Every Friday I fly out of LBC Towers, head for Charing Cross, grab a baguette, climb aboard the 4.15 to Hastings and head home.
Home is where my heart-hearth-HD-telly-wooden-chopping-trolley-carpeted bathroom-soft furnishings-no- light-and-dead silence is.
Friday spells out the end of a week time for rest and relaxation. Were I true to my culture I should be lighting the Shabbat candles and shouting to my relatives across a table crammed with bread, wine, and comfort food.
I don’t practice the wonderful traditions of my heritage but I do know that, despite a lifetime of denial I am Jewish.
Today, according to new figures attacks on Jewish targets is at a record high. Michael Gove said ‘British Jewish citizens face a real and growing danger. History tells us when Jewish people feel less safe, society as a whole is becoming less free.’
You can imagine the debate that followed after I posed the question ‘Do you hate Jews because they are Jews or because they are responsible for the war in the Middle East?’
The notion that I am responsible for my people’s misdemeanours leads me to ask whether you feel tainted by the association that people have with your religion and culture.
Just how stressful is your working environment. Just how stressful is your home-working environment? We bankrupted ourselves so we could put a studio at the end of our garden that was beautiful enough to create in. Turner sat looking at The Thames from a Church in Battersea. I look at Jo Newsholme, a very talented, pretty, senior producer which is small compensation for the brick wall behind her, here at LBC. In France 34 employees of France Telecom committed suicide because of their working environment.
Roald Dahl closed the curtains in his studio and just looked for the pictures in his head – where do you get succour from in your workplace?
Emma Watson is worth £30 million for playing ‘Hermione’ in ‘Harry Potter’, millions of our youngsters are paid nothing for caring for their relatives.
‘The Half-Blood Prince’ versus your mum - I rest my case.
I’m off now to catch that train grab that baguette and breathe in the cool, clean air of East Sussex, oh and hoover the downstairs…...
You have a lovely week-end too.
cu nxt wk.