I’m as happy as any blushing bride with a husband with an elephantine foot has ever been

Until I read Giles Coren’s philistine column in the Times on the supposed lack of Jews at the well-attended Sunday march against antisemitism. Then I read the outburst it provoked from the Jewish community and a further outburst provoked in Jeremy Clarkson leading to him writing about his general rising panic  – and thereafter mine too – over what might fester the kind of hate that prompts a loner with a cross bow to wipe out, let’s say, a celebrity farmer or a dazzling new wife.

It all started with radio programmes like LBC and local radio, where the true definition of democracy took shape. Angry, lonely, or just in need of a chat, listeners suddenly had a platform outside their local paper. Like the original Gogglebox, or Big Brother before celebrities like me took the place of the public, these “ever so real” voices made for rather riveting broadcasts. Television and radio had always been for the proletariat, now the air was bubbling with programmes by the proletariat.

They were far cheaper for production companies. Finuala from Thaxted hardly wanted a crate of Louis Roederer Cristal on ice and a sushi chef in exchange for two minutes on air. The internet took the game up several thousand notches. Now you could go from an inhibited nobody to a disinhibited influencer simply by wearing a taupe beret, dying your pubic hair lime green and making your own harissa.

Same old carousel you may think but you might start feeling aggrieved if you can’t change the world just by ranting, or being drilled poison at university by paid activists, that the world would be butterflies and bonhomie if only certain people were driven from particular rivers to seas, even though you may not be quite sure which sea or even, in which continent, then your brooding might transmogrify into more bullish behaviour. Words have consequences as Mr Coren has now realised and I realise every week.

I suppose as a proud and sometimes prominent British Jew, I just can’t understand why other Jewish people contribute to the mindless sweep of antisemitic diatribe levelled at Jewish people in the diaspora, because of the actions of a country 2300 miles, as the bustard flies, from our mezuzah’d doors. Why not leave it to the rabble, the rabid, the right wing where it touches the left and of course, the militant actors and  pompous pop stars who don’t squeak a word on the subject of Kiev or Myanmar or the starvation in the Sudan? I think that they believe that decrying Israel, as a Jew, somehow raises them intellectually, above the rest of us, the rabble in the lobby of the shul they rarely, if ever, attend. Heigh ho.

I wrote a letter about Giles’s column to the Times and, as usual, they ignored it. So, here it is: “Dear old Giles Coren, as ever, in and out of his Judaism, except when it suits him for folksy or kvetching purposes. Like him, I didn’t attend the march against antisemitism last Sunday. My excuse was that I was getting married, but many of the absent celebrities might have cause not to attend. They might fear being cancelled. It is happening in casting offices and companies. Also, their union, Equity, is famously anti-Zionist and their president and committee is obsessed with Palestine Action. Maybe it hurts and scares them already, that so many Jewish parts are invariably played by non-Jewish actors.

On the other hand, and there always is another hand if you are Jewish, we are often not invited by the organisers to attend rallies, rarely asked to speak or to attend press calls. I am happy  to attend anonymously but then Giles would accuse me of boycotting the event.

Most Jewish people are used to keeping their heads down and assimilating, so demonstrating in a passionate, unified voice may be difficult and even slightly embarrassing. Furthermore, we have all become increasingly aware that the rallies frustratingly, rarely receive any coverage in the mainstream media.”

Phew. That got it off my chest. Back I go to the sofa and like our deep thinking King Charles, I shall spend the evening Deconstructing Harry.