BRITAIN enjoyed a few years as a meritocracy during the 1950s and 60s. For that all-too-brief period, this country – for the first time – extended a welcoming hand to all people, regardless of background.

The latest example of how far we have shifted from that ideal must surely be the millionaire comedian Hugh Laurie’s foray into the world of blues and jazz.

It’s not that I necessarily have a problem with a well-heeled white man with a glittering future singing the songs of povertystricken black men with no future whatsoever.

After all, Eric Clapton has been milking the Mississippi dry for decades.

No, the trouble is this – as a player myself, I can detect no merit in this venture at all, even if the authentically dowdy sidesmen and token black woman bring some ersatz credibility to the whole thing.

And judging by the televised evidence, Laurie has minimal skills on the silver strings to boot. He must therefore go down as the wealthiest ‘skiffler’ in the history of popular music, a frets-flogger of little promise and even fewer chords.

ÅWE stayed with some friends in the West Country and the highlight of this delightful interlude was a trip out to the Somerset Levels.

Not far from the battlefield of Sedgemoor, I experienced what England must have been like before the post-war urbanisation of our countryside… not the slightest sound of the internal combustion engine. There was nothing but birdsong. There seemed to be reed buntings and sedge warblers around every clump of reed mace… and the best news of all was when my friend told me that water voles were quite common in this area.

Of course, elsewhere in the country, these delightful creatures have been taken to the verge of extinction thanks to the animal rights terrorists’ release of mink back in the 1990s.

Happily, the effects of these lunatics’ criminal idiocy have not reached these fragile wetlands… yet.