Peter Rhodes on compulsive viewing and chasing the sins of the fathers for all eternity

I regret to report that my New Year’s Resolution, to watch less telly, did not survive New Year’s Day when a friend introduced us to catch-up viewing of The Traitors (BBC iPlayer).

As a rule I avoid so-called reality shows but this bitter little exercise in total strangers making and breaking friendships, cheating on new pals, bullying underdogs and killing off anyone they regard as a threat is a compulsive peek at the nastier side of human nature. You get the feeling that if these “murders” were real, some folk would eagerly pull the trigger.

Incidentally, The Traitors includes one of the great whopper-phrases of our time, when it offers a prize for the winners of “up to” £120,000. Never forget that, whether in reality TV or adverts, “up to” actually means “less than.”

A reader harangues me for defending Jeremy Clarkson over his vitriolic attack on the Duchess of Sussex. You miss the point, sir. It’s not about defending Clarkson, a Marmitish person who happens to be a popular writer. It is about defending the right of Clarkson, or anyone else, to express an opinion within the limits of the law, even if it’s offensive. Freedom of expression only for nice, kind opinions is no freedom at all.

Benedict Cumberbatch’s seven-times great grandfather bought a slave plantation in Barbados in 1728. So they’re not exactly close relatives and it all happened a very long time ago. Yet the connection is enough for the Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration to be demanding compensation from the actor and “any descendants of white plantation owners who have benefited from the slave trade.”

A bit steep, isn’t it? According to the Old Testament at its sternest, “The Lord... visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” The Almighty does not pursue divine justice through all the generations and for all eternity, as the Cumberbatch family seems to be facing.

The stated aim of such campaigns and the endless re-examining of the slave trade, may be about truth, peace and integration but a worrying side-effect is that they may also encourage black people to hate white people. And that really is a sin.