The REAL outrage about the Presidents Club scandal

To adapt an old joke, what’s the difference between a militant feminist and a Palestinian terrorist? Answer: you can negotiate with a terrorist.

This gag — unrepeatable in its original form in the current hysterical climate — sprung to mind when modern feminism’s monstrous regiment of self-appointed moral arbiters launched into a predictable avalanche of righteous indignation over the alleged goings-on at a charity dinner in London.

By now, you’re probably familiar with the lurid claims about sexual misconduct towards ‘hostesses’ by wealthy guests at the Presidents Club fundraiser at the Dorchester Hotel. They originated from an undercover Financial Times reporter and were seized upon ravenously by female MPs and the usual gaggle of #MeToo hashtag harridans.

So far, so predictable. But where the plot left the planet was when the Prime Minister was forced to answer questions about this sordid affair at the Davos summit.

Mother Theresa could have said: ‘I’ve no idea what you are talking about. I’ve never heard of the Presidents Club and I’m not getting involved. I’m here to discuss Britain’s future as a global trading nation post Brexit.’ Instead, she felt it necessary to add her three-penn’orth of condemnation to that of everyone from the Charity Commission to the Governor of the Bank of England. Give me strength.

Most ridiculous of the lot was Labour’s permanently outraged Pixie Balls-Cooper, face contorted with hatred and fury in the Commons. On the same day, pictures appeared of her husband, Strictly Come Dancing’s Ed Balls, embracing two of the Real Housewives Of Palm Beach at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

He was there making a BBC travel documentary. How far the architect of Gordon Brown’s post neo-classical endogenous growth theory has fallen.

Did Pixie know that Ed would be consorting with the Trumpettes? After all, the taint of sexual impropriety is never far away from the real President’s club.

If she didn’t, Ed can expect to be banished to the spare bedroom on his return — that’s if it’s not full of all those Syrian refugees Pixie promised to take in.

Guests outside The Dorchester Ballroom entrance during the annual Presidents Club Charity Dinner in London on January 18

Before we continue, in the interests of full disclosure, I should tell you that 20-odd years ago I was the after-dinner turn at the Presidents Club bash. I’d been invited by the late Jeremy Beadle, MC for the evening, when we both worked for London Weekend Television.

From what I remember, there were plenty of good-looking women waiting on tables but I can honestly say I wasn’t aware of any of them being molested or propositioned.

That’s not to say it didn’t happen. Who knows? I was preoccupied with trying to entertain a ballroom full of some of the country’s most prominent businessmen, bankers and property developers.

David Walliams said much the same thing when asked about his role as this year’s compere. I believe him. But what intrigued me was that he described it as a ‘professional’ gig and declared he was so horrified by the revelations of bad behaviour that he was returning his fee. What fee? I didn’t ask for, or receive, a fee. I’m pretty sure Beadle wasn’t paid, either.

Jeremy did hundreds of charity fundraisers over the years without expecting a penny in return.

Turns out this was the third time in a row Walliams had compered the event. Presumably, were it not for the fall-out from the FT’s sting, he’d be doing it next year, too.

Not that there’s going to be a next year. The Presidents Club has been disbanded to appease the baying mob.

Great Ormond Street Hospital says it won’t accept a £500,000 donation that could have paid for a cancer scanner and saved the lives of countless sick children. Still, by giving back the money, Walliams has saved face with his Left-wing showbiz buddies and the bosses at Great Ormond Street can claim they have struck a blow for social justice. Knighthoods all round!

No doubt the FT’s undercover reporter will win a slew of Press awards, too. She’s the natural successor to the now-defunct News of the World’s Fake Sheikh.

But what amused me was the way in which she claimed to be shocked and surprised at what she discovered when she posed as a hostess at the event. No, she wasn’t. She found exactly what she expected to find. That’s what she was doing there in the first place. She’d been tipped off. Otherwise, why bother?

This wasn’t a fishing expedition, it was a fishnet expedition.

Look, if there was genuine sexual assault on the night then it’s a matter for the police. The ‘victims’ will always find a sympathetic ear at the Yard these days.

And, unlike Jimmy Savile, the alleged perpetrators are still alive.

