When was it — 1981, maybe? My manager, the redoubtable Peter Bennett-Jones, was talking to a person organising a concert to ‘Stop Sizewell B’.
This zealot wanted me and my TV partner, Mel ‘Smudger’ Smith, to appear at his event and use our celebrity wattage — our TV sketch show Not The Nine O’Clock News was riding high in the ratings — to whip up opposition to the Suffolk nuclear plant.
‘Now look here,’ Peter began, ‘I’ve had a word with the boys [not that inaccurate in those halcyon days] and, to be honest, I think they’re both rather in favour of nuclear power.’
There was a pause. The eco-warrior was clearly grinding his solar-powered mental gears. Eventually he said: ‘No matter, we are just concerned that everyone should know about it.’
As it happens, we were — to borrow Peter Cook’s memorable riposte to an invitation to have dinner with Prince Andrew and his wife — ‘too busy watching television’ that evening to go, but the incident taught me two valuable lessons.
The first is that ‘celebrities’ will be sought out to back any campaign. And, second, that their main value to any worthy cause is, as the Sizewell activist suggested, to foment debate, rouse demons and get people interested.
But in the 40 years or so since, I have found that the safest place for me to be is sitting firmly on the fence.
For that reason, part of me hesitates to enter the debate over Ed Miliband’s forthright plans to cover the countryside with solar panels, adorn the landscape with electricity pylons and decorate our coastline with windfarms.
One of the first acts of the ‘Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero’ was to overturn the ban on onshore windfarms and, shortly afterwards, he approved the creation of three massive solar farms in the south of England. And, last week, he announced his plan for a body called ‘Great British Energy’ to kickstart expansion of offshore wind that he hopes will provide enough electricity to power 20 million homes by 2030.
These moves bring out the nervous Nimby in me. I still tremble to recall the occasion, 20 years ago, when I wrote to offer my support to a campaign to prevent a beautiful Scottish island I had just visited being smothered in wind turbines.
It was that outspokenness that caused the Guardian to label me a ‘climate change denier’ and, far more hurtfully, an ignorant celebrity, on a par with Noel Edmonds, who had opposed plans for windfarms near his home in Devon.
I was so aggravated that I wrote a letter to the editor of the Left-wing paper pointing out its story’s inaccuracies. But this only led to another punishment beating, as my letter was handed to the ‘eco correspondent’, who used extracts from it to ridicule me. He focused on my misspelling of ‘whirligig’. (I’d written ‘whirlygig’.)
They say never read the comments beneath an online article about you, but I couldn’t resist. One reader accused me of murdering people in Africa.
It was another life lesson. Don’t engage in passion. Do use spellcheck. And only press ‘Send’ after hours of careful consideration.
The truth is that climate change fanatics, like many hysteria-driven, single-issue, agitators, brook no debate. No blow is too low. No manipulation of facts too extreme. No misinterpretation of motives too gross.
A few years after the Guardian incident, I found myself at the centre of a similar spat, this time over a solar farm. It was ‘urgently required’, apparently, smack in the middle of an area of considerable rural beauty in Suffolk.
A productive, top-grade arable field had been chosen. The company involved had noticed that, tucked away off the road nearby, was a substation, making it far easier to connect the solar panels to the grid.
Once the financial goldmine this represented had been identified, all that remained was to make the cash-strapped farmer an offer he couldn’t refuse. I don’t blame him for accepting. Farmers everywhere are desperately scratching a living. But we were ten miles south of Ipswich, a town with a post-industrial demeanour and acres of brownfield land and grey Tarmac fields, too.
A place where sensible, intelligent, less opportunistic planners would site solar panels first. On warehouse roofs. Over carparks. Around the retail areas that have sprawled around the bypass.
Nobody was planning solar farms there. These vast industrial installations appear to be called ‘farms’ for reasons purportedly to do with agricultural proximity or a sub-conscious association with natural growth. But mainly because it costs much more money to get hold of the brown fields than the green ones.
I am the Patron of the Stour And Orwell Society, an organisation dedicated to preserving what is officially designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. We sought to point out that this proposal, worthy as it might be when it came to combatting climate change and preserving the future of the human race, was — in fact — against the law.
There were strict planning guidelines in place and we really had to object to the proposal, because unless somebody objects, these desecrations tend to come to pass unchallenged.
When the preposterously badly sited Suffolk solar farm was proposed, we made our legitimate objections.
Not long after, I went off to act as starter at a 5km fun run around a nearby reservoir. I joined in the sweaty event and, quietly expiring on a grassy bank after my flabby exertions, I found a young man looming over me. He was the son of someone I had once met at a party. He was doing a journalism course. Would I grant him an interview for his project?
Yes, of course, I wheezed. I duly panted my responses to his questions, which were, largely, about my recent campaign to stop this nearby solar farm.
He was a good trainee journalist. He sold a partial version of the interview to — where else? — the Guardian. Oh, it was excited. Once again, here was this ill-informed, second-rate comedian advocating the end of the world.
T he abuse poured in online. I was only concerned about the value of my house. I was intent on the extinction of the human race. I seem to remember that even the local BBC weighed in.
The one that got me was the triumphant comment: ‘He definitely is a Nimby,’ followed by an explanation of my motives.
I admit, I seethed. I wanted to be heard. I wanted to point out the field was miles from my house and that, as Patron of the Stour And Orwell Society, I was duty bound to support its campaign.
Most of all, I wanted to explain that, while I accepted the need for renewable energy, the planning for it had to be coherent.
But then I thought: ‘Er no… I actually am a Nimby, aren’t I? I do care about industrial sprawl.’
In 2014, I helped the campaign to get the extra pylons occasioned by the offshore wind farms in the Wash buried in underground cables to prevent the Dedham Valley, one of the most revered views in Britain — repeatedly painted by Constable — being blighted by unsightly infrastructure.
And even earlier, in the mid-1980s, I lobbied against the erection of a category B floodlit prison on the banks of the Stour valley on ex-MoD land that just happened to be free of planning restrictions.
Both these objections were successful. Because the law protected these areas, the law was applied.
The acronym Nimby — which originated in the U.S. — stands for ‘Not In My Back Yard’. But the places I’ve referred to were not ‘back yards’. They’re called ‘gardens’ in plain English and if you don’t look after your garden, who do you think is going to do it for you?
The council? The Government? The hedge fund manager who has slipped a couple of billion into a ‘green’ industrial process, hired an expensive PR company and over-paid lawyers, and arrives in his expensive suit to complain that we are not heading quickly enough to Net Zero (not because he cares about the planet but because its delaying his payday)?
We desperately need renewable energy but more so we need a coherent energy policy, which probably includes nuclear power.
I f we unleash an ‘emergency’ opportunistic free-for-all without laws, we achieve only chaos and scarring of the countryside. Smothering the UK’s most beautiful areas with industrial plant and the infrastructure to serve it, will not actually save the rest of the planet.
We need an organised planning regime that includes a balanced view of the future. So I wish Ed Miliband well with his proposals and intentions. But let’s, for goodness sake, hope he does it rationally.
Yes, one eye may see climate Armageddon approaching but the other should see a ravaged landscape, a wasteland that no one would want our grandchildren to inherit. We have been in the throes of some kind of public ‘emergency’ in Britain since the 1930s. Depression, war, Cold War, inflation, immigration: big problems need steady minds. Mr Miliband, please don’t sacrifice victory in this struggle with climate change to posturing, heated, ‘emergency’ solutions.