After a long day reading about the battles of Cassino I eventually relented and watched a semi-final episode of Britain's Got Talent. My God. It was a real blub fest. Not me, but the contestants. A tubby Greek man in a skirt kept kissing his tubby little son. A group of Scouse girl dancers cried so much they left makeup on the faces of everyone they hugged: 'Weel be eble to go home to the Pool with owr hids hild high' was priceless after they lost. A tubby florist belted out Rule Britannia while her husband put together a bouquet supposed to resemble a shield. Maybe I'm hard-hearted? I hope not. This is like a freak show.

Later I caught Martin Amis on Newsnight talking about the Stasi tactics employed by the former Oxford Professor of Poetry. I'd better be careful here since one of his lads is administering this site. Amis senior was dignified and thoughtful, actually pausing to think before he spoke. However he kept being interrupted by some ghastly English academic who constantly waved her hands around in inverse proportion to anything meaningful she had to say. I've seen this human windmill before on Late Review where she also doesn't listen to anything anyone else says. There was an amusing moment when she misinterpreted Paxman's question, about whether (she) had (been) harrassed (by) anyone.

Couldn't escape poets yesterday. The morning started listening to two women professors chatting on R4 about the Padel affair. For the first time in my life I found myself agreeing with Lisa Jardine who said that any academic appointments would not survive five minutes serious scrutiny. References are taken up in advance, and malign emails and phone calls usually queer someone's pitch before they've even got on the train for the interview. I've seen this in operation in the case of other people. Some hack talking head from Cambridge unconvincingly claimed that all her colleagues were nice cuddly eccentrics. Really?

Last year we had dinner with a friend who invited the ex-Poetry prof. It wasn't a fun evening. Another one who mistakes being hyper for being creative or intelligent.