The Moral Maze

I was on The Moral Maze on Radio 4 last night on an episode about class. In the unlikely event that you want to listen to it, it's available here or as a podcast here.

I got to speak with Michael Portillo and to meet Owen Jones, both of which are very fine things to have done. Sadly James Delingpole, who was also appearing on the show, wasn't physically present, but was in a studio in Oxford. Which is a shame because I rather wanted to meet him - he once gave my book Rejoice! Rejoice! a five-star review in the Mail on Sunday.

The problem with the show is that it's a very short conversation, and there's an assumption that everyone is trying to be as provocatively opinionated as Mr Delingpole. So Melanie Phillips concluded that I was arguing against the concept of meritocracy, which isn't what I was saying at all - I was just pointing out that meritocracy is another form of elitism.

But it was fun. And I was particularly pleased that the man who got in touch with me from the show was Peter Everett, who made the fabulous radio series You'll Never Be Sixteen Again back in the 1980s. The book of that series is one of the volumes that I find myself going back to again and again, and I'm very happy to find out that the full text is available online. It's wonderful. My thanks to him and to Chris Burrows.