As readers here are aware, Joe Smith's chief claim to fame is that in the first years of the 21st century he managed to pervert the BBC's environmental output, ensuring that the green political agenda was adhered to across the corporation's output, from comedy to current affairs.
During today's BBC World Service show Are We Tired of Talking About Climate Change?, Smith seemed to admit that this had been a "tactical error" with the narrative of gloom and doom apparently switching the public away from the desired political programme and inducing little more than an extreme case of apathy. You have to admire his chutzpah.
There was something almost entirely otherworldly about this programme, with the collapse of interest in global warming after 2009 discussed without even a peep about Climategate and related scandals, climate psychologists interviewed as if they were credible academics and the whole show presented as if the world's only concern was to get back to the stone age as quickly as possible. It was all quite odd.
I wonder if the producers of the show could get their heads around the idea that we are not actually tired of talking about climate change. We are, however, tired of being lectured about it, misled about it, lied to about it and subjected to an endless stream of propaganda about it by homicidal environmentalists and closet authoritarians and all with the blessing of the BBC and the political classes.
Apart from that we're really quite interested.