THIS morning I am just going to stand by this road with my thumb out.

In the Times today, there is an interview with an Argentinian man described as “one of the world’s most accomplished hitchhikers”.

Juan Villarino earns that title by having thumbed lifts in 90 countries during 100,000 miles of journeys. In his hitching blog, Acrobata Del Camino, he ranks countries by the time it takes him to get a lift.

Britain is kinder than you might imagine to a foreigner and his thumb.

The average wait in Britain was 18 minutes. Iraq served him better with drivers stopping after seven minutes. Tibet was less kind, expecting him to wait for three hours and 16 minutes.

As an Argentinian, Villarino says his “most daunting voyage” in Britain was a lift from a farmer who once coached the Falkland Islands football team.

This story snagged my attention because of the memories it brought back. Beyond that it caught my eye because Villarino seems to be doing something stubbornly individual and interesting.

In my long-ago student hitchhiking days, I’d get a lift to Knutsford service station. Then I’d stand on a slip road with my thumb out, hoping for London. Back then, lifts took a lot longer to arrive than 16 minutes and hitchhikers queued on the hard shoulder.

One summer, I hitched through France and over the border into Spain. Writing those words now seems strange. Little from that trip remains in my mind, although I do recall a prostitute stepping out of her roadside caravan in Paris to expose her breasts.

Do I really remember that? Almost certainly, but much of that trip is misted by time. I certainly camped in Paris and later hitched a lift with a mad French driver who stopped for provisions. I didn’t speak much French and misunderstood that he wanted to eat as we drove along.

The lift did not end well, and we parted with some hostility, but I did keep the bread.

Back home, I travelled in various lorries and cars. Two trips stay in mind. In one another mad driver belted around in his Mini. “I know for sure the engine is shot but it still goes,” he said, or something like that, as we screeched to wherever I was hoping to arrive in one piece.

On a return trip from university, an elderly Scottish woman picked me up in her TR7. As we flew down the third lane of the M1 she asked about my politics. I said I read The Guardian. “Well, that’s a start,” she said. In celebration she got out small plastic cups, spotty cups in memory, and poured each of us a slug of whisky. While powering along the fast lane.

‘I have boarded nearly 1,200 vehicles covering over 100,000 miles and – save your questions – I have never been raped/murdered/assaulted’

But these memories are feeble next to this hitching hero. In his blog, Villarino describes himself thus: “I’m a travel blogger, digital nomad and author of four books.”

He started his travels in 2005, setting off from Belfast, where he’d lived for a couple of years. And he hasn’t stopped hitchhiking since then.

His aim is to “document hospitality and portray everyday life beyond stereotypes. He has spent 13 years, on and off, “vagabonding the back roads of Europe, the Middle East, Asian, Africa and Latin America”. He has also visited Antarctica. All of which seems a lot braver than the M1 and the M6 in the 1970s.

He says he keeps his budget to five to eight dollars a day. Not to punish himself, but to depend on the kindness of strangers and to “spark interaction”.

Villarino says he even hitches in countries where public transport is cheap – just to keep up his crusade. “I have boarded nearly 1,200 vehicles covering over 100,000 miles and – save your questions – I have never been raped/murdered/assaulted”.

I guess we could have worked out the middle one of those, but this is a Spanish blog translated into English with some eccentricities.

I haven’t hitched forever and never will again. Still, there is something uplifting about this roadside vagabond. Have thumb, will travel. Hope those lifts keep giving.

Oh, last year’s model has enjoyed digging this one out again. In my mind this was the soundtrack to the student years.

That proves to be an unreliable memory, in that This Year’s Model came out in 1978, my last year at university. That means the album was only there for that final year. A soundtrack to beer, girls, reading and more beer; a soundtrack to heartache and flings, and more beer; a soundtrack to stumbling out of university into a world that was eager for my arrival (or so I vaguely imagined through the hope haze).

