Rylan Clark is all that stands between civilisation and barbarism

Essex is having a moment.

First Romford’s own Thomas Skinner – already celebrated in these pages by yours truly as a (reasonably) authentic embodiment of traditional family values and can-do optimism – met up with America’s bravest stab at the same, vice-president JD Vance. And now Rylan Clark (Stepney and Upminster) has stepped up to give the daytime TV Overton Window a healthy shove towards the location it has been occupying in the real world for some time now – namely, overlooking Dover Beach, and the mounting threat presented by illegal immigration.

In a widely shared segment on ITV’s This Morning earlier this week, Clark surprised and delighted millions – and of course dismayed millions more – with a pretty damning assessment of the UK’s handling of the hundreds arriving weekly on the shores of our former island fortress.

Few could have guessed what was coming, not least as Rylan opened with the familiar if highly disputable shibboleth of the ‘sofa-safe’ opinion-havers: that this country ‘was built on immigration’. This is of course – and it is about time we started making this absolutely clear – a straight-up lie. No matter how many non-white actors are cast in period dramas about the Tudors or the Norman Invasion, we all know that Britain was more or less demographically homogenous until the 1950s at least, however much of a contribution those arriving since then have made.

Still, these polite fictions presumably cleared Rylan’s conscience for what was about to come, as did his cursory genuflection to NHS nurses of overseas origin, the likes of which had ‘saved [his] mum’s life’. In front of a briefly lulled and stupefied audience, Rylan then grabbed the wheel and spun the juggernaut hard to the right.

Without ever losing his genial body language, he got stuck into the iniquity of undocumented migrants receiving accommodation and services denied to our own homeless. All funded by a tax burden that is the highest anyone can remember, and which is causing misery and resentment on a genuinely dangerous scale.

He then moved smoothly on to the other danger: importing tens of thousands of people we know nothing about. Their opaque history, their potential capacity for mischief, and the impact their presence has on residents who happen to find themselves living and raising their families near migrant hotels. Thus Spake Rylan Clark.

The backlash was swift and polarised. Social media erupted with accusations of xenophobia, while supporters, including the aforementioned Skinner, backed him. Bosh.

Undeterred, Clark has since doubled down on X. ‘You can be pro-immigration and against illegal routes’, he asserted, making the not entirely convincing comparison with being pro-trans and also respecting women. But let that, for the moment, lie.

Clark’s determination to hold his ground here, joking aside, is crucial. His comments have clearly resonated with a silent majority frustrated by record small-boats arrivals and strained public services, yet wary of hard-right rhetoric from figures like Tommy Robinson.

For now, Clark is – as usual – only urging us to have respectful and earnest dialogue. To reject ‘putting everyone in a box’, to foster constructive conversations and escape echo chambers. Which is all anyone can expect for a man in his position.

Yet, Clark’s intervention underscores a vibe shift from taboo to mainstream. In a nation grappling with its identity, it is significant that one from this camp – pun entirely intended – feels able to break cover. He reminds us that compassion and control aren’t mutually exclusive.

As I hope is clear, I share Clark’s ‘legitimate concerns’ (aka seething frustration), if not his need to lard the bayonet with caveats about who built this country. But I must admit, I get a little uneasy whenever such people seem to speak a little too much truth. We have to see what comes next. Too often, a contract or two begins to wobble, a sponsorship here and a summer season there. Then the perpetrator not only retreats, he also makes the whole effort look like too much trouble for others. This is why the lad needs our support.

Until now, Clark has been, for me (and I suspect many spiked readers), largely a dental phenomenon. His teeth – on whose porcelain origin he has spoken openly – always seem to me to have escaped from a meme. Add to this his jet black eyebrows in 28-point serif font and one of the most fiercely delineated beards in TV, he has never seemed entirely real.

His trajectory through the various stages of TV fame, from The X-Factor in 2012, when Gary Barlow described him as a ‘joke contestant’ and ‘talentless’, to winning 2013’s Celebrity Big Brother has done little to dispel this impression.

In other words, to the extent I thought of him at all, it was as an unusually handsome duckling who was unlikely to make much of a swan. But out of the mouths of babes and ducklings…

The fact is, this is no time to quibble on Clark’s credentials, breadth or learning. He may be no Kenneth, his namesake, the legendary Lord Clark of the iconic BBC Civilisation documentaries. But however much some of us may mourn an earlier epoch of televisual presentation and dental standards, we are where we are. And it may be on men such as Rylan, rather than patrician art historians and peers of the realm, that civilisation now depends.

Simon Evans is a spiked columnist and stand-up comedian. Tickets for his tour, Have We Met?, are on sale here.