Wind On Radio

I'm not usually up this early on a Saturday. But as I was snoozing under the Hungarian goose down doona, drifting in and out of consciousness to the tones of the Today programme on Radio 4, an item came on which caused the old shell-likes to prick up.

Booming out of the B&O was our very own Tory MP for Fannit Norf, Sir Roger Wind!

Roger, if you recall, recently made a successful claim to recoup more than £2K in expenses which he'd been told to repay by the Troughsniffer General, Sir Thomas Legg. The, er, 'idea' of the radio item was to gauge the mood of the angry mob in his constituency. Of course, once the reporter discovered that 68% of his constituency are over 90 and would vote for a small piece of cheese as long as it was blue, it was game over. Despite a plucky attempt by the lovely editor of the Gazunder to waft letters of complaint under our intrepid's nose, the vox pops said it all. 'Roger? Nah, he's a lovely bloke!' 'Expenses? Piss off back to that London, you pinko liberal twot!'

What never ceases to amaze me is that even Labour and Liberalites on the seedy north side of the island privately stick up for Roger on the basis that he's a 'good constituency MP'. When you ask why, if that's the case, his constituency has crumbled and burnt to the ground in the 27 years he's been presiding over it, they often mutter something about his passionate concern for animals (but not humans, as he wants to execute those), or the fact that their Auntie Gladys got a Christmas card from him once.

Perhaps the Today reporter could have opened her eyes, taken a look around, and asked the question why he's been claiming exes at all, seeing as Margate has gone to the dogs (Newfoundlands, of course) under his stewardship. But then Radio 4 and BBC reporting in general is just a shadow of what it was when Roger was producing the Today programme. Or that's what they say in Margate, anyway!

Click here for today's Today on BBC iPlayer. Roger's at 1:44.30.