Some albums included so far in this trawl through the old records have stayed with me, such as John Martyn’s Solid Air. This Year’s Model isn’t quite like that: it’s familiar, yes, and yet heard again through the buzz and crackle of a once over-played copy, it sounds urgent, exciting, disorienting – and new all over again.

My Aim Is True had been released the year before: a gentler album, guitar-based and ruminating on love and loss. This Year’s Model comes through the door with a shove, all angular rhythms, thumping paranoia and fantastic songs delivered at such a rush it sounds as if Elvis wants to be out of there before the grim reaper taps him on the shoulder.

The Rolling Stone review at the time gave the album five stars and began with an arresting image… “Listening to Elvis Costello is like walking down a dark, empty street and hearing another set of heels. His music doesn’t make you dance, it makes you jump.”

The album is twitchy, breathless, a finger prodding at your chest. The songs come in a jerky rush: No Action, This Year’s Girl, The Beat, Pump It Up, Little Triggers and You Belong To Me on side one; Hand In Hand, (I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea, Lip Service, Living In Paradise, Lipstick Vogue and Night Rally on side two.

Costello is a reckless angry young man barely in control of this brilliant outing and the tyres only just stay on the road. The backing from The Attractions is rhythmically jagged and tight: Bruce Thomas hammers out bass lines to get the dead dancing, Pete Thomas delivers furious beats and Steve Nieve splashes keyboard notes over everything like a sort of blessing.

It all sounds just as good to this old model as it did to that young man in an upstairs room on the road leading up to Blackheath. Definitely one to dig out again and hear Elvis Costello at his angry best.

THE Pope says hell does not exist – and there was me thinking it was to be found on the front page of the Daily Mail.

That newspaper is an inspiration to me, although perhaps not in the way the editor might hope.

Letting your eyes fall on the Mail’s front page can certainly be a hellish experience – and sometimes hellishly amusing. While Dante’s nine circles of hell ran from treachery to greed, rampant hypocrisy was somehow forgotten. Thankfully, the Mail nails that one for us.

We’ll turn to the Pope in a moment, but let’s enter that tenth circle of hell as marked by the Mail’s tombstone typeface. Today’s typographic gravestones spell out the words: “AN ABUSE OF CAPITALISM” above a story about the hostile £8-billion takeover of engineering firm GKN by Melrose, referred to in the Mail and elsewhere as “asset strippers”.

The Mail stirred a lump or two of nostalgia into this tannic brew the other day when the story of the possible hostile takeover emerged, pointing out that GKN made Spitfires during the war. That doesn’t have much to do with anything, but ‘Spitfire’ is one of those button-pushing words for the Mail.

As it happens, the Mail has a point about this takeover. Or it would do if it wasn’t for the rampant hypocrisy. A newspaper that sings from the capitalist hymn book isn’t best placed to complain about the workings of capitalism.

That’s the thing with the Mail: the paper seems to suffer from convenient amnesia, forgetting its past behaviour to jump on that day’s train and spout indignant steam.

‘Whatever you think of the incoming asset-strippers, that isn’t an abuse of capitalism – it’s just how capitalism works’

It’s fair to argue that an important British engineering firm shouldn’t be subject to such a hostile takeover, especially as the firm makes parts for military aircraft including the Lockheed F-35B fighter jet.

But it’s a bit rich coming from the Mail. That newspaper does like to have its capitalist cake and eat it, then spit out the crumbs while complaining about the bad taste.

Whatever you think of the incoming asset-strippers, that isn’t an abuse of capitalism – it’s just how capitalism works. You can’t be tirelessly in favour of something, then complain when that thing brings about a result you don’t like. Or you can’t unless you are the editor of the Daily Mail.

Anyway, let’s relocate to that other hot-under-the-collar place. According to reports in the Times and elsewhere, the Pope has said that hell does not exist. No red-hot pokers, no fiery flames, no eternal damnation. Francis reportedly told an Italian newspaper columnist that unrepentant sinners were not punished in the afterlife, but simply disappeared.

