I have a confession to make. I was drawing up a list of people I just turn off when they come on the radio. I've found they have nothing to say that I care to hear. I'm frankly surprised that any of them have managed to keep their jobs. But here's the terrible appalling thing. When I looked at the switch-off list, all the people on it were women. Now, there are some guys I'm not too happy about having to listen to but I don't turn them off. So, what's going on? Am I a closeted misogynist? I could come up with some rationalisations - sexism, racism, xenophobia, laziness, obnoxiousness, incompetence or class prejudice. But 100% of those on list for switch-off female? I am appalled and shocked.

I'm announcing that I am not going to the United States to promote my books. The reason? The US border folk will want to know my place of birth. I identify myself as a Citizen of the World. I refuse to be defined by my place of birth. And in any case I didn't live there until I was in my teens. I am not doing this to get myself interviewed on the radio. I am adamant that this is not a publicity stunt.

I was recently reading about the Battle of Rorkes Drift, immortalised in the 1964 film Zulu, and the book looked at recreations dating back almost to the time of the battle in 1879. British interest in the battle was such that performances, some involving real Zulus, were quickly to be seen at theatres, circuses and military tattoos. Some, particularly at the latter, simply featured white guys covered in boot polish as the Zulus. That all reminded me of my first and only byline in the old Glasgow Herald. While walking along Woodlands Road in the city I spotted a little card in shop window looking for black Africans and telling them to apply for work at Python Films. Some follow up revealed, yes, that Python. They were filming a sequence for the Meaning of Life featuring red coats and Zulus. I suppose Glasgow was the closest they could get to South Africa without leaving the UK. Anyway, come filming day the black extras refused to work. Many were medical students at Glasgow University and something about the portrayal of the Zulus upset them. An emergency search of nearby JobCentres was launched. So, if you look closely at the battle footage most of the Zulus are actually from the Indian sub continent and the ones furthest from the camera are unemployed white Glaswegians wearing boot polish and sandshoes.

Should people who work for foreign governments and undermine Britain while promoting the interests of a third country lose their citizenship? The question came to mind after listening to Kate "HawHawsdottir" Laycock on German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle. DW is known to still recycle anti-British Second World War Nazi propaganda and combine it with present day material most probably scripted in Washington by the CIA. The coverage of the last major anniversary of the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift was a disgrace. The one token former RAF pilot included in the fawning US worshipping programme grossly misrepresented the British contribution of almost 25% of the supplies flown in. I suspect the DW scripts are American written because Cambridge-educated Laycock employs Americanisms such as Gotten and uses the word Protest without saying whether it's For or Against something. And for a supposedly German broadcaster DW has an awful lot of American presenters or people who learned their English from Americans. Maybe perhaps there should be consequences for folk who denigrate their former neighbours for foreign government money. And the US Über Furhers who seem call the shots at DW don't even know their own history - The first St Patrick's Day parade was not in Boston but in the then Spanish colony of Florida in 1601. Or perhaps HawHaswdottir might just check what she is telling her audience is true.

One of the red flags when it comes to science on the radio is the number of Americans interviewed for an item. The more Americans, the more dubious the science. Good rule of thumb. If they ever interview four Americans, then we'll be in Food Causes Death territory. The Autopsies All Found Food In The Stomach - Food Causes Death. The reason much American science, when conducted by Americans, is poor is that during the Vietnam War the university faculties suddenly had to expand massively to cope with demand for higher education from draft dodgers like Donald J Trump. People who otherwise would have no hope of teaching in university suddenly found themselves on campus faculties after all. And if you're taught by an idiot...... This is why I ended up giving up on history books written by American academics. That was disappointment as I was interested in a non-British take on events but what I got was often really poorly researched and fantastically chauvinistic.