Historian and seemingly one-man gaffe machine, David Starkey, was at it again on BBC1’s Question Time on Thursday night. The supposed expert on Islam was talking about freedom of speech in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings and referred to Mehdi Hasan, the political director at HuffingtonPost UK, as “Ahmed”.
The blunder caused the Twittersphere to implode with the historian labelled a “bigot” and “xenophobe”. Hasan made several references to the incident on Twitter, calling Starkey “basically Katie Hopkins with a PhD”, followed by a tongue-in-cheek tweet: “#jesuisahmed @bbcquestiontime”. Starkey has some serious blunder form on Question Time, including insisting that a 16-year-old pupil could “groom” a 44-year-old teacher; stating that violence, not consent, should be the measure of rape; and saying that Princess Anne looked like a horse.
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