Remember the fuss last year over Adolescence, the Netflix drama about a ‘manosphere’-influenced-13-year-old white schoolboy arrested for murdering a girl classmate?

Brilliant, it may have been. But it was a work of fiction. That didn’t stop Surkeir (remember him?) convening an emergency meeting at No 10 with the series’ producers and various charities to address the problem of how to prevent young boys ‘being dragged into a whirlpool of hatred and misogyny’ online.

Encouraged by Starmer, Netflix agreed to waive subscription fees so secondary schools across the country could screen the show to students.

Adolescence was hailed as the greatest dramatision since – oh, I dunno – Cathy Come Home, the ‘landmark’ 1966 film by Leftie director Ken Loach about a homeless working-class family fallen on hard times.

The hysteria surrounding Adolescence peaked when Kemi Badenoch was monstered on the BBC for not watching it. How dare she?

That’s because it reinforced the gormless woke agenda – white supremacy, misogyny, etc (see above). None of this is to discredit co-creator Stephen Graham, an actor for whom I have great regard. But it was a drama, not a documentary.

Yet politicians, up to and including the Prime Minister, took it as fact and acted accordingly.

And, yes, drama can often achieve more than documentary – as the superb Mr Bates vs The Post Office proved.

In which case, why isn’t another Netflix series compulsory viewing not just in schools but in the Palace of Westminster and on big screens everywhere?

I’ve just spent the weekend binge-watching the fifth season of Fauda, the breathtaking drama about an Israeli counter-terrorism unit.

Fauda is the best thing on what we used to call ‘television’ this side of HBO’s oil industry Landman and Amazon’s Clarkson’s Farm. Despite being made by Israelis, it’s pretty even-handed, showing both sides of the divide.

But after the Hamas pogrom of October 7, I assumed the fourth series would be the last. How could they dramatise the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust?

The answer is: graphically, terrifyingly, truthfully. If anything, the real horror of that day, when cold-blooded Islamist fanatics murdered, raped and beheaded Jewish men, women and children, can only be imagined.

Fauda takes you inside that nightmare, exposing the banality and savagery of the Hamas violence. I won’t go into detail, it’s heartbreaking. You are free to watch it yourself, but I did so that you don’t have to.

(Many of those involved in Fauda served in the Israeli security forces. One of them, Matan Meir, died in the war against Hamas in Gaza.)

Suffice to say that when the series reaches the October 7 massacre, viewers are advised to skip the next two episodes as they are likely to prove too painful. I watched them, with my heart in my mouth, with growing anger – not just at the Hamas barbarians themselves but at their brain-dead useful idiots in the West, especially in Britain.

What made me sick to the pit of my stomach was the man Hamas now see as their new pin-up, Ed Miliband, our smug Foreign Secretary, standing serious-faced at Buck House during the 9/11 memorial.

This is the man who has just given succour to the perpetrators of that heinous attack by imposing sanctions on Israel. And before the usual far-Left apologists try to spilt hairs and claim that it was al-Qaeda, not Hamas, who flew the planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, let me remind you that on 9/11 they were dancing in the streets in Gaza and the West Bank.

Many years ago, I was at a dinner at the TUC where someone was trying to explain the difference between various far-Left factions, including the International Socialists, the International Marxists, the Workers Revolutionary Party, Reggie Birch’s Maoist Collective and so on. My old friend and sometime mentor, the late Terry Duffy, a patriotic former paratrooper who fought the real Nazis and fascists in the Second World War and went on to become leader of the engineering union, said: ‘Doesn’t matter, they’re all Communists.’

Terry’s remark still resonates. Don’t differentiate between Al-Qaeda, Al-Jolson, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis or any other bunch of headbangers beginning with ‘H’.

They’re all terrorists who hate Israel, hate Jews, and – yes – hate us, too.

So can we expect a Downing Street summit to discuss Fauda and the ‘whirlpool of hatred and misogyny’ stirred up by over- indulged Islamists and grooming/rape gangs in Britain?

I wouldn’t hold your breath. I’d like to tape Mister Ed to a chair at Leicester Square Odeon, along with a packed audience of the entire ‘River To The Sea’ keffiyeh clowns at gunpoint, and force them to watch episodes seven and eight of Fauda season five, so they can witness the true barbarity of the genocidal maniacs they support.

There’s a word for these people. What is it? Oh, yes.

Adolescents.

One of the first columns I ever wrote, pushing 40-odd years ago for London’s Evening Standard, when it used to be a newspaper, was a lament for a proper cheese sandwich.

The yuppie-fication of the City meant you could get Brie on brioche and Camembert on ciabatta, but if you wanted Cheddar on crusty white you had to go south of the river as a basis for negotiation. Now I read that following Marks & Sparks’ success with a strawberries and cream sarnie, Sainsbury’s is bringing out an apple crumble version. Whatever happened to the More Rabbit Than Sainsbury’s sandwich?

Why would anyone want to eat an apple crumble sandwich? And, more to the point, where can you get a decent apple crumble these days? South of the river, probably. Lovely Jubbly!

The most bizarre story I’ve stumbled across lately is a spat between chimney sweeps over a website domain name.

The dust-up has broken out between a bloke with a firm called Mr Soot, who operates in Burnham country, and a woman who glories in the name of Sparkling Flues – which sounds like that Bonnie Blue bird from Only Fans.

Who knew there were chimney wars in Manchester? We’re not talking The Sopranos waste-management here, more a Manc version of the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars.

Call me old-fashioned, but since when did chimney sweeps start having websites? Dick Van Dyke got by without chimchiminey.co.uk. Maybe Sooty and Sweep could get in on the act, too.

Bye, bye, everybody.

According to yesterday’s Daily Mail, film fans have been voting on the greatest on-screen love triangles. Surely that accolade belongs to Kate O’Mara’s Triangle, no contest.

As the columnist who brought you Two Jags, etc, I’ve been playing around with nicknames for Burnham.

Andy Capp didn’t quite fit, despite the ludicrous ‘King of the North’ affectation (and because the monkey-hangers of Hartlepool, spiritual home of AC, objected). Andy Pandy seemed more appropriate, since he seems to have the backbone of a puppet. Given his parochial obsessions, I also thought about Prime Mayor.

But I must bow to my old mate and fellow hack J. Clarkson Esq, who has settled on ‘Councillor Burnham’. Brilliant. Councillor Burnham, it is.