It takes all sorts

Someone's cracking open a bottle of Cava in Peter Hitchens' house this weekend, as the noToryous columnist finally lays claim to having been right all along. Apparently, he's been claiming for 20 years now that the BBC, our venerable public broadcasting institution, leans to the left.

This shouldn't come as a massive surprise to anyone with functioning neurones, but to Hitchens, this is the vindication he's been seeking for the last couple of decades. Dancing to the tune of the world's smallest violin, the horrendous hack claims "I have made this case patiently, with evidence, not crudely. And I have been met with unending scornful denial."

However, Hitchens has finally discovered the 'smoking gun' he's been seeking for so long - Director General Marc Thompson has admitted that when he joined the BBC thirty years ago, he felt that there was a 'massive bias to the Left'. But that's not all, apparently the Corporation has been collaborating with David Cameron, to try and make the Conservative party more palatable to people who wouldn't see a burning cross as the sign that it was a good time to dig out the marshmallows.

As a consequence of these 'under the radar' meetings, the BBC switched its coverage of the Tories from "an unending stream of high-pressure slime to cautious approval, gradually warming into endorsement". Honestly, some people are never happy.

What Hitchens fails to recognise, is that the Tories didn't meet with the BBC in order to gain better coverage. They clearly had a heritage of policies and attitudes that jarred with the British mainstream, and needed to moderate some of their long standing positions in order to court the populace.

The way Hitchens sees it, the BBC "gives or withholds its blessing to the leaders it approves of. Lean to the Left, or face frozen disapproval, consistently unfair coverage, misrepresentation and actual exclusion from the national debate." Those are serious accusations indeed, and paint a worrying picture of modern political discourse. They're also complete horse pizzle.

Hitchens needs to remind himself that, as the national broadcaster, the BBC has a mandate to represent the views, interests and realities of everyone in the UK. And that kind of open-minded inclusivity is precisely the kind of thing that old-school conservatives like him cannot abide. The unfortunate truth is that his world view is increasingly becoming a minority perspective. Still worthy of coverage, but not in any position to dictate to the rest of the country.

Still, we should all be thankful that in these troubled times, where the national consensus is manipulated by a left-leaning conspiracy, that there are still some independent voices in the national press. People who pride themselves on their independence of thought and journalistic responsibility. People like Peter Hitchens in fact, whose next article starts with the lines "What a very odd creature is Anthony Blair. I feel I can justly point this out because Mr Blair has devoted so very much of his gruesomely interesting book to making nasty comments about the weirdness of Gordon Brown."

Ahhh, smell the integrity.

Someone call the Doctor

When it comes to significant cultural landmarks, Sylvester McCoy's tenure as the seventh incarnation of Doctor Who is right up there with Glenn Medeiros and So Haunt Me. And yet, despite the fact that his own family must need flash cards to remind them who he is, he's hitting the headlines today for his legacy as the eponymous Timelord.

It turns out that Sylvester's time in the stripy scarf and blue phone box was laden with powerful political subtext, since it occurred during Margaret Thatcher's reign of terror. According to a revelatory article in today's Mail (only twenty years out-of-date) there was a vast liberal conspiracy within the BBC, that felt it could topple the Iron Lady with a weekly science fiction show that relied upon a special effects cupboard filled with egg-boxes and glitter gel.

Margaret Thatcher made a number of enemies during her 11 years at Number 10, including miners, teachers, nurses, children, gays, the Irish and the whole of Argentina. So it's hardly surprising that the artistic community felt compelled to speak out about her ruthlessness - indeed, she's made appearances in more songs than the lyric "Put your hands up in the air, wave 'em around like you just don't care".

1980s Doctor Who Script Editor Andrew Cartmel remains unapologetic about his contribution to the world of science fiction, telling the Sunday Times that "My exact words were, 'I'd like to overthrow the government'. I was very angry about the social injustice in Britain under Thatcher and I'm delighted that came into the show. Critics, media pundits and politicians didn't pick up on what we were doing. Nobody really noticed or cared."

The thing is, if anyone had noticed the anti-Maggie sentiment running through the show, it's unlikely that they would have been particularly surprised. Science Fiction has always been the ideal platform for exploring political ideologies and social tensions, as Avatar and Caprica are currently demonstrating.

Sylvester McCoy has also weighed in on the subject, saying "Our feeling was that Margaret Thatcher was far more terrifying than any monster the Doctor had encountered. The idea of bringing politics into Doctor Who was deliberate. We were a group of politically motivated people and it seemed the right thing to do."

The Mail, however, disagrees, describing the 'Tardis revolution' as "propaganda to undermine the Tory prime minister". Particularly offensive to their delicate sensibilities was Sheila Hancock's portrayal of Helen A, "a vicious and egotistical alien ruler who banned outward displays of unhappiness among her downtrodden people and used a secret police to oppress dissidents". So nothing like the woman who triggered the poll tax riots, eviscerated the NHS and banned teachers from discussing homosexuality with troubled students.

By the end of the eighties, Doctor Who was scoring the same kind of ratings as an Open University broadcast on conversational Polish, and it was cancelled soon after.

So there's a delicious irony in the fact that now the Doctor is more popular than ever. Especially since the resurgence in his popularity is largely thanks to the work of Russell T Davies, an out gay man who was characterised as a second class citizen by the Tories' ludicrous Clause 28.

If there's one things that sci-fi has taught us, it's that the underdog will always rise up and overthrow the evil Empire.