»  Radio Derb — Transcript

        Saturday, January 31st, 2015

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[Music clip: From Haydn's Derbyshire March No. 2, organ version]

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! Yes, listeners, this is your postally genial host John Derbyshire, podcasting to you from Taki's private island here in the sun-kissed Aegean.

We had an election here in Greece last week and the winner was a Marxist, Alexis Tsipras. I can't say I've noticed much change here on the island, but things take a while to float across the wine-dark sea. I did see that Nikki's fast-food joint has been relabeling its products. If I got the translations right, the goatburger is now the "peopleburger" and the french fries are "dictatorship of the proletariat fries," but that's about it. Did you see any other changes down in the village, Candy? [Candy:  "Whatever."] Right.

I asked one of the local staff here to explain the crisis to me, and all the bad feeling over Germany. Here's what he said:

An old donkey was watching a racehorse galloping to and fro. He said to the racehorse: "I wish I were as sleek and strong as you. I wish I could run as fast as you." The racehorse replied: "No problem. Here, tie one end of this rope to my saddle and the other to your collar. Then when I gallop off you'll move just as fast as me!" This was done, and the racehorse galloped off.

A little fable there from the people who brought you Aesop. I'll leave you to mull over it while I cover the rest of the news.

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02 — The Mulatto Mafia.     After Eric Holder announced last fall that he'd be stepping down from the post of U.S. Attorney General to rejoin His People, the President put forward the name of Loretta Lynch as a replacement. This week Ms Lynch has been up before the Senate Judiciary Committee for confirmation hearings.

Ms Lynch, currently U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn, is a sort of twofer version of Eric Holder: the same color as Holder but female. Her opinions on matters of federal law enforcement are of course identical to Holder's. Who but a person filled with hate would have any different opinions?

So, another Social Justice Warrior from the Ivy League affirmative action program.

The connection with Holder is in fact more than merely dermatological and spiritual: In 1980 at Harvard, Ms Lynch co-founded the Xi Tau Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority with ten other Harvard women. The names of all eleven founders are listed on the Xi Tau website; among them is Sharon Denise Malone. Who she? Well, back then she was a classmate of Ms Lynch. Nowadays she's the wife of … Eric Holder.

What is the nature of this Xi Tau Chapter that Ms Lynch and the future Mrs Holder founded? Judging from the photo gallery on the chapter's website, it's black women only.

Personally I'm fine with that. I'm a freedom of association absolutist. If this sorority chapter Ms Lynch co-founded wants to exclude nonblacks, good luck to them. Of course I also want non-black sororities and fraternities to be able to exclude blacks. I'm guessing that's not Ms Lynch's position. Perhaps the Senate committee could ask her.

In fact, looking at that sorority photo gallery again, Xi Tau may be for mulatto females only. It may be they have one of those brown paper bag tests for admission. You know: If you're darker than a standard brown paper bag, then — sorry, sister.

That might go some way to explaining why these elite blacks are all so light-skinned. Barack Obama, Eric Holder — and Mrs Holder, too — Susan Rice, Loretta Lynch … it's like a Mulatto Mafia. Can't we get a few full-blood blacks in there to darken things up a bit? People like Tom Sowell or Clarence Thomas? or Carol Swain? Eh, never mind.

So yes, Ms Lynch is the whole Social Justice package. Here she was early last year at an event in Long Beach, New York, arguing that it is racist to ask voters to identify themselves at polling stations.

[Clip:  "I'm proud to tell you that the Department of Justice has looked at these laws and looked at what's happening in the Deep South, and in my home state of North Carolina has brought lawsuits against those voting rights changes that seek to limit our ability to stand up and exercise our rights as citizens. And those lawsuits will continue."]

I really can't understand how the anti-white crowd get away with this one. What's voter ID got to do with voting rights? Why doesn't the whole country just burst out laughing every time they try this stunt? I have to show ID at the pharmacist when I buy cold medication, but being asked to show it at a polling station is racist? And this is a person being considered for the highest legal executive office in the land? [Laughter.]

In front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday this week, Ms Lynch, in an exchange with the magnificent and patriotic Senator Jeff Sessions — whom God preserve! — asserted that illegal aliens have the right to work. Here's the exchange:

[ClipSessions — "Let me ask you this: In the workplace of America today, when we have a high number of unemployed, we've had declining wages for many years, we have the lowest percentage of Americans working, who has more right to a job in this country: a lawful immigrant who's here — a green card holder — or a citizen, or a person who entered the country unlawfully?"

