Over the festive season ePolitix.com is publishing some of the best articles and interviews of 2009 from our sister publication The House Magazine.
In April columnist Cobbett wrote this paean in praise of on Prince Philip.
Congratulations to the Duke of Edinburgh for becoming the longest-serving regal consort in British history.
I have always been in favour of his so-called gaffes, which I am certain were in many cases deliberately uttered for the pleasure he derived when the media – which can be puritanical and even sanctimonious when it chooses to be – blew hot and cold over many of his remarks.
Hungarians with large tummies, Chinese with slitty-eyes and aboriginals from Down Under who, allegedly, still throw spears at each other, have all come under his verbal lash.
But it is so refreshing that such a senior member of the Royal Family should ignore, and with such relish too, all the fashionable taboos which now try to limit, through political correctness, our freedom to make silly jokes about each other.
On one occasion, many years ago, I recall, he did intervene hastily over a remark he made at what he thought was a private luncheon but which in fact was attended by reporters - whom he failed to notice until it was too late.
In one aside, he told his audience that the voice of one pop idol sounded like his dirty bathwater gurgling down the plughole.
When he spotted a reporter – a Press Association reporter, in fact – hot-footing it to the telephone with this juicy line, the Duke rose from his place and hastened after him. As I recall it, the Duke managed merely to delay the story getting out into the public domain by an hour or two.
It was inevitable that once those words were in a reporter's notebook they would, at some stage, be shared with the nation, however wrathful the Duke of Edinburgh might become.
Generally speaking, however, the Duke gives every impression of revelling in his remarks – and the wider the circulation, the more he likes it.
And on another celebrated occasion, he turned a hose on the melee of reporters waiting nearby for him to utter yet another ‘gaffe’.
Another character who seemed to revel in the kind of gallows humour so popular (although generally behind cupped hands) at Westminster, was the late Alan Clark.
Who can ever forget his reference to ‘Bongo Bongo Land’, a remark which sent Clare Short, and various other worthies, into paroxysms of finger-wagging but which nearly everybody else thought was hugely funny?
And another, who wisely kept his mouth shut most of the time in public, yet who more than once broke all the taboos, was the late and splendid Denis Thatcher.
His own version of the acronym CHOGM (officially Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting) was not something you would generally repeat in polite society. And once when we were flying overt Canada, he pointed down to the ground and inquired: "Do you know what they do in Canada? They do f-all in Canada."
Those of Margaret Thatcher's aides who heard this remark were in a state of panic for a short while, fearful that the words would somehow get into the public domain and be the cause of a massive diplomatic row.
Fortunately for them – and for him – the words never got out for several years, by which time it was far too late to take umbrage.
Otherwise, Sir Denis was a firm believer in the dictum: "Keep your mouth shut and let everyone suspect you are a fool, rather than opening it and proving that you are one."
Yet nowadays, people are so ludicrously sensitive that it is impossible, virtually, to express a view about some subject without a constable knocking on your door to give you a ticking off or even a caution.
Some people, for instance, have specific views about homosexuality which, if they utter them in a public place, can find themselves in trouble. But the barmiest situation of all is that to extol your own religion, particularly if it is Christianity, can land you in hot water because it allegedly offends those who follow other creeds.
That is so nonsensical that it is barely worth discussing. Nobody cares.
And do you imagine that in Saudi Arabia, for instance, they would dilute and tone down their own religious beliefs and practices because they may offend, say, Christians?
Nor is there any balance in much of this. There is a song-and-dance group known as "Three Poofs and a Piano". Nobody objects to that because, presumably, the people who make up this group, are homosexual.
And Peter Tatchell, the most renowned pro-homosexual campaigner of them all, frequently uses the term "queer".
Yet, if so-called "straight" people were to dare to use these epithets themselves, they would almost certainly find themselves in trouble with the police.
Whatever happened to that dictum: "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your riht to say it."
My view is that we should all return to the good old days when we could be bawdy, vulgar and even occasionally offensive without the fear of being clapped in irons.
I mean to say, as one Austrian tourist discovered the other day, it is even an offence now to take a photograph of a London bus in a busy bus station – that must be the end!
