LAST SATURDAY afternoon, I managed to make a difference. For fifteen minutes, I stopped Holocaust revisionist and Nazi apologist, David Irving, from disseminating his lethal poison. My phonecall, he informed me from his home in London's Grosvenor Square, had interrupted his writing and broken his concentration. A tiny triumph, admittedly, but when you're dealing with such deadly lunacy every little helps.

A self-style "professional historian," Irving has devoted his life to sanitising the crimes of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. His central contention is that the Holocaust is a "myth" and that the concentration camps and gas chambers were a Jewish "propaganda exercise." Despite, or more precisely, because of, such deranged views, Irving has been invited to address debating societies in University College Dublin and University College Cork next month. An invitation to speak was also extended by students in Trinity College but was subsequently withdrawn.

"I've been there before and I always regard Dublin as a very enjoyable city," says Irving when I ask about his impending Irish visit. "I was glad to get these invitations but I'm also sad that the Trinity College one has been withdrawn. It's been withdrawn because of pressure from the university itself. The last time I stayed in Trinity College which is about eight or ten years ago, there was a protest demonstration against me by a group of outsiders. Various Jewish organisations protested. I never realised that there were that many Jews in Ireland so they were obviously flown in from elsewhere.

"Anyway because of that demonstration and even though there was no damage done, this time Trinity College has asked the students to put up a very substantial sum of money to cover the costs of any potential damage. They couldn't afford the sum so the invitation had to be withdrawn."

KICKED AROUND

Groups such as the Irish Anti-Nazi League and Youth Against Racism in Europe have pledged to stop Irving speaking publicly in Ireland, physically if necessary.

"Have they, indeed," he laughs. "I'm afraid I'm not impressed by them. Listen, I've spoken to audiences around the world. I've spoken to audiences in the nastiest parts of South Africa and America, so what the Anti-Nazi League in Dublin can do doesn't really perturb me."

Not surprisingly, Irving was extremely pleased by the election last week of a member of the ultra right wing British National Party as a councillor in London's Tower Hamlets. "I think it was a very encouraging result," he states. "I don't know if you saw on Irish television what we saw here, which was a large number of ordinary citizens in Tower Hamlets being questioned as to why they had done the unthinkable and voted for the BNP. I think it shows that the English people are gradually beginning the find their voice.

"They hadn't got much of an alternative in who to vote for. Neither Labour nor the Liberal Democrats nor the Conservatives have spoken out for the indigenous white population which, of course, will soon be the minority population in the East End of London. People voted for the only solution they had and it wasn't just a handful or a fringe, it was, as it turned out, the majority. I think you'll see a lot more of this over the coming years.

Of course, television coverage of the Tower Hamlets by-election also exposed the high level of thuggery rampant among BNP supporters and reported on the sharp increase in racial attacks in the area in recent months. David Irving, however, is characteristically dismissive.

"I've been kicked around quite a bit myself so I tend not to read too much into that kind of violence," he says. "I've been kicked around in Germany and, at that time, the kicking around was being done by mobs which had been paid for jointly by the German Trade Union Congress and the East German communist government. I've looked into the faces of people demonstrating against me in various places and seen real undiluted hatred.

"Until you've seen the hatred of some of the various Jewish organisations, you haven't seen real hatred. So I pay very little attention to the kind of violence you're talking about. It was very little to do with the democratic process."

INFINITE WISDOM

Curiously, the subject on which David Irving was to have spoken in Trinity College was not his beloved Nazis. He was invited to participate in a debate on feminism, a topic about which Irving has views that are every bit as demented as his opinions on Adolf Hitler.

"Women are intellectually inferior," he proclaims. "Procreation is their role. Their job is having us. If, occasionally, you have girls, then you can regard that as useful too because you're having us-havers. It's a biologically recognised fact that the female brain is substantially smaller, significantly smaller, than the male brain. My speech in Trinity would've taken a light-hearted look at the consequences of that. It considers what is in the missing ten per cent."

What's "light-hearted" about dismissing half the human race as inferior? "I've had audiences in Cambridge and Durham rolling in the aisles while listening to my speech," he asserts. "Both women and men, though fewer women than men of course. Women don't have as good a sense of humour as men. That's probably another element in that missing ten per cent. Women have caused considerable ructions at various speaking engagements of mine. They're obviously afraid of something that I've got to say."

Is he completely serious about this "women being intellectually inferior" stuff?

"Well, you have to judge that for yourself but you won't be able to now because Trinity, in its infinite wisdom, has deemed to be this subversive material," he says. "But yes, it's a light-hearted look at a serious subject."

Irving himself has four daughters - is he embarrassed about not having had any "intellectually superior" sons? "As I have said, girls are very useful too because they are us-havers," he replies.

Surely, if ever there was a man committed to spreading propaganda that could legitimately be described as "evil" then David Irving is that man.

"I don't think I'm evil," he chuckles. "My family don't think I'm evil. My friends don't think I'm evil. If anyone in Ireland thinks I'm evil then they'll just have to get a chance to get to know me personally."

It was time for the obvious question. Are you mad, Mr. Irving?" I asked. "Goodbye!" he snapped curtly and abruptly hung up.

The bleep bleep of a telephone tone has never sounded sweeter.