For a few glorious minutes at the Golden Globes awards ceremony, Ricky Gervais told a roomful of Hollywood stars what the rest of us have been thinking for years: they need to stop preaching to us about politics. "You're in no position to lecture the public about anything," he said to a shocked room. "You know nothing about the real world."

This was the fifth time Gervais served as host of the awards and, as he made clear, the last. It is hoped he got paid up front, because he certainly didn't make any friends of the glitterati in attendance.

But his rant has a better than two-millennia pedigree stretching back at least to Socrates, who was taken aback when the Oracle of Delphi said that there was none wiser than he. Not believing the Oracle, Socrates went on an exhaustive hunt for a person wiser than himself but came up empty.