Lynch — "Well, Senator, I believe that, um, the right and the obligation to work is one that is shared by everyone in this country, regardless of how they came here. And certainly if someone is here, regardless of status, I would prefer that they be participating in the workplace than not participating in the workplace."]

So: another nation-wrecker from the Mulatto Mafia up for Attorney General.

As if that wasn't bad enough in itself, it looks as though the Reverend Al Sharpton had a hand in picking her. This is from the Daily Caller last November 7th, right after the midterm elections and just before Obama announced his choice. Quote:

President Obama is expected to nominate Loretta Lynch to replace Eric Holder as Attorney General of the United States, just two days after Obama's post-election meeting with Al Sharpton and weeks after Lynch's own meeting with Sharpton.

End quote.

Lynch herself met with Rev'm Al in August, the reporter tells us.

Remember the bad old days when nominees for the highest offices in the land were put forward by dull, dutiful, blinkered, WASP-type men in gray suits — people like George C. Marshall, Averell Harriman, and James Baker? Well, no more of that cisgendered racist straight male patriarchy! Nowadays these key decisions are made by persons of true largeness of mind and breadth of understanding, wise with learning and incorruptible in demeanor: people like Al Sharpton.

Weep, citizens, weep for your country.

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03 — May he poop on my knee?     Meanwhile, as lesser members of the Mulatto Mafia jostle for position in Washington, the Godfather and his lady have been globetrotting.

The President and First Lady were invited to attend India's Republic Day parade on Monday the 26th, and were then scheduled to do some sightseeing elsewhere in India. I think that further excursion was supposed to be to the Taj Mahal, but at any rate it was definitely not to the Khajuraho temples 200 miles further south, which have some really interesting carvings.

In the event the Obamas had to scrub the Taj Mahal jaunt. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia died on Friday, so the royal couple cut short their India visit to pay a courtesy call on the Saudis. I'll cover that in the next segment. This one's about India.

I feel a tiny twinge of guilt when India comes up in the news. Radio Derb-wise, India's kind of a non-place. The last time I said anything much about India was a year and a half ago, September 2013; and even that segment was mainly about a lady of Indian ancestry being crowned Miss America.

Yet India's big enough to be really important. It's certainly populous enough. India's population is currently 91 percent the size of China's, and the U.N. says India will actually overtake China to become the world's most populous nation in 2028, thirteen years from now.

India has nuclear weapons, a space program, drones, all the good stuff. They even have two aircraft carriers. All right, that's the same number as Italy, but it's one more than China.

India has a lot of Muslims, too. A lot: over 160 million — more than any other country except Indonesia and Pakistan. Worldwide, about one Muslim in ten lives in India.

In view of the trouble Muslims are giving the world recently, you'd expect more of it to be happening in India. The fact that this is not the case may possibly be something to do with the fact that when India's Muslim minority makes trouble the non-Muslim majority do not drop to their knees, rend their garments, flagellate themselves, beg forgiveness for their racism, and write the trouble off as "workplace violence": instead they raise a mob and trash a mosque or two.

So I don't really have an excuse for ignoring India, and I apologize to Indian listeners for doing so.

I should say that I have paid some attention to India, just not on Radio Derb. I did publish a 3,000-word review of Paul Scott's Raj Quartet, and a lot of stuff about Kipling. I have also written about India's very imaginative pop music, which features titles like "May He Poop on My Knee?" [Clip.] I just don't find India very newsy.

In a feeble attempt to make up for all that neglect, I urge Radio Derb listeners to go to YouTube and search for "Republic Day Parade." The Indians, I must say, do a great parade. In the event I qualify for a state funeral at last, I have told my executors to hire an Indian contractor.

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04 — First Lady of rudeness.     Well, as I said, the Obamas cut short the India trip to go and pay respects to the late Saudi monarch and his successor, King Salman.

First just a little digression here on succession in the House of Saud. The modern nation of Saudi Arabia was established in the 1930s by a very energetic alpha male named Ibn Saud. Ibn Saud died in 1953, since when there have been six kings ruling the country, counting this new guy, Salman, as the sixth. Every one of them was a son of Ibn Saud. Put it another way, they are all brothers — strictly speaking, half-brothers in all but two cases, having different mothers.

