Tell me about your mother

Sir Clement Freud today gives a perfect example of how to forge a career in journalism despite having nothing to say but a famous name under which to say it. See also Peaches Geldof, George Monbiot, Celia Walden, Paul Foot, Poppy Sebag-Montefiore, Harry Mount ... in his youth Sir Clement despaired of being famous solely as Sigmund's grandson and yearned for a solid basis for his fame; naturally, he became an MP (which, implausibly enough, appeared to satisfy this desire for legitimacy) and after 14 years undistinguished by much in the way of achievement, other than being "out-grandfathered" in China by Winston S Churchill, was knighted. Clearly feeling he had put paid to any suspicion that his name had opened any doors, he became a journalist. This morning's article was the first of his I can remember seeing in the Telegraph, possibly ever - although I dimly recall a few Times articles a decade or so ago.

With such a rarefied workrate, you'd think that when this giant of the Press vouchsafed to comment on a piece of news, it might contain a germ of an argument, painstakingly conceived and honed over a considerable period - but that would presumably be rather too modernist and would therefore jar with the real thrust of the piece, in which Sir Clement rails against the infuriating habit language has of evolving and the way most people, lacking his own patrician certainty of superiority (which is nothing to do with having such a famous name, of course), manage to keep half a thumb on such developments.

Salman Rushdie offered his own opinion on the niqab: "Veils suck". As a connoisseur of foppish belletrism, I can certainly think of more impressive ways to phrase such a proposition, but the sentiment it expresses is second to none. Sir Clement, conversely, clearly feels that as a successful and much-admir'd author, it is incumbent upon Mr Rushdie to use better words and dismisses as "attention-seeking" undertaken by those who feel the limelight is beginning to desert them such inapt uses of modern slang. The notion that Mr Rushdie is seeking any more attention from, for example, the kind of people that force their women to wear sacks on their heads is among the most preposterous and laughable as has been advanced for many years.

Sir Clement is clearly not short on attention himself (because of his glittering political and journalistic career, you understand, and nothing to do with his name) and so needn't trouble himself to think of language as a living thing. Unfortunately the same appears to apply to the women behind the veils. Having innacurately defined "suck", for the benefit of the moustachioed Colonels spluttering into their marmalade, as a word popularised by its similarity to a well known expletive, ie having failed to realise that saying that something bad "sucks" is merely a shortened version of saying it "sucks cock", Sir Clement deigns in his last paragraph to proffer an substantive proposition, opining that veils do not, in fact, suck, unlike "bad plays, excruciating opera [natch] - and, in this instance, Salman Rushdie". He does not, of course, trouble to defend this opinion. It is surely enough that it has come from a Freud and has been elegantly expressed (one assumes his advice that Mr Rushdie "keep [his] gob shut" was offered in the spirit of irony).

So, keeping women hidden in bin-bags is OK, but using modern slang despite being a successful author merits an article castigating the miscreant? I should go into psychoanalysis, if I were you, Sir Clement. You've got nothing to say here.