Pouf! You’re gone.

Is this a better deal for the unrepentant or not? I guess you could argue that eternal damnation is at least a sort of existence, whereas what Francis is now suggesting is an eternity of nothing.

That’s your lot, now you are dust.

If moved to think about such things, as a non-believer I’ve always thought that’s what happened anyway. Heaven and hell are with us, and then we are atoms blown to the four corners of nowhere – or sucked into one of Professor Hawking’s black holes.

Whether you find that to be a comforting thought or not is a down to inclination, I guess. The sort of hell that Pope Francis now hints might not exist was mostly designed to keep people in their place; much as the beautiful cathedrals we see today were put up to remind our forebears of their insignificance.

As for that other hellish place, thanks to the Daily Mail for once again being so inspirational.

ONE year today, 12 months to go – until Britain’s oldest man celebrates his 111^th birthday.

Yorkshireman Bob Weighton was interviewed in the Observer last Sunday in a lovely piece by Harriet Sherwood. He lives in a care complex in Alton, Hampshire and you wouldn’t put it past him making it to that double-B Day: his birthday and Brexit day.

Weighton shares the oldest man title with Alf Smith, from the Carse of Gowrie, in Scotland, but Alf – who lives with his 80-year-old daughter – was only mentioned, not interviewed.

But never mind, because Weighton has plenty to say.

He is “not interested in birthdays anymore” and dismisses the idea that his great age is an achievement – “an achievement is something that wouldn’t happen without effort. And all I’ve got to do is sit in a chair”.

If age grants wisdom, as they say, then Weighton sits on a solid pile; and if age makes you more likely to be a supporter of Brexit, then this 110-year-old should be a dyed-in-the-Union-Flag supporter of getting his country back, and all that nonsense.

Refreshingly, Weighton is not a fan of Brexit. “I have a son who married a Swede, and a daughter who married a German. I flatly refuse to regard my grandchildren as foreigners. I’m an internationalist but I’ve not lost my pride in being a Yorkshireman or British.”

“I have absolutely no idea why I’ve lived so long. I just haven’t died yet, that’s all”

He has never been a member of any political party but remains interested and informed about politics. He is irked that Article 50 was triggered on his 109^th birthday and that Britain will leave the EU when, God willing, he turns 111.

Away from Brexit – and wouldn’t we all love to be away from that – Weighton watches the world with a wary but engaged eye, reading the Economist and listening to BBC Radio 4.

He thinks Putin is a danger to the world – “all the authoritarianism of communism but coming from the right wing”. And he worries about the “recrudescence of tribalism, seen in Brexit, Trump and Putin”.

I hope I can still use words like ‘recrudescence’ when I am 110. To be honest, I wish I could use words like ‘recrudescence’ now without having to look them up. It means “a sudden new appearance and growth, especially of something dangerous and unpleasant”.

What a sobering corker of a word. Thanks, Bob – I do like a new word. And meeting you through the inky sheets of the printed Observer was a treat.

Asked how he has managed to stay alive for so long, Bob Weighton has no secret formula to offer. “I have absolutely no idea why I’ve lived so long,” he says. “I just haven’t died yet, that’s all.”

I’d rather listen to this 110-year-old wise man of Yorkshire than to Theresa May any day. But she is the prime minister and today’s serving of waffle takes the form of a pledge to keep the country “strong and united” after Britain leaves the EU. Hope that works out better than all that “strong and stable” malarkey.

Mrs Maybe promises “a strong and united country that works for everyone, no matter whether you voted Leave or Remain”.

Well, we shall just have to see ten years or so down the line. And by then we probably won’t be able to call on the wisdom of Bob Weighton.

I AM driving to one of my jobs. The winter-bare hedges offer a view of a man standing in an empty field, with only mud for company.

What’s he doing out there, I wonder.

Some Tom Waits lyrics wander into my mind from somewhere. “What’s he building in there? What’s he building in there? We have a right to know…”

The car moves on and the man is still there, blurred by branches. He is engaged in some task or other, something agricultural at an uneducated guess from a passing townie.

