Anti Fascism

The Very Definition of “Tragic”

We all know Simon Darby, don’t we? “Naturalist, angler and, wait for it… Deputy Leader of the BNP”. He also has a falcon. Obviously.

Well, he has been given his own radio show.

Now, I don’t want to sound too much as if I’m taking the piss. But Simon’s radio show is on … an internet radio station. A proper one, right. Remember PressTV in the early days, when you had to watch it through the internet? Well, now it is on Sky, who is laughing? If the BNP just strike oil, that’ll be the next step to world media domination!

The radio station in question is Play Radio UK: “The Home Of The UK’s Largest Online Radio Network”. (“The Home of Free Speech – Radio You WONT Hear Anywhere Else”!!)

Depressingly, the person who got Simon his show was LBC and kids’ tv legend, Tommy Boyd. Sacked one too many times, I guess this is where he ended up.

The great thing about internet radio, of course, is that it falls without the ambit of OFCOM. Think of the freedom!

Anyhow, I strongly recommend that you listen to last week’s show. I tried to write this post with it on in the background, and just failed, miserably. I was laughing too much.

The show starts professionally enough – although it sounds a bit as if it has been recorded on a 1980s portable cassette recorder, by your dad, in a garage, on an estate in Harlow. He is assisted throughout by a woman called Cheryl. Then, a couple of minutes in, the whole programme is drowned out in a howl of feedback.

When that is sorted out, our man launches into a halting anecdote about smoking and drinking, and how the laws have got too much, and about being at the BNP’s St George’s Day Parade, and people coming up to him and saying that St George is for everybody, and how he said that St George was just for the British, and then somebody telling him that he couldn’t have a drink, and how he could see the point of the laws and everything, but hasn’t it all got a bit much? What do you think? Well?

Then he started to talk about speed limits. At that point, I was laughing so much, I had to stop listening.

I’m going to try again.

Simon starts to argue against the smoking ban. Simon then claims that at one time, boys at Eton were punished for not smoking. (I have looked this up. It appears to be true!)

A listener calls in to argue against him. From Poland. He opposes smoking and supports a smoking ban. He asks Simon whether he supports marijuana use, if he supports smoking. No, says Simon, he doesn’t. Aha, says the caller – why not? They’re both drugs. Well, says Simon, what about alcohol? Would you ban that. The caller disagrees, because the Bible says that you have to drink it.

Oh, says, Simon. That’s one part of the Bible he agrees with.

He then tries to get the caller to talk about politics. The caller explains that he thinks that society has got very left wing. Simon agrees, ruefully. The caller then tells Simon that society “has to be reset”, and that the problem is the Freemasons.

Simon is clearly uncomfortable. He has spotted that the caller is a nut. He states that he does not agree.

But worse is to come. The caller then says that he disagrees with the BNP on the “racial issue”. He rolls the “r” of “racial”. He explains that he is Right wing, but that he believes that it is what a person has inside that matters.

This is just the first 20 minutes.

It is like Alan Partridge.

Remember kids – you can catch him live, every Monday at 7 p.m..