If we promised to be ever so nice to Muslims and gays and to volunteer for assisted suicide, do you think Radio 4 would stop hectoring us?

So there I was reading a book earlier today with The World At One droning along earnestly in the background on Radio 4. Some guy was talking about the need to counter anti-Muslim prejudice in this country. That was followed by the homosexual former head of BP, John Browne, talking about the difficulties of being a gay businessman. Finally, there was a long interview (probably part of another programme) with some British doctor who is extremely enthusiastic about assisted suicide and plans to travel to Switzerland to be offed when the time comes: although there's nothing much wrong with him, he seemed to be relishing the prospect of no longer existing.

I switched off the radio at that stage, because the prospect of another twelve months of being subjected to the BBC’s bizarrely skewed view of what matters to listeners started me wondering whether I should pop over to Switzerland myself - the doctor did make the traditional final meal sound very enticing. In case the BBC is in any doubt, the vast majority of us couldn’t give a toss about the prejudice supposedly suffered by British Muslims, we’re getting very, very tired of gay sob-stories (in the spirit of Christmas I decided not to write about Saint Alan Turing’s ridiculous pardon last week), and most of us don’t think suicide should be treated as simply another valid lifestyle (or deathstyle) choice.

I might have left the radio on as The Archers was up next and I never pay attention to it. But my wife was complaining the other day that the current social issue the show is using to make us all feel really guilty is homelessness, and I simply couldn’t face yet another bout of left-wing preaching.

Thank God for Radio 4 Extra, where many of the programmes are from an era when we weren’t all expected to spend every waking minute empathising with the left’s seemingly endless collection of mascot victim groups.