Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, absolutely free of charge, so please take him, my Tit of the Year. Yes, yes, I know it's only August but somehow I just know he is going to be a well-deserved recipient because no-one, not even 'little Georgie Moonbat', could reach the heights - or depths, perhaps - of this particular Tit. Roll of drums, please . . .
. . . followed by an enormous raspberry for Prof(!) Ben 'Batty' Pitcher of, God help us, Westminster University. That sounds rather an august insitution but in reality it's just another jumped up polytechnic so 'Batty' Pitcher should fit in rather easily.
Anyway, you may wonder what this, er, distinguished academic has done to earn his valuable soubriquet as Tit of the Year. Well, if you will put down your mug of coffee or your rather full glass of wine - I know you lot and I'm not paying for any keyboards! - I will allow The Daily Mail to tell it all. For the benefit of my foreign readers Gardeners' Question Time is a regular Sunday radio programme which is nearly as old as the BBC. It 'does what it says on the tin', that is, listeners send in questions about their gardens and various expert gardeners provide answers. In the course of these most gentle and couteous of discussions freqent references will be made to "native plants" and "non-native plants", and such like. Poor old 'Batty' Pitcher went quite batty:
Dr Ben Pitcher, a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Westminster, says the panel show is ‘saturated’ with racial language.
From debates about native and non-native plant species to advice about the purity of different soil types, the programme’s resident green-fingered experts are secretly feeding nationalist and fascist fantasies, he claims.
Speaking on another Radio 4 programme, Thinking Allowed, he said: ‘Gardeners’ Question Time is not the most controversial show on Radio 4, and yet it is layered with, saturated with, racial meanings. The context here is the rise of nationalism. The rise of racist and fascist parties across Europe. Nationalism is about shoring up a fantasy of national integrity. My question is, what feeds nationalism? What makes nationalism powerful?’
Is there a factory somewhere, along the lines of that one in California which pours silicon plastic into great vats and then extrudes thousands of tall, slim, buxom blondes whose teeth are so white they can only be viewed from behind sun-glasses, but in this British case where tons of thick, and I do mean seriously thick, clay are poured into moulds which produce utter nincompoops like Prof(!) 'Batty' Pitcher? If so, I bet it's not far from 'Uddersfield or Scunthorpe or somehwere 'oooop north'! Mind you, for lack of anything better to do 'ooop there' they do produce some excellent comedians and 'Batty' Pitcher is the best joke this year.