What's more, since the new King will turn 80 this year and by all accounts is, mental-agility-wise, a couple of sheep's eyeballs short of a banquet, the Saudis have appointed a Crown Prince, name of Muqrin, and he's, yes, another son of Ibn Saud, another half-brother.

So just contemplate this ruling family in wonder for a moment. The first generation, in the person of Ibn Saud, was born in 1876, when Ulysses S. Grant was President; and we're still working our way through the second generation!

Well, as I said, the Obamas went to pay their respects to the new king. That doesn't sound quite right, though. Far from paying her respects, Michelle Obama was downright rude. She didn't wear a headscarf, as Saudi custom requires, and stood there scowling and pouting as her husband greeted the king.

Sorry, but that's just rude. Saudi customs may seem peculiar to us, but they're not our business. Radio Derb is a nationalist podcast, not a globalist one. Nations are entitled to their own customs and traditions. You could call it … let's see, what's the right word here? … yes! — diversity.

Radio Derb strongly favors diversity on a worldwide scale. The ideal is, if a few million people want to live a certain way, let them have a nation of their own, and let them live that way in it. Diversity! I strongly favor it.

If Koreans want to eat dogs, and people in Tanzania want to eat each other, and Hindu widows want to leap onto their husband's funeral pyres, and Finns want to run out naked into the snow and beat each other with birch twigs, and Tibetans want to make hundred-mile pilgrimages on their hands and knees, and Burmese hill people want to stretch their necks with brass rings, and sheep farmers in New Zealand … well, never mind about them.

Whatever: It's their business. If you don't like it, stay out of the place. If we in our nation collectively decide we don't like it, let's keep them and their customs out of our country, happily corraled in theirs. Seems to me that's the entire point of nations.

Culture is a strange and to some degree arbitrary thing. The present culture of the U.S.A. requires that women don't go out in public bare-breasted. That hasn't always been the rule, even among civilized peoples. The Minoan women of ancient Crete went around bare-breasted.

If some other nation is fine with bare breasts, and their President visits our President, and the President's wife — theirs, not ours — is showing her titties, that would be disrespectful to us.

And yes, I know, Condoleezza Rice didn't wear a headscarf in Saudi Arabia either. She was disrespectful too. What's the matter with American blacks? Are they so full of themselves and their own wonderful blackness they can't make some harmless gesture of respect for another nation's culture?

Condoleezza Rice at least could say she was in the Kingdom on business, as Secretary of State. What exactly was Mrs Obama doing there? If she dislikes Saudi Arabia so much, why didn't she fly home from India? What, come to think of it, was she doing on the India trip? She has no constitutional position; and judging from her haughty and disrespectful behavior in Saudi Arabia, she's hardly a diplomatic asset. Did she pay her own fare? Including security coverage?

I used to have a job that involved me flying over from New York to London two or three times a year. The firm never offered to fly Mrs Derbyshire along with me.

You may say that Saudi customs are horrid and immoral, and they need to be scolded about them.

OK, one: Do you have any idea how arrogantly insulting that looks from their side? Does the U.S.A. have too few enemies in the world and need to acquire more?

And, two: The record of our government intervening in that part of the world isn't exactly stellar. Forty years ago right-thinking Americans all thought the Shah's Iran was a dreadful place, a gross violator of human rights. The Carter administration pressed the Shah for reform, and we got the Ayatollah Khomeini, an embassy siege, and mobs shouting "Death to America!"

More recently there was the Arab Spring, street mobs egged on by us sweeping away — or trying to — horrid oppressors like Gaddafy in Libya, Mubarak in Egypt, Assad in Syria, and Saleh in Yemen. How's that working out?

It's true the Saudis make a certain amount of trouble, propagating their brand of Islam in Western countries; but that's the Western countries' own stupid fault for permitting mass settlement of Muslims. There was never any sane rationale for that, other than a sick kind of post-Christian sentimentality and post-colonial noblesse oblige. We were fools, and we're paying the price of our folly.

What else you got? Those fierce Islamic punishments? As opposed to our way of dealing with criminals: Lock 'em up for a few years with three hots and a cot, cable TV and a weight room?

Sorry, can't work up any negativity towards the Saudis. They have a reactionary attachment to their own traditions and customs? Speaking as a reactionary myself, I wish we had more of that attitude. They finance trouble-making mosques in our cities? Let's shut down the mosques and deport the preachers. If they're citizens, strip them of their citizenship before deporting them to the Muslim country of their choice. This is our country; we don't have to put up with trouble-makers promoting foreign creeds.