What’s he doing standing there? What’s he doing standing there? I have a right to know. Or the relevant degree of cul-de-sac curiosity.

What sort of job requires you to stand alone in an empty field in the flatlands of East Yorkshire. Perhaps he is a human scarecrow employed under a new government scheme to mask rural unemployment.

Maybe his job requires him to fix something in the middle of an empty field. Do empty fields have things that need fixing? The question flummoxes me. I drive on and lose the man in the field.

This image snags in my mind, as these things do. Employment can be mysterious. That farmer stands in mud, busy doing something. The man passing in the dirty car is heading to push other people’s words around for eight hours.

Maybe the man in the field would consider that to be a mysterious living, and perhaps he would be right. He is surrounded by earth, and I am surrounded by words. The words I am driving towards today come from Ireland; sometimes the words come from me.

In my other job, the words come from students learning about journalism and a bit of creative writing. I push and polish, show them a trick or two. Some even take note of the advice from a man who is sometimes made tired by pushing words around.

The next day on the same journey, a tatty SUV pulls out in front. In the back there is a black and white collie. That dog looks at me, turns to face the front, looks out the side window, then looks back at me. The routine carries on, a sort of attention deficit ballet, a hyperactive desire to see everything at once.

That dog continues looking ahead, to the side and then behind, unable to stop the anxious dance. All that nervous energy is exhausting.

Is a collie turning and turning again in the back of a car a metaphor for something, or just a dog doing what a dog does?

Sometimes there are only more questions.

It’s hard not to feel like the dog trapped in its own unending activity. Other days you feel like the man standing alone in the mud.

Life goes on, the dog spins, the man stands.

ECHO chambers and prisms. The first is a social media chamber where people gather to hear their own opinions bounced back. The second is a partial lens showing one view of a situation.

Whether the Labour Party does or doesn’t have a problem with antisemitism seems to be a hall of mirrors moment. Only this time there’s an angry crowd in there shouting and waving placards.

On one level, this is one of those social media tales where someone comments on something they shouldn’t have commented on or shares something better left unshared.

The arc of this story, or one arc of this story, goes like this: in 2012, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn put a comment on a Facebook post from a Los Angeles-based street artist called Mear One. The artist had painted a mural in London featuring anti-Semitic images and this was due to be removed after complaints.

The artist said: “Tomorrow they want to buff my mural Freedom of Expression. London Calling, Public art.”

According to reports, Corbyn replied: “Why? You are in good company. Rockerfella [sic] destroyed Diega Viera’s [sic] mural because in included a picture of Lenin.”

Here we can pause in the hall of mirrors and look at ourselves frowning. A quick Google helps. Turns out Corbyn was referring to a fresco by Diega Rivera in New York City’s Rockefeller Center – painted in 1933 and then disowned by the Rockefeller family, who objected to the inclusion of an image of Lenin.

Here is where those prisms come in. Corbyn seems to have dusted off a very old prism to dredge up this political parallel. And he was so busy peering through that prism that he forgot to look closely at the offensive image he was accidentally defending.

There it might have ended, if not for the persistence of one man, a music publicist called Sam Shemtob.

According to this morning’s Guardian, Mr Shemtob complained on social media and then pursued the Labour Party for an official apology for Corbyn’s apparent defence of the antisemitic street art. He didn’t get one, and that’s how a moment on Facebook has landed Corbyn and Labour with such a suppurating problem.

Only of course it’s more complicated than that, as suggested by yesterday’s rally outside Parliament. Members of London’s Jewish community protested about Labour’s antisemitism problem – alongside rival Jewish groups, some reportedly carrying banners proclaiming: “Jews for Jez.”

As someone who tilts to the left but doesn’t belong to the Labour Party, all of this puzzles me. Does Labour really have this problem, beyond potty old Ken Livingstone ranting about Hitler believing in Zionism?

