Can someone tell me what it was that Patrick Mercer MP said which was either racist or offensive? I’ve been mulling it over for 48 hours and I’m still clueless. The Tory homeland security spokesman, a former army colonel, was sacked last week for having said that in the forces, squaddies have been heard to refer to colleagues from ethnic minorities as “black bastards”, just as they might call obese colleagues “fat bastards”. He also said that he’d come across plenty of idle, useless soldiers from ethnic minorities who used racial prejudice as a means of excusing their uselessness.

For this, David Cameron sacked him and sections of the liberal media were gripped by paroxysms of outrage. Why? Did Cameron hitherto believe that army squaddies addressed each other as if in attendance at a Guardian editorial meeting? And Mercer did not say that he approved of their racism; indeed, he said that when he was a serving officer he came down very hard on it. So in what possible sense was this racist?

Similarly, does Cameron have evidence that Mercer was incorrect in his assertion that a tiny minority of black army recruits used the excuse of racial prejudice to explain away ineptitude? Of course not. A man is sacked for explaining, with candour, what he’d observed during his time serving this country as a soldier. Sacked by a man whose effortless dog-sled ascent to political power has involved nothing more hazardous than the occasional Notting Hill dinner party where the chablis wasn’t adequately chilled.

Still, Mercer apologised and told the press that Cameron was right to sack him. Why did he do that, I asked. “Oh, it’s from being in the army, I suppose, and having an habitual obedience to authority. When I give my loyalty, it is total. If my boss says, Patrick — f*** off, I respond, yes sir, how quickly would you like me to f*** off? You may think this utterly pusillanimous, Rod.” Too right, mate, although it’s a reflex I understand.

In fact Mercer is a mate — I once employed him as a defence correspondent on the Today programme. He was very proud that he’d instigated a drive to get more black and Asian army recruits — his unit, the Sherwood Foresters, was better represented by ethnic minorities than any other army regiment. Five of his company sergeant-majors — recruited and promoted by him — were black. Every one of them. The man doesn’t have a racist bone in his body.

I do wish he hadn’t apologised, though; that’s where the real damage lies. We demand that our MPs be freethinking and candid and we would like them also to have a hinterland, a background which stretches beyond politics. Then when such qualities are displayed, someone like Cameron decides that this wasn’t what we wanted after all and gives them the sack.

Still more puzzling is the criticism of Mercer from Tories sensible enough to realise that what the man said wasn’t remotely racist. He should resign, went the argument, because other people, either through political opportunism or stupidity, might think it WAS racist, even though it wasn’t.

I’ve been poleaxed by this strange logic. Some years ago, when I was working for a different newspaper, I was told I shouldn’t use the term “monkey” to describe a person, because it was racist.

“But the person I’m talking about is white!” I said. “Yes,” came the reply, “but people might think that he’s black. And then it would be racist.” And so a week later I used the word “wolverine” to describe another white person. “Can’t use that, it’s racist,” I was told. “People might think that it’s an ape. And they might think the person you’re calling it is black. And so that’s racist.”

Quite bizarre. And now we have the noble Lord Levy crying racism over the cash for peerages inquiry. According to The Jewish Chronicle and Sir Alan Sugar, Levy is being victimised because he is Jewish — despite the fact that I hadn’t seen a single reference to his race until he himself brought it up. I thought the press was more interested in his alleged involvement than in whether or not he took Saturdays off. But call me naive.

Never a good idea to talk turkey

Poor Bernard Matthews has been forced to take out full-page advertisements in some of our national newspapers to assure the public that his “turkey products” won’t kill you if you eat them. Sales have slumped after some of his turkeys were stricken with bird flu.

“My turkey is completely safe to eat,” he pleads, with the beaming desperation of a used car salesman trying to flog you a 1986 Vauxhall Astra.

He’s probably right, of course; the turkeys are safe to eat. But my suspicion is that people are refusing to eat them not because of avian flu, but as a result of the greater insight they have been afforded into Matthews’ methods of production. The Bernard Matthews label which adorns his products depicts a lovely country house, as if the turkeys were being reared in an agreeable East Anglian prep school.

But we saw the news programmes, Bernard mate. And the reality is that hundreds of thousands of the benighted creatures are “processed” in grim aluminium sheds, which look for all the world like the government’s germ warfare establishment at Porton Down. Those infamous Twizzlers will be off the menu perhaps indefinitely, I reckon.

Ann won’t stand for Jack’s chair directive

It was International Women’s Day last Thursday, a joyous event in which feminists across the world joined together in an organic and nonphallocentric display of haphazard car parking and synchronised shopping. I bet there were workshops and puppet theatre shows, too.

As you might expect, our government got itself involved. Jack Straw, whose feminist credentials have never been doubted since he insisted that Muslim women should strip off a bit before they talk to him, announced that the sexist word “chairman” would be banished from the political lexicon. Henceforth, women who preside over meetings would be known as “chairs”, he said. Well done, Jack — you can almost hear Mrs Pankhurst howling with triumph from the grave. The redoubtable Ann Widdecombe responded in typically robust fashion. “I am not a chair,” she barked, “because nobody has ever sat on me.” I bet they haven’t, Ann. You might, I suppose, sit on Straw without too much worry, if nothing more comfortable was available.

There are many ways in which one can express distress at the state of the world. But Christa Lilly, an American citizen, has offered the most eloquent. Lilly had been in a coma for six years and was not expected to rouse herself again. But last Sunday she opened her eyes, sat up in bed and said hello to her mother who was visiting. Her thrilled mum told her what had been going on. George Bush Jr is President; we’re at war with Iraq; Islamic terrorists smashed two aircraft into the twin towers, Iran’s almost got the bomb. Maybe she also mentioned that Patricia Hewitt was British health secretary. Christa listened, smiled at her mother, glanced around the room sadly, sighed and went back into a deep, deep sleep, in which state she remains.

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