The Saudis are beastly to criminals? We're too damn nice to criminals. They don't let women drive? I'll allow that's eccentric; but I don't see the harm, and it's not our business.

So, bottom line here, I can't stir myself to mind the Saudis. I wouldn't want to live in their country, but nobody's asking me to.

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05 — The law's delay.     You don't like the way the Saudis deal with criminals? Let's take a close-up look at the way we do things in the U.S.A.

The name Aurora, Colorado mean anything? Mmm, a foggy distant memory, right? Some kind of atrocity — a school shooting, or a mall, something like that?

Allow me to refresh your memory. It was July 20th, 2012 at the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora. There was a midnight showing of the new Batman movie. A lone gunman started shooting at the movie audience. When he was through, 12 people were dead and 58 wounded.

The gunman gave himself up to police at the scene after his gun jammed. He was 24-year-old James Holmes. When police went to his apartment, they found it booby-trapped with explosives and stocked up with dangerous chemicals.

That was two and a half years ago. I'll say it again: That was two and a half years ago. Holmes was arrested on the spot with his gun in his hands. There is not a shadow of doubt that he did the deed. Holmes has not yet been brought to trial.

I'll say that again: Holmes has not yet been brought to trial, after two and a half years.

So where is the case, exactly? Well, January 20th this year, that's the week before last, jury selection began. It's expected to continue until May or June. Then the trial itself will begin; it's expected to last four months or so. So if nothing goes wrong, we'll get a verdict by year end. That'll be coming up to three and a half years since the crime.

In their determination to get a fair jury, Arapahoe County prosecutors have sent out summonses to nine thousand potential jurors. The entire population of the county is only 572,000, including minors and convicted felons, so a free adult resident of the county has about a one in fifty chance of being summoned. So many summonses have been sent out that twelve potential witnesses got them, as did two husbands, a father, an uncle, and a best friend of prosecution staff members.

Just to drive the main point home again: There is no doubt Holmes did the killing. Holmes has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and there is fair doubt about whether he is insane or not according to standard court rules; but it's hard to believe it needs three years to determine that.

Colorado does have the death penalty, although they use the cowardly and un-republican method of lethal injection. If Holmes' insanity defense fails, he'll be up for the gurney and the needle, although not of course until twelve or fifteen years have been consumed by appeals.

So there's how we order things in the U.S.A. You massacre a dozen harmless people out watching a movie and cripple a couple of dozen more. Your gun jams and you surrender to police, gun in hand. Twenty years and untold millions of public dollars later you get your just punishment, provided some prosecutor's clerk didn't fail to cross some "t" or dot some "i."

I dunno about you, listener, but Saudi justice looks pretty good to me right now.

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06 — The GOP's B-list meets.     Last weekend saw the Iowa Freedom Summit in Des Moines, billed as an effort to, I'll quote from their website, quote: "bring grassroots activists from across Iowa to hear directly from conservative leaders on how we can get America back on track by focusing on our core principles of pro-growth economics, social conservatism, and a strong national defense."

The summit was organized by Citizens United, a conservative group famous for a court victory on campaign financing, and Iowa Representative Steve King, a stalwart conservative and immigration patriot.

The media lefties had a lot of fun mocking the summit as a "cattle call," but it seemed to me a useful and public-spirited thing to do — get possible GOP Presidential candidates out there and give us a good look at them.

Unfortunately the event wasn't quite as much a showcase as one might have hoped. The speakers were in fact mostly the B-list of GOP hopefuls. Jeb Bush didn't show up; neither did Marco Rubio; neither did Mitt Romney; and neither did Rand Paul.

Just contemplate that list of no-show names for a moment. What do they all have in common? I'll give you five seconds. [Metronome ticks.] Did you get it? Right: They are all fully signed on to the notion that the key to a GOP victory is being nice to Hispanics, and that the key to that is amnesty for illegal aliens.

Yes, yes, I know, and Radio Derb listeners surely know, this is a terminally dumb idea, contradicted by a heap of evidence. Example: Ronald Reagan got 37 percent of the Hispanic vote in 1984. Two years later he signed IRCA, the 1986 amnesty bill. Two years after that Reagan's Vice President, Poppy Bush got 30 percent of the Hispanic vote. There's gratitude for you.

