On Monday I visited my Mum, as mentioned here, and while there I talked also with my brother Toby, who is a UKIPer.

The report I wrote yesterday about our conversation has become the trigger for a very satisfactory Samizdata comment storm about matters European and EUropean, as I write this still blowing.

After writing that, I then googled "Toby Micklethwait", which I haven't done lately, and I found my way to this:

This is my contribution to the BBC charter review.

That's all the explanation you get, in the page I googled my way to. Presumably, what Toby is referring to is this. I am not encouraged that "Micklethwait" is spelt so very wrongly in the web address. This suggests to me that no very great attention was paid to what he said.

Which, if true, would be a pity, because after Toby's what-you-would-expect-from-a-UKIPer denunciation of BBC bias (concerning the idea of Britain getting out of the EU – surprise surprise), he then veers off into this:

Finally, perhaps off topic, it seems to me uneconomic to spend billions of pounds on language education in schools, and then to fail to spend the few millions needed to ensure that there are free to air television channels in French, Spanish etc. Such channels should be purchased from abroad. The best programs for learning languages are quiz programs (preferably with text on screen), followed by nature programmes, and then news. Fast moving comedy is very difficult to understand in another language.

If proof is required that TV affects language learning, then I point out that dwellers in Copenhagen understand Swedish well, whereas in Esbjerg they do not. The difference is not in the schooling, it is in the TV.

What an interesting observation. He is quite right that our government, or at any rate a fragment of it, has for some time been in initiative mode about language teaching in schools. We now have a strategy to make more people learn foreign languages.

Toby's idea is the best I've heard for achieving greater foreign language knowledge in Britain, and, as he says, at a trifling cost. Just sling a few cheap and cheerful foreign language channels up on regular don't-pay-as-you-watch TV, and let nature take its course. Excellent.

So good is this idea that I reward brother Toby with two gratuitous pictures of him, looking studious and educational, and looking happy, taken a year or two ago at a Christmas family gathering at his home in the leafy suburbs of Surrey.

A few learned comments on this TV helps language learning idea would be very welcome. Does it really do this? Is Toby (and am I) getting too excited about this idea? If he is right, are there some other examples to throw into the pot from elsewhere in the world? I do recall reading in all kinds of places that lots of people have learned English by going to the movies and listening out for the English words to go along with the subtitled words at the bottom. But how about TV? Do Spanish speaking Americans learn their English (assuming they want to learn it) by watching Anglo-TV? Do Europeans learn English by watching British and American TV?

If the idea survives scrutiny in the comparative privacy of here, I can then give this notion another push on Samizdata. If I get no comments here, I'll stick it up on Samizdata anyway.

Apart from the idea itself, is there any way to access the place where this piece got posted, and most especially any replies to it? I tried ringing Toby to ask this, but he seems to be extremely busy just now. He is, presumably, among other things, UKIPing, helping to reinforce their success. If so, it makes sense.