Where the plot left the planet was when the Prime Minister was forced to answer questions about this sordid affair at the Davos summit

These are, though, only allegations. Where’s the evidence? I’m prepared to be proved wrong, but I find it hard to believe that one of the guests actually exposed himself to a waitress in the Dorchester dining suite.

Nor am I condoning, or defending, boorish behaviour. But, as someone remarked, it doesn’t seem to have been much worse than your average rugby club dinner.

Certainly, it doesn’t justify the absurd call to ban all-male gatherings in future. Otherwise, you might as well outlaw all-female parties, too. Hen nights are hardly bastions of decorum and sexual continence.

Plenty of women have been known to behave ‘inappropriately’ towards handsome male waiters in tight trousers and hurl themselves at Chippendale-style dancers.

The tragedy here is that an organisation which has raised millions for charity feels obliged to disband because of the alleged behaviour of a handful of guests.The whole business is blown so far out proportion that even the Prime Minister is compelled to interrupt an international conference to pass comment.

We live in an absurd age of knee-jerk moral outrage, fuelled by social media and 24-hour rolling ‘news’, in which everyone is expected to genuflect before the altar of militant feminism — just so that politically motivated, university-educated, middle-class women with an exaggerated sense of their own importance can draw attention to themselves.

Suddenly, that old joke doesn’t seem so funny any more.

This column collects daft fancy dress stories. There have been some belters over the years.

Who can forget the university rugby club in Norwich, where students turned up dressed variously as members of the Ku Klux Klan; Gary Speed, the Welsh footballer who hanged himself; and Baby P, the victim of the Haringey child abuse scandal?

At Oxford, a physics student has just been disciplined for attending a ‘Dress for your Degree’ party done up as paraplegic Professor Stephen Hawking. He rolled in on an office chair, adapted to resemble Hawking’s special disability scooter.

A university spokesman said: ‘While it is not impossible to dress respectfully as Stephen Hawking, this seems not to have been the intention.’

Bring on the Oompa Loompas!

Why are we allowing Left-wing headbangers to trash our history? Winston Churchill is currently being celebrated by cinema audiences worldwide, thanks to Gary Oldman’s award-winning portrayal in Darkest Hour.

Yet, back home, for some lunatics the Great Man is a pariah. A cafe in Finsbury Park, North London, which features a mural of Churchill and Battle of Britain Spitfires, has been repeatedly vandalised. The walls have been sprayed with disgusting slogans including ‘scum’, ‘warmonger’ and ‘imperialist’.

Now the owners have removed the mural, after campaigners accused them of glorifying ‘colonialism’.

The cafe should have been given a round-the-clock police guard and the vandals hunted down remorselessly.

London Transport took down a board marking the anniversary of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift in 1879, after Lily Allen accused it of celebrating ‘colonialism’

Elsewhere, London Transport took down a board marking the anniversary of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift in 1879, after it was attacked on social media by pop singer Lily Allen, who accused it of — you guessed — celebrating ‘colonialism’.

The board, at Dollis Hill Tube station, is regularly rewritten to commemorate a day in history. Rorke’s Drift was immortalised in the film Zulu, starring Michael Caine, Stanley Baker and Dave the barman from Minder.

A small, 150-strong British garrison fought off 4,000 Zulu warriors. Eleven soldiers were awarded the Victoria Cross. I wonder what these heroes would have made of the craven, spineless society Britain has become.

Why the hell should anyone give in to a tiny gang of Left-wing thugs or take any notice of a dopey bird like Lily Allen?

Fix bayonets!

David Cameron was caught in Switzerland admitting that Brexit won’t turn out quite as badly as his Project Fear predicted

Call Me Dave gets around these days, doesn’t he? One minute he’s at Disneyland Paris wearing a Peaky Blinders cap. The next, he’s in Switzerland admitting that Brexit won’t turn out quite as badly as his Project Fear predicted.

Next week, Cameron hits the American lecture circuit.

Now that he’s joined the international jet-set, perhaps he should change his name to Call Me Davos.

The Church of England is introducing a baptism service designed especially for transgenders. Of course it is.

They’ll be rewriting the Bible next. I look forward to the chapter about Jane The Baptist.