If you want more explanation of why GOP hopes for the Hispanic vote are a mirage, I'll leave you to read the piece Heather Mac Donald wrote on this topic following the Romney debacle in 2012. Executive summary: Hispanics don't vote Democrat because Republicans want to enforce immigration laws; they vote Democrat because they're Democrats, fond of big government funded by high taxation.

It is, however, an article of faith with Bush, Rubio, and Paul that kissing up to Hispanics with amnesty is the key to election victory; and this is also the lesson the GOP's dim-bulb 2012 candidate took from his defeat.

That's why they stayed away from the Iowa bash. Representative Steve King is, you see, an immigration patriot. He wants the people's laws enforced, the Border Patrol supported, compulsory E-Verify, big fines on law-breaking employers — everything that you want if you believe that the U.S. government and legislature exist to serve Americans, however much that may inconvenience foreigners. To Hispanderers like Bush, Rubio, and Paul, Steve King is radioactive.

So we got the B-list: Ted Cruz, Scott Walker, Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin. They're worthy enough people, each in his own way, but they're all long shots for the nomination, and none of them really belongs with Steve King on the National Question. So far as I can tell, in fact, every one of them but Ted Cruz favors amnesty.

I hate to be down on fellow conservatives when they're trying hard, but for immigration patriots, the Iowa show was a bit of a dud.

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07 — The National Association for the Advancement of Billionaire People.     Another event took place last weekend in the California desert fourteen hundred miles southwest of Des Moines: an event that will likely have more bearing on the selection of a Republican Party presidential candidate than the Iowa Freedom Summit. This was the American Recovery Policy Forum, organized by Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce.

Who are they when they're at home? They are a network of Republican mega-donors headed up by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, Charles and David.

The American Recovery Policy Forum was held Saturday through Monday at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Rancho Mirage, a watering-hole for showbiz celebrities and the super-rich conveniently close to the Mexican border, just in case one day the peasants rise up with pitchforks.

The Koch brothers have big plans for this donor network, this Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce. They aim to spend $889 million in the run-up to the 2016 Presidential election. To give you a sense of scale here, that's twice as much as the Romney campaign spent in 2012.

Well, great, if they can help us get rid of the undergraduate Trotskyists currently running the federal government. Right?

Not so fast. If you are a patriotic American who wants to preserve this country and its Constitution, and you want your grandchildren to grow up in a successful and reasonably harmonious nation with freedom and justice for all under historic American norms, the Koch brothers are not your friends.

If, on the other hand, you want your grandkids to grow up in Brazil, you should have been at the Rancho Mirage Ritz Carlton last weekend cheering on the Koch brothers and their pals. Alternatively, you could just move to Brazil.

The Koch brothers are open-borders fanatics, whose principal aim is to hold down the wages of Americans by importing great masses of foreign labor. Whether the same thing applies to the other megadonors represented at Rancho Mirage, I don't know; but reading down a partial list of the donors who've identified themselves, it's not an unreasonable assumption. Here's the partial list:

  • New York hedge fund billionaire Bob Mercer;

  • Arkansas poultry producer Ronnie Cameron;

  • Wisconsin roofing billionaire Diane Hendricks;

  • Nebraska trucking magnate Clarence Werner.

What we had there at the Ritz was, in short, what Steve Sailer calls the NAABP: the National Association for the Advancement of Billionaire People.

Now look: Radio Derb is a conservative podcast. We're fine with capitalism. Nobody here wants to eat the rich. Make as much money as you like, and good luck to you. However, when the rich want to use their wealth to erase national sovereignty, to depress the wages and living standards of their fellow citizens, to fill up quiet, busy, orderly towns and cities with hordes of illiterate Third Worlders clamoring for welfare and race preferences, then we'll call them on it.

Oh, and a couple from the Donorist Party A-list did show up to this one: Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, along with Ted Cruz. When Frank Luntz polled the delegates he found that Marco Rubio was their favorite. What. A. Surprise.

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08 — Miscellany.     And now, our closing miscellany of brief items.

Imprimis:  Microaggression of the week: Movie actor Benedict Cumberbatch caused a tremendous storm on social media by referring to black people as "colored" when being interviewed on TV by black guy Tavis Smiley. I deduce from this that large numbers of drooling morons use social media.

Cumberbatch did a full grovel for his microaggression, saying, or rather whimpering, quote:

I'm devastated to have caused offense by using this outmoded terminology. I offer my sincere apologies. I make no excuse for my being an idiot and know the damage is done.

