“John Kettley is a weatherman,

A weatherman, a weatherman,

John Kettley is a weatherman

And so is Michael Fish.”

["John Kettley is a Weatherman", a 1988 song by A Tribe of Toffs]

John Kettley is one of the UK’s iconic weathermen - he has even featured in a UK pop song which reached number 21 in the UK Singles Chart. Kettley used to work for the Met Office, but he is now famous as BBC Radio 5 Live’s “intrepid weatherman”, appearing mainly on ‘Breakfast’  between 6 and 9 am.

He is also an intrepid Yorkshireman, having been born in Todmorden in West Yorkshire, and, like all Yorkshiremen, he likes to tell it as it is, which is precisely what he has done today with respect to Britain’s lousy summer weather [‘Awful August has delayed this year’s harvest but global warming is not to blame’, Daily Mail, August 24]:

“Atrocious weather has seriously delayed the harvest this year ...

But this is not a symptom of so-called ‘global warming’.”

And:

“These conditions are not unique and are more like the poor August weather Britain saw during the Twenties and Sixties.

It is more likely a stark reminder that the warming trend we recorded in the last part of the 20th Century has now stalled.”

Finally:

“We are not suddenly about to be catapulted towards a Mediterranean climate [idiotic BBC 2 gardening programmes, please note]. We are surrounded by water, with the vast Atlantic Ocean to our west, while the jet stream and gulf stream will forever influence our daily weather and long-term climate.”

Common sense at last. Thank goodness for down-to-earth forecasters like John. And thank goodness, too, for the parts of the BBC beyond BBC 1/2 and Radio 4. Like a Yorkshireman, these bits of the Beeb tend to tell it as it is, not as the bien pensant would have it be.

There is thus no cognitive dissonance [see: ‘Cognitive Dissonance’ (August 19) and ‘More On Cognitive Dissonance’ (August 20)] for John Kettley. This summer’s dreadful weather, cold and wet, cannot be conveniently forced into the ‘global warming’ cognition simply to ease the dissonance of our more PC media.

It’s time to call a spade a spade - or even a bloody shovel. It’s time to call cooling - er - cooling.

And today? More chill rain in the morning.... It’s just like my soggy visits to Torquay as a child. This scene is perfectly recaptured by Eleanor Mills [‘The wind, the rain, the child-hating waiters...’, The Sunday Times, August 24], as she describes her family’s ‘summer’ holiday this year in Dorset and on the British Riviera:

“Last week I came back from my two-week summer holiday spent under growling grey skies, sheltering behind a windbreak, where my garment of choice wasn’t my new swimming costume but a trusty North Face waterproof. Sunglasses? Pah. A sundress? Are you joking? I wore my thermals.” Her five-year old neatly renamed Dorset, ‘Pour-set’.

Just so. Strong Sunday coffee required.