Like many of you I suspect, I prepared to watch the piece on last night’s Newsnight on BBC 2 with that weird mix of interest and trepidation. It’s not as if network broadcasters have a great track record of covering things Welsh, extending from politics to sport to arts and culture. On reflection, and from personal experience, I’ve concluded that most coverage can be traced back to one of two imperatives. The first, a “need” to do something on Wales (probably originating in some W1A style nations and regions memo along the lines, “Rupert, apparently there’s some wacky festival going on in that place the size of Wales where they dress up in nightgowns and brandish swords whilst dancing in clogs. Get one of our juniors to ring my pal, Geraint in Cardiff who was at Oxford with me and ask him to say something vaguely interesting and short in say, 30 secs max. Don’t put much energy into it obvs as no one really gives a ff” ).

The second is much more insidious and, at times, downright nasty, spiteful and even bullying. I experienced this directly in that fabulous summer of football last year when Wales reached the semi finals of the UEFA European Championships, in doing so defying pre-tournament predictions and, of course, progressing furthest of all of the home nations and the Republic of Ireland. Admittedly, I have a pretty wide selection to chose from in terms of the most patronising bids that came my way from network broadcasters. One (who shall remain nameless) asked how people in Wales could possibly afford to get to France for the semi final. Another asked how football had managed to thrive in Wales given everyone-yes, everyone- plays rugby. One asked if any of our players was a “nationalist”. Meanwhile, the bile of the press focused on the fact that some of Wales’s Euros stars like captain Ashley Williams, Hal Robson Kanu and Sam Vokes, had been born in England. This one is an interesting one as it captures a dominant theme that was also reflected in last night’s Newsnight piece, namely that Wales, and things Welsh, only matter in relation to England and its own interests and identity.

So, here goes, a few of my own thoughts about why the language and Wales were treated as they were on Newsnight last night: