side of the sartorial trouser.

Working in the media and with friends whose job it is to comment on fashion, I am made all too aware of my passé threads on a weekly basis. “Trainers again?” is an oft heard criticism.

“I really don’t like that watch” is a more recent abuse.

My uneasy relationship with clothes stretches back some years.

My first major fashion outlay was at University. Having cut the apron strings from mother (but with her purse strings still loose) I decided to buy an expensive shirt.

It was the mid-nineties, an era in which men pea cocked in pinstripe trousers, shoes buffed to the point of disintegration and the all important button down shirt with branding.

I had watched wit

• Read Full BLOG

It could have been the lateness of the hour or the cheap wine, but I was sure this was a demarcation point in American history - just as significant as the Gettysburg address or the falling of the Berlin Wall.

VIDEO: OBAMA'S VICTORY SPEECH

Its true impact is the remit of historians yet to come, though even the most dismissive of their discipline will surely note the general and widespread welcome that accompanied Obama’s victory. When else has the world rallied so universally around the story of one man?

However, lost behind the placards and crowds, overlooked by a media carouselled by the public mood were those who felt not so much the comforting hand of history, but a sharp jab to the stomach.  

Racists from the wrong end of the Republic were dismayed. Those of equally bigoted bent around the globe no doubt felt the same.

Yet a more subtle form of

• Read Full BLOG

“Would celebrities please stop dying? That is all.”

The last few months have been quite a busy time for the obit writers. Still, Jacko dying just hours after Farrah Fawcett was unusual. Two in one day - has that happened before?

Earlier this year we had the even more bizarre death of Jade Goody.

Not that the demise of a young woman from cancer is bizarre or, unfortunately, all that uncommon. But it was a surprising dénouement to a life that, when assessed, was as strange as it was short. 

This year has also seen the passing of Wendy Richards and Mollie Sugden. In January it was Jeremy Beadle.

I had the odd experience of accidently breaking the tragedy of Beadle’s death to my sister last week.

Now a native of Kentucky, news of the prankster’s passing had not reached rural USA. She was genuinely upset, even more so when I dropped Tony Hart into the conversation. We haven’t spoken since.

Ja

• Read Full BLOG