It's tradition, Jimmy..

When I was a newish member of my London Club I was having a drink with the Oldest Member who complained, quietly and sadly, about a move by some other youngsters to extend the club’s membership to include women.

He forecast, rightly as it happened, that the change wouldn’t be effected in his lifetime, but he asked my views.

Fairly diplomatically, I thought, I said that I could not, for the life of me, imagine why any women would want to join it, and – adapting the Groucho Marks theory on clubs – that I didn’t think we would want to elect any women who would look at us and decide we were the sort of club they wanted to join.

‘What we should ask all candidates when they are put up for membership,’ he said, ‘is whether this is the club they want to join – or whether they wish to join it with the intention of changing its rules.’

Can’t say fairer than that, I think.

Peter Ustinov told me once that the US immigration form included a question: ‘Is the intention of your visit to overthrow the democratically elected government of the United States of America?’ – And that he had written beside it: ‘Sole purpose of visit.’

But now, as Ben Elton might have said, let’s get political. Ooh, er, missus..

When refugees seek asylum and choose the United Kingdom, do they come because of its remarkable history of freedom of speech, expression, worship and lawful assembly?

Or do they come because they have looked around and found the one nation that they can adapt to be more like the place from which they have recently fled in terror?

Do they wish to integrate with their British hosts? Or to live peacefully in parallel lives with them? Or to make the Brits change to suit their own traditions?

Actually, what they want is fairly academic, because whether they want it or not the country is being adapted for them.

The Daily Express had a story from Scotland this week that you might have missed: Doctors and health workers have been banned from eating lunch at their desks - in case it offends their Muslim colleagues.

‘Health chiefs believe the sight of food will upset Muslim workers when they are celebrating the religious festival Ramadan. The lunch trolley is also to be wheeled out of bounds as the 30-day fast begins next month...’

I don’t want to sound like a London taxi driver here – honestly, I don’t – but didn’t the Muslim doctors who opted for greater freedom (and higher wages) in the UK know that the British, whether Christian, Jew or atheist, ate lunch during Ramadan? They must have been incredibly ignorant if they didn’t; any construction worker taking up a job in the Arab states knows about local and religious laws before he heads for the airport.

So does eating a sandwich, or having a vending machine on display, offend Muslims, do you think?

Or has some totally underemployed wanker decided that it MIGHT?

That’s my guess.

I have been in Muslim states during Ramadan and fairly gracious hosts have reminded me that, if I wished to eat during daylight hours, it was no problem but they would rather not see me do it. Simple as that. And it was their country, so I didn’t eat (or even smoke) in public view. Did they say that they would be offended if they actually saw me eating lunch in a Muslim country? No: they said they would just rather not see me, because it was not something that they did themselves.

So if a Muslim doctor told his infidel colleague that he was ‘offended’ by his snatching a sandwich at his desk, the answer would surely be: ‘That’s what we do here, Jimmy. It’s our tradition.’

He doesn’t even need to add: ‘If it offends you – boy have you chosen the wrong place to live and work.’
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