So this week we’ve had the demonstrators who disrupted a Promenade concert and we’ve had Vanessa Redgrave pleading the cause of the Essex travellers. On balance my Tit of the Week award has to go to Vanessa. You must admit, she’s awfully good at it.

I realise that in England nowadays it’s highly advantageous to belong to some kind of minority group. Given the way things are going in the Church of England I’m advising my Anglican friends to hang in there. Another ten years and they too will be able to get away with flouting greenbelt zoning, defying building regs and generally crapping up any neighbourhood they land in. The thing I don’t understand about the Cray’s Hill travellers is why they insist on staying put. Aren’t travellers supposed to travel? The open road, the dusty highway, here today, somewhere else tomorrow!

Anyway we now have some United Nations committee throwing in its twopenn’orth and the Weekend Anarchists are on their way to Essex so maybe Vanessa can spare some time to advise the Palestine Solidarity Campaign on their next protest. They were the people who disrupted this Thursday’s Prom to the point where the BBC pulled the plug. Whether the BBC were right, I’m not sure. The Israeli Philharmonic played gamely on but the demonstrators were certainly ruining the music.

It was such a mean-spirited demonstration. Lots of Israelis oppose their government’s current Palestinian policies, perhaps even some of those who were playing at the Albert Hall. Music is one of those blessings that transcends politics. That’s why Chinese musicians are able to come from their human rights hellhole of a country to perform in the West and why, on Thursday evening, those demonstrators didn’t win a single friend. I’d say the only thing they could have done to make things worse was get Vanessa Redgrave to climb onto the podium and chain herself to Zubin Mehta.  

A narrow escape, Maestro. Thank heavens she was busy with the Wise, Warm and Gentle Ones.