They frighten me

We have a request! A Mr Organic Cheeseboard, who doesn't seem to give an address would like a post about Nick Cohen latest Standpoint 'Television' review Wireless: Curmudgeons of the World Unite. (Honestly, this does seem to be their television column this month.) And that's not wireless as 'keyboard' or 'printer' - it's apparently a term that used to refer to what became known as the 'radiogram' to bright young things between the wars. Watch out Daily Telegraph, Standpoint's after your coffin-dodging readership!

Sorry to disappoint you, Mr Cheeseboard, but I know very very little about sport on the radio - everything I do know comes from either Woody Allen's Radio Days or Stephen Jay Gould. Comrade Justin is our resident football egghead, and perhaps he'll be kind enough to cast a critical eye on our behalf in the comments. I don't think realises that his gripe against Radio 4 (which is what I assume he's talking about in the second paragraph) was put rather better more than a quarter of a century ago.

Everyone describes the same process. At first it is exciting. You're at the centre of the world. As soon as anything happens, you're the first to know about it. And there are deadlines a dozen times a day, even more, and that's intimidating and exciting. Then you get the hang of it and the excitement wears off. Your a clerk in a rather dowdy Office. There's none of the glamour of television, or the penetration of serious journalism. You're a processor of semi-official news. Some people leave at this stage. Then, if you hang on, and especially if you're promoted, you discover a new kind of pleasure. You're pleased by the ease with which you can write summaries and bulletins from news agency printouts, by the way you ca judge length. Ending a broadcast on the dot, having everything run smoothly, selecting a running order that makes sense, knowing instinctively what you can and cannot do. Professionalism

THE PLOUGHMAN'S LUNCH An original screenplay by Ian McEwan (spelling in original) from The Daily Script. It's harder to quote from than I hoped, but the speaker, played by the wonderful Jonathan Pryce, has reached "a fourth [stage]. Numbness. You do everything right, but you feel nothing either way."

The good thing is that it at least sees Nick writing well for the first time in ages: he's finally found a topic he enjoys writing about and which inspires him to actual good humour.

Green's Ulster cussedness, his towering self-regard and his indifference to the opinions of the former players and managers with him in the commentary box, who are clearly unqualified to pass judgment because they have been involved in the game only at the highest level, make him an irresistible target for the affection of many, your correspondent included, and the enmity of others. But the attention Green receives hides the fact that in their quieter way, 5 Live's other commentators are no different. Mike Ingham and John Murray will tell you if a game is awful, while Gabriele Marcotti is the finest sports analyst on radio because he never panders to his listeners but argues with them incessantly.

I know nothing of any of this. I listen to Radios 3 and 4. But Michael Henderson, who writes about (high) culture and sport, usually in the Telegraph, clearly can't stand Alan Green (warning: Daily Mail).

Let me talk about something I do know a little more about: film. I've yet to see The Infidel, which has had mixed reviews, but any film about Jews and Muslims comes close to being on-topic here. I rather admire David Baddiel. (Full pathetic disclosure: I was a runner-up [top 20 of 2000 entries, or top 1%] in a Twitter short story competition run by the Times last year and co-judged by him and John Humphreys. This may have made me like him a little more. But not that much. After all, I didn't win. Bastard.) The Jewish Telegraph likes it, but also reports that Israel hasn't bought it.

You know what's coming: the Jewish Chronicle (which DA occasionally writes for) hated it, as did Peter Whittle in Standpoint. Nick rediscovered some old depths this month. Peter Whittle didn't. He managed to write an article which stumbles between ignorance and dishonesty.

Thirty years ago, that country was ravaged by economic decline but culturally still knew what it was, and the assumptions it could safely make. Then again, few of us freshers had even heard of Islam. As we queued for the movie, we knew that something was going on over in Iran, yes, but we'd been told the Shah was a fascist tyrant. So the establishment of this new regime must have been some sort of victory for something we could vaguely assume was good, progressive, and to be supported.

Actually, I think the Pythons were taken by surprise at the reaction they produced. They went to some lengths not to be offensive with The Life of Brian. I was at school when the film came out, and I can't remember what month it did, but given that the Iranian Revolution started in February of that year, it's fairly safe, in a Brucie's Play Your Cards Right sort of way to assume that the film hit cinemas later. Anyway, I think the point of the above passage was to indicate that students and other trendies admired the Revolution. Not the case as I recall (but I didn't go to Oxford). I knew only one person who thought Iranians running Iran might be a good thing. That was me.

The Shah's replacement was an old man who famously went on to say: "There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humour in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious." So there would be no Life of Iqbal showing in downtown Tehran. Blinded by a misplaced sensitivity, cringing cultural cowardice and a very well-placed sense of genuine fear, we followed suit. Now, three decades later, we can say with certainty that there will be no Life of Iqbal at Bradford's local multiplex.

Yes, I'm certain that a film you just made up won't be shown in Bradford. We can at least agree on that. There are so many things wrong here, I don't know where to start. Islam comes in more than one flavour. Iranians aren't actually Arabs and they're Shi'a Muslims and pretty much the whole of the Arab world is Sunni. It's also possible that Ayatollah Khomeini was talking rubbish. (After all, Theodor Adorno said "After Auschwitz it is barbaric to write poetry" and Bob Dylan seemed to do alright.)

A word about this year's Oscars: what a relief that that overblown, infantile piece of tosh Avatar was stopped in its tracks, and by a small film, The Hurt Locker, which, by the standards of James Cameron's cartoon epic, has been seen by almost no one. More importantly, the simple-minded anti-Americanism of Avatar was trumped by a film which, whatever its makers' view on the Iraq war, admires and celebrates the bravery of US troops. Such a film is inconceivable here — or anywhere else in Europe for that matter.
It was not ever thus: Noel Coward did a sterling job in In Which We Serve, admittedly a wartime effort. Even as late as the Sixties, with the star-studded The Battle of Britain, it was possible for audiences here to see a straight-faced tale of heroism where nothing much was called into question. But even then, the heart was already growing feint, and really from Tony Richardson's revisionist take on the Charge of the Light Brigade in that decade it has been downhill all the way. Even when they show up in science fiction dramas such as the zombie-fest 28 Days Later, British troops are portrayed as bigoted, psychotic grunts. Our film-makers, it seems, refuse to separate the message from the messenger.

I'd like to remind the reader here that Nick Cohen hates Spooks, while I love it, although I think it's pure propaganda. It certainly shows the security services (about whom I'm sceptical) to be noble and courageous. But really, why do right-wing writers hate the market so much? Cinema is a market. People make films for money. Make a popular film and you can be rich. Lefties like fast cars, big houses, and wide screen tvs too, you know. Why aren't there more films like John Wayne's The Green Berets? Didn't Adam Smith have a theory about this sort of thing?

However, I agree with Mr Whittle that it's terrible that "British troops are portrayed as bigoted, psychotic grunts." So I'll leave you with a few thoughts from one of these lily-livered, draft dodging, effete, trendy liberals on our brave boys.

People talk of their enlisting from their fine military feeling - all stuff - no such thing. Some of our men enlist from having got bastard children -- some for minor offences -- many more for drink.

Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won.

I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me.

By Gad, I wouldn't depend on him to fight those upstart Frenchies, etc.