Well, it has enough of a problem to set up the Chakrabarti report of 2016 into whether it had a problem or not. This report concluded that: “The Labour Party is not overrun by antisemitism”.

A relief – but not enough to stop worries, with further examples having emerged, including Bradford West MP Naz Shah sharing something offensive on Facebook. Corbyn suspended her for that offence.

Is this partly the prism thing? It is common for people on the left to condemn the behaviour of Israel. Does that reflex instinct somehow turn into antisemitism?

I don’t know the answer to that, but you do have to be careful with those prisms. Jeremy Corbyn’s reluctance to join the criticism of Russia over the Wiltshire poisonings seems to be down to an old Soviet-era disinclination to criticise Russia.

Corbyn needs to be wary of smudged old prisms. And he needs to stamp out this antisemitism problem, or the perception of a problem, before the stain spreads.

One thing about taking a wander down the vinyl canyons is that you are reminded how short albums often were.

This Richard and Linda Thompson classic from 1982 has eight tracks and, unlike some CD versions, comes without assorted outtakes and live recordings. In an interview once, Thompson told me that all the bonus tracks added to CDs had been left off originally for a reason: they weren’t good enough.

Shoot Out The Lights is often seen as one of the great break-up albums. This is because it was recorded as the couple were splitting up, although many of the songs had been written a couple of years earlier. What is true, however, is that Richard and Linda were obliged to carry on touring, appearing on stage together each night as their relationship fell apart.

The album is produced by Joe Boyd, but it didn’t start out that way. Gerry Rafferty stepped into help the couple by funding and producing the album, but Richard Thompson wasn’t happy with the results, so the Rafferty-produced version was never released. Instead, folk-rock supremo Boyd took over, giving the album the feel Thompson wanted.

The songs do seem sustained by the tension of a failing relationship, with titles such as Don’t Renege on Our Love, Walking On A Wire, and Did She Jump Or Was She Pushed.

As for the title track, that remains a Thompson classic, and one he plays still today (witness the amazing guitar work-out on Acoustic Classics, 2014). It’s a great song, full of anger and pyrotechnic dazzle. If Richard played better than ever on this album, Linda sang more sweetly than ever, and the combination is affecting, especially given the marital context.

There is folky fun here too on Back Street Slide, and two further classics, both playing to the power of gravity: Walking On A Wire and Wall of Death.

And here’s a nerdy point: the 1982 version on Hannibal Records has a different track listing on the album cover than on the album itself: took me years to work that one out.

According to this morning’s review of the newspapers on the BBC website, “The Daily Mail vents its anger…” Whoa! Doesn’t it always. That newspaper never stops fuming over something or other.

If you look at the back page, there’s a V-shape vent to allow the energy generated by all that anger to escape in a little row of furious exclamation marks. It’s like a perpetual motion machine fuelled by fury.

What’s the cause of today’s fuming?

Oh, that amusing story about the contract for producing the new blue passports going to an overseas firm. Isn’t that all the Brexit bother in a nutshell? A lot of blather and bollocks about symbols rather than substance?

Looks that way to me, although the editor of the Daily Mail begs to differ – loudly, furiously and with an extra scoop of pomp.

The Mail’s front page is a classic, with the usual shouty headline: “STAND UP FOR BRITAIN – FOR ONCE!”

Above that is one of those the-Mail-bellows-from-its-favourite-barstool sub-headings: “Today the Mail has a question for Britain’s ruling class: Why DO you hate our country, its history, culture and the people’s sense of identity?”

Wow! That’s a corker in a long line of tub-thumping twaddle. All that from a cost-saving bureaucratic decision to give the contract to the Franco-Dutch firm Gemalto instead of Britain’s De La Rue.

This is a great symbol for Brexit – for the extravagant pointlessness of the whole exercise.

A symbol nearly as potent as those pictures of Nigel Farage and his double chin throwing dead fish into the River Thames.

