Dear readers, I’m sorry to tell you that naked racism is alive and kicking in the pages of the Euro Weekly News , a newspaper published in Spain but aimed firmly at British migrants. A recent column by regular contributor Leapy Lee, himself a Brit, takes aim at the coronavirus outbreak and the supposed substandard hygiene standards in China that led to it. Below the headline “Diet Needs Changing” and a picture that is clearly of Manila schoolgirls (at least they’re Asian, right?), our Leapy displays a grudging respect for Beijing’s ability to get cities locked down and hospitals built before giving in to his baser instincts. “Mind you, that of course is how a dictatorship works; heaven forbid the democratic countries of the world being taken over by despots of this nature. And frankly, that’s why the Chinese leaders worry me. If they have this sort of hold over so many people and decided to galvanise them onto a war footing, we could have half a billion on the doorstep before you could say Chicken Chow Mein.” Perhaps best not to tell Leapy that Beijing has moved on from the 18th century and now has aircraft carriers with which to invade the Costa Blanca, if it so chooses. Leapy then touches on Huawei’s bid for contracts in Britain : “If their inscrutable leaders don’t take the opportunity to insert some form of ‘bug’ into the Huawei project, I’ll eat my bat soup,” using that as a segue into some of his finest mouthfrothing: “have you seen the recent videos on social media showing what these people actually do eat!? Dogs, cats, monkeys, live mice, living fish, rats, fried excretion and human fetuses – to name but a few.” “ These people,” Mr Lee, number 1.4 billion, and that comment says more about your viewing habits than Chinese eating habits. Coprophagia and cannibalism; where does one even begin looking for such content online? And that many of anybody would include a few with niche tastes. Snails? Blood sausage? Jellied eels? Yuck! After blaming another high-profile killer on China – “It wouldn’t surprise me if Aids didn’t originate from somewhere in this inscrutable Far Eastern direction either” – Leapy really gets into his xenophobic stride. “I think we should be very wary of the Chinese. Have you ever had an argument with a waiter in a Chinese restaurant? It doesn’t take much for the whole staff to join in and the chef to appear with a meat cleaver.” To prove this isn’t just a cliché he’s stolen from many an unimaginative film, he quotes … wait for it … a 16th century English soothsayer, Old Mother Shipton: “And Christian one fights Christian two. And nations sigh, yet nothing do. And yellow men great power gain, from mighty bear with whom they’ve lain.” Yes, that’s convinced me, even though I lived in Hong Kong for more than a quarter of a century and never saw a chopper raised in anger – at least not by a chef. “Let’s just hope the whole horror trip is over soon and the Chinese authorities decree a change in their nation’s diet habits,” concludes Leapy, who, we must assume, eschews the hyper-processed, artery-clogging, environment-wrecking junk many of his countrymen regularly put into their mouths. Having shot all his little arrows, how does Leapy end this ill-informed diatribe? With an “Ah So”. Of course he does.