What about an online register of leftard actors and “comics” like Rufus Hound so conservatives can boycott them?

Hound by name, swine by nature

We saw Rufus Hound in the play One Man, Two Guv’nors in the West End last year and he was pretty good. But I'm now annoyed because, before booking the tickets, I checked up on the chap online just to make sure he wasn’t one of those ghastly standard-issue BBC “comedians” who imagine that the ability to deliver a script written by someone else in a vaguely competent fashion somehow gives them the right to bore our tits off with their drearily predictable left-wing opinions. Not having discovered any definitive proof that the chap was a blister, I purchased two seats in the dress circle.

I wasn’t checking up on Hound's political views, you understand – I just wanted to make sure that he wasn’t in the habit of making stridently left-wing remarks in public or of referring to Tories as “scum” or UKIP members as “swivel-eyed loons” or of glorying in the death of political figures I have admired, such as Margaret Thatcher, or of ascribing ludicrously evil motives to right-wingers without the slightest scrap of proof. It’s not that I want these people blacklisted by theatres or broadcasters or film-makers – I just don’t want to do anything which might in the slightest way advance their careers. Besides, I find it impossible to watch performances by the likes of Sean Penn, Vanessa Redgrave, Alec Baldwin or Eddie Izzard without thinking of how very much I despise their politics – and that’s their fault, because they’ve been shoving their opinions down my throat for years (decades, in Ms Redgrave’s case).

Rufus Hound, in an appearance on ITV’s Jonathan Ross Show (which I don’t watch because the host is a repellent human being), revealed that he is thinking of standing as an MEP for the NHA (National Health Action party), because, he claims, the government is privatising the NHS (if only!). Later, he wrote the following on his blog:

'David [Cameron] and Jeremy [Hunt] want your kids to die (unless you’re rich)… The millionaires that currently run things have decided that you (assuming you’re not a member of the Bullingdon Club, or a trustafarian) can go fuck yourself. This place is for them, not you. Why should you get free healthcare? Why can’t they take that big pot of money ear-marked for medicine and just start sharing it out amongst themselves? People are desperate when they’re sick and nothing’s as easier to monetise than desperation. Big, rich, private healthcare companies have donated millions to the Conservative party and now they’re calling in the debt. Jeremy Hunt is killing the NHS so that his owners can bleed you dry.'

Of course, many people hold similarly ridiculous views. And an alarming number of leftists evidently feel that their infinite sense of moral superiority gives them the right to impute grotesquely wicked motives to anyone who doesn’t agree with them – especially those cunning enough to get themselves born to parents who send their offspring to private schools… Oh hang on a sec: according to Wikipedia, Hound attended Hoe Bridge School (£12,000+ per year) and Frensham Heights (£15,000+ per year), so I’m not quite sure where he gets off sneering at over-privileged Tory politicians.

Whatever, it’s a pity that his own expensive education didn’t teach Hound that accusing a politician (Tory of otherwise) who suffered the dreadful experience of losing his evidently beloved six-year old son Ivan in 2009 of wanting the parents of children who aren’t rich to die is the act of a vicious, conscienceless swine. I, for one, would never be able to watch Hound performing on stage or television again without remembering what a wretched excuse for a human being he is.

Hound was appearing on Ross’s show to plug his new musical, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. As I greatly enjoyed the first film version starring Marlon Brando and David Niven, as Hound was funny in One Man, Two Guv’nors, and as I’ve enjoyed previous stage appearances by his co-star Robert Lindsay, I’d have been tempted to book tickets. Now, to adopt Hound’s argot, he can go fuck himself.