But back to the Mail’s venting. Who, you might wonder, are Britain’s ruling class who allegedly hate Britain so much? Well, at a guess – and I am taking a punt here – might it not be the government that the Mail usually supports?

Or the royal family; or the Mail itself? Who knows, but that’s what the world looks like through a spittle-flecked lens.

‘The thing is, Bill, it is symbolically spot on, capturing perfectly the illusory benefits of Brexit, while also hinting at how the brave new world will look in a year’s time’

The Usual Brexit Suspects – and there’s a film you wouldn’t want to see – lined up to fulminate.

Brexit-backing Tory MP Priti Patel called in “a national humiliation”, while grumbly old Bill Cash, chairman of the Commons European scrutiny committee, called its “symbolically completely wrong”.

The thing is, Bill, it is symbolically spot on, capturing perfectly the illusory benefits of Brexit, while also hinting at how the brave new world will look in a year’s time.

Symbol over substance is often the way. As Donald Trump introduces trade tariffs against China, it’s worth remembering all those pictures during the presidential campaign. You know, the ones showing that the Trump tatt, the Make-America-Great-Again baseball caps and so on, were all made in China.

A perfect symbol. As is the fact that imposing new tariffs on China could harm many American firms and introduce a tit-for-tall trade war that could unbalance the world economy.

But back to those passports. My burgundy one runs for another nine years, and I am happy with that. And I bet that when the “people’s sense of identity” blue passports are introduced, they will be underwhelming and a disappointment.

For once I am in harmony with the Sun which says that the £120m saved could be spent on the NHS. Switching to a foreign supplier may be annoying, but “c’est la vie” says the paper, using the sort of foreign expression that would give the editor of the Mail fury-venting indigestion.

THE Facebook row about data sharing reminds us of the old saying that “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”.

This saw is thought to date back to the mid-19^th century in the US when lunch, usually cold, was laid on by bars for anyone who bought a drink. This inducement to buy alcohol was much disliked by the temperance movement.

Pubs in this country sometimes lay out plates of free sandwiches and the likes for drinkers, although you don’t see this often nowadays.

Economists picked up the saying that you don’t get something for nothing. Initially we thought that was the deal with Facebook: all that enjoyable time-wasting for nothing, but the price of entry was hidden.

Users don’t pay in money, but in data they share. Your details, likes and so on are the currency in this strange new world. This information is passed on to advertisers who can then target adverts at you individually.

Then it emerged that a company called Cambridge Analytica was using data and behavioural science to pinpoint American voters in a way that is said to have helped Donald Trump in the presidency.

Some of this data came in early 2014 from 270,000 people doing one of those silly ‘personality tests’ you see on social media. This information was harvested, along with the likes and inclinations etc of third parties (ie Facebook friends). By nasty multiplication, the information of around 50 million Facebook friends is said to have been passed to Cambridge Analytica.

‘This was all dragged kicking and screaming into the daylight by good old-fashion journalism’

A moment ago, the words “it emerged” were used to describe these revelations. But none of this emerged; it was  dragged kicking and screaming into the daylight by good old-fashion journalism.

The Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr has been chasing this story with dogged brilliance for more than a year now, a pursuit which has involved much personal abuse. Carole seems to have started from the best place of all: wondering why something was as it was and asking awkward questions, again and again.

Some of us have been reading her stories with horrified fascination for all that time. This week her story hit the wider world after secret filming by Channel 4 showed executives at Cambridge Analytica telling undercover reporters the tricks of their grubby trade. It is reported that Facebook had $36 billion wiped off its shares on Monday.

That says much about this strange new world, where companies that on the surface don’t do or produce anything end up being worth untold billions in the blink of an over-eager eye.

The chummy disruptors unleashed by the internet change our lives without us realising until it’s already happened.

Many changes are for the good: the usefulness of Google, the time-frittering joy of Facebook, all that friendly connectedness. The internet enriches and disrupts our lives in many ways: devastating high streets, ending centuries of dominance by the printed media, and so on.