End quote.

I deduce from that that Mr Cumberbatch really really wants to get an Oscar in the upcoming Academy Awards.

Incidentally, on the name Cumberbatch, I was talking with an American lady friend who is exceptionally well-read. She's read third-rank Victorian novelists like Meredith whom even I haven't read. She remarked: "Cumberbatch? Sounds like a name out of Dickens."

To which I said: "I was thinking more of Mervyn Peake."

To which she said: "Mervyn Who?

Two nations divided by a common literature.

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Item:  Sometimes it's the little items that stir the blood to anger. Here's a very little item.

There is a trial going on in Nashville, Tennessee of four students, college football players, charged with raping a female student who was unconscious from drink. One of the accused is white, the other three are black. Tuesday this week we got verdicts on two of the accused, the white guy and one of the blacks.

The New York Times ran a story on this. They illustrated the story with a picture of the college and, twenty percent of the way down the column, a picture of one of the convicted students — the white one. The same picture of the white guy was used as a tag to the story in summary pages.

They must have got some pushback from that: Hours later the newspaper's website added, lower down the story — sixty percent down — a picture of the second guy convicted, a black. The tag picture was still the white guy, though.

There's a clear case of Narrative Clash there. On the Narrative, women are helpless underdogs preyed on by feral men. Also on the Narrative, however, blacks — including black men — are helpless underdogs preyed on by feral whites. So when black men rape a woman you have [Cymbals] Narrative Clash.

Still this seems to me very shocking. I understand of course that in Jim Snow America the media show favoritism to blacks; but it seems to me this tips over from reflexively pro-black to offensively anti-white.

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Item:  There has been a wave of pub closings in England because white working-class areas have been taken over by Muslims who don't drink.

That's kind of sad; but it's the Brits' own stupid fault for permitting mass settlement by Muslims.

When I was working as a bartender in pubs over there in the 1960s, we notified the customers of closing time by calling out: "Bottoms up! Empty your glasses please, ladies and gentlemen." Nowadays if you hear the call "Bottoms up!" in a working-class area of England, it's the call to Friday prayers at the mosque.

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Item:  Er, that's all I've got, ladies and gents … No, wait, just one more from across the pond.

A chap in Wigan — which, by the way, is the ancestral home town of the Derbyshire clan — a chap in Wigan was arrested for attempting to have sexual intercourse with a public mailbox, one of those red cylindrical ones.

Forty-five-year-old Paul Bennett was fined $400 and registered as a sex offender, I suppose for the protection of other mailboxes he might take a fancy to.

American college authorities might want to bear his offense in mind when drawing up those elaborate sexual-assault protocols they're now all so busy with.

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09 — Signoff.     That's it, listeners … Except for one thing: I've had emails asking me why I have passed no comment on Prince Andrew's adventure with a 17-year-old girl.

All right, that deserves an answer. Part one: I like Prince Andrew. He served his country bravely as a helicopter pilot in the Falklands War, which makes him a better man than most of our Western elites as they scurry from Ivy League universities to jobs in finance, law, and government.

Part two: The lady was seventeen, for crying out loud. This wasn't exactly, nor even approximately, pedophilia. Step a couple of cultures away, people would be really baffled by this fuss. Did I mention Ibn Saud back there? His favorite wife was thirteen when he married her.

Here's a game I've heard about. You might want to try it.

You can only play the game with a small group of single men. They can be any ages, but they need to be single. We married guys tend to be too well-bonded with our wives. So get your group together and put this question to them.

Imagine an angel appears to you and says: "I'm afraid you're going to die tomorrow. It'll be instantaneous and painless, so don't fret; but this will be your last night on earth. I'm an angel and I feel kind of sorry for you, so I'll provide you with a female companion for this, your last night on earth. Unfortunately I'm only a low-rank angel, so I can't give you much choice of companion. She may be tall or short, fat or thin, black or white, happy or sad, smart or dumb, I have no control over those. You can, however, choose the lady's age. What age companion would you like?"

That's the game. You go round the group of guys and get their answers. I'm reliably informed that the modal answer, the one most often given, is seventeen.

You're welcome to try this for yourselves. I confess I haven't; I don't know enough single guys. It does, though, give me a nice segue to my exit music, which of course is dedicated to HRH Prince Andrew.

More from Radio Derb next week!

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[Music clip: The Beatles, "I Saw Her Standing There."]