For me one of the weirdest - but most wonderful - accidental consequences of the last two years’ madness has been discovering so many new and unlikely bedfellows.

Take Maajid Nawaz. This time twenty years ago, Nawaz was languishing in a grim Egyptian prison under continual threat of torture or death. And back then, I would probably have been among those secretly hoping he would stay there.

In those days, as so many of us were in the aftermath of 9/11, I had become convinced that the greatest threat to world peace was Islamic fundamentalism. I deeply resented having to worry, every time I got onto the London Underground or boarded a plane, that I might be blown to smithereens by a terrorist bomb. And definitely a big part of the problem, I used to believe, were articulate, well educated, British-born Islamists like Nawaz.

Nawaz was a leading member of a proscribed group called Hizb ut-Tahrir, whose stated purpose is to re-establish the Islamic caliphate, unite the Muslim community and implement Islamic law globally. This made him, as far as I could see, a traitor to his country (whose liberal values he was clearly bent on undermining) and a public enemy best prevented from influencing impressionable young minds and converting them to the Jihadist cause.

Well that was then. Now I find myself in the same foxhole as Nawaz facing the same multitude of common enemies and I am proud to count him as a comrade and an ally. A former LBC radio presenter (till he was sacked for WrongThink) Nawaz is one of only a handful of high-media-profile figures in Britain - or indeed anywhere - to have dared speak out against the official narrative: on Covid, on vaccines, on lockdowns, on Central Bank Digital Currencies, on the malign purposes of the World Economic Forum and, most recently, on Ukraine.

Sceptical, independent-minded, intellectually rigorous and utterly fearless in confronting arbitrary authority and abuses of power, Nawaz is everything a journalist/commentator should be in these strange, frightening, increasingly authoritarian times. Everything that, sadly, so many journalist/commentators are not.

Which is why I’m so looking forward to chatting to him onstage in central London at my Delingpod Live event at the end of this month. I loved his heroic and enlightening performance on the Joe Rogan Show. This, I hope, will be even more illuminating and entertaining, as I push him still further on key questions like: ‘What is REALLY going on?’ It will be a freewheeling conversation about whatever takes our fancy before an audience of likeminded folk: a gathering of the awake. You’d be mad not to be there - it’s going to be great and I look forward to meeting you all as we join together in solidarity on our mission to throw off the shackles which have bound us for so long. You know what I mean. And if you don’t: why not come and find out?

James Delingpole

Delingpod Live with Maajid Nawaz