Perhaps I am not untypical, in that this new world  worries me; yet I don’t want to go back to the old world, even if it was easier to understand and to know where you were.

When this scandal broke earlier this week, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg stayed ominously quiet. Eventually yesterday he announced – in a Facebook post rather than properly in person – that allowing the misuse of data was “a breach of trust between Facebook and the people who share their data with us and expect us to protect it”.

Well, that’s a start, I suppose.

Earlier the temperance movement was mentioned. A modern echo is what you might call the intemperance movement, unruly mobs stirred up by social media.

Just such a Twitter mob is encouraging us to quit Facebook: is that to swap one mob for another; can we truly divorce ourselves from social media; these and other questions buzz about our heads.

I am not quitting Facebook because I like it too much, even if over-use threatens to addle my brain. It’s an enjoyable and occasionally rewarding way to waste time.

But perhaps it is time for Facebook to be more responsible with us; and for us to be more responsible with Facebook.

Did the BBC plonk a Russian hat on Jeremy Corbyn’s head to make him look like a Russian stooge? That question put a few ripples in the social media pond.

To those who believe that the BBC habitually denigrates the Labour leader, the answer will be ‘yes’. A loud and indignant ‘yes!!!’ propped up by a row of exclamation marks. Anyone less engaged might wish to pause and think.

The BBC denied that the image of Corbyn used in a montage on Newsnight had been Photoshopped or altered. This denial was treated with disdain by the trigger-happy friends of Jeremy, and by a few people who just thought the image tampering was obvious, however much the BBC protested its innocence.

This sort of thing is common in what modern cliché demands we call the social media age. It’s just so easy to take offence nowadays at every twitch or turn in the news agenda. Then fire off an angry post.

What this does is exaggerate the nature of the alleged offence, while ignoring any wider context. It’s fair to say that those who believe the BBC is biased against Corbyn and Labour are unlikely to be convinced by evidence to the contrary. But here are a couple of thoughts anyway.

‘Johnson blustered and blathered, while sliding about like a jelly on a plate, and initially suggested no such match had ever taken place, then admitted that it had’

Shortly after outraged Corbyn supporters were sharing posts about the latest BBC sin against their man, some of the same people started sharing something else from the BBC.

This time it was footage from Andrew Marr’s interview with Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary. Marr was on bullish and forensic form as he tackled Johnson about his party’s links to Russian oligarchs. He persisted in asking about the donations to the Tories from Russian tycoons and brought up a sponsored tennis match with Johnson and David Cameron.

Johnson blustered and blathered, while sliding about like a jelly on a plate, and initially suggested no such match had ever taken place, then admitted that it had.

In this example, the sort of behaviour that usually irks the friends of Jeremy had been turned against Boris Johnson and those who complain about BBC bias against Labour were happy to share links to the interview.

None of this proves anything. For proof you need much more detailed academic studies conducted over a long period. But these two examples do suggest that BBC bias can be in the eye of the beholder.

I don’t know what the easily offended supporters of Jeremy Corbyn made of the interview with their man yesterday on Radio 4’s The World At One, when Martha Kearney tackled Corbyn over his attitude towards Russia. Corbyn spoke calmly and sensibly, with just the tremor of contained anger you sometimes catch in his voice. Or maybe it’s not anger, just the training he’s had in sounding calmly sensible, rather than going off on one.

Again, nothing here proves anything, but if you take the three examples – the Russian hat palaver, Andrew Marr roasting Boris Johnson over an open fire, and a firm but respectful interview on the World at One – you can at least answer the bias question by saying: it depends.

It depends on your point of view to start with; it depends how much you can be bothered to be offended; it depends if you even care a jot; and it depends if you think the BBC tries to be centrist but allows itself to be too influenced by ranting in papers of the right (a workable theory).

For what it’s worth, I think Corbyn’s supporters shouldn’t be so ready to take offence on their man’s behalf. He seems to look after himself just fine.