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I’m going to Auschwitz with Christopher Biggins.

Seriously, this is a trip we’d been planning for a while. Last time I saw Biggins, we discussed our desire for a deeper understanding of the Holocaust. So he suggested that my wife, his partner, he and I visit Auschwitz. So ironic, given his ejection from Celebrity Big Brother for an ill-judged remark about a concentration camp. I cannot defend his “joke” but I can defend him as a human being. He is one of the kindest, most inclusive people I know. He doesn’t have a bigoted bone in his body and many of his closest friends are Jewish. If he has a fault, it’s that he loves everyone. And that means making jokes with everyone about everyone. In hindsight, he shouldn’t have made that particular one – it was bound to cause offence. But it came not from a dislike of Jewish people; it came from the very opposite.

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