I wanted to heckle, storm the stage, disrupt. And if I’d had the guts there would have been something beautifully apt about the disruption because this was Index on Censorship’s annual “Freedom of Expression” awards. Some people, it seems — people who call themselves liberals — think freedom of expression depends on who is doing the expressing.

The place was London, in the high-end May Fair Hotel which had generously hosted the charity as its guest. The time was Thursday night. And the object of my rage had been hired to MC the event: Nish Kumar, a thirtysomething leftie stand-up comedian educated at a super-selective Kent grammar school and Durham University, and whose stock-in-trade appears to be biting the hand that feeds him.

We the