Sometimes you just have to love David Aaronovitch ...

Alright, so he's a classic product of 70s university leftism. He's a hypocrite who sends his child to private school, but opposes choice for parents without his sort of money. But we all have our faults - and I still think of him as basically a decent bloke. He gritted his teeth and supported Blair over Iraq when it would have been easier to join the left consensus and shout 'it's all about oil !'.

He likes to think of himself as a sophisticated, metropolitan sort of chap, easy about prostitution, laughing at suburban bigots, at ease with all sorts and conditions of men.

He's only lived in London for twenty-five years, so when he met his first angry taxi-driver the other day he reacted like a maiden aunt in a teashop when the truck-driver at the next table breaks wind loudly.

Where do these awful people come from ?

" ... the polls were showing heavy Ukip support, and yet no one I knew or met thought that the party of Kilroy, Collins and disgraced former Tory MPs was anything but a vaudeville turn."

'No one I knew or met'. I think that's rather sweet. As sweet as Tracey Emin's hurt-child reaction when people laughed as her artworks burned.

UKIP got 2.5 million votes against Labour's 3.5 million. There's a country that isn't London and isn't Hay-on-Wye at Festival time.

Our citizen of the world seems blissfully ignorant of the lives and opinions of millions of his fellow-countrymen.

He needs to get out more.