Delilah is a 1967 chart-topper first sung by the Welsh dragon Sir Tom Jones. The song topped the charts in many countries. It sold millions of copies. It won the composer and lyricist an Ivor Novello award in 1968. And it has been an unofficial anthem for Welsh rugby fans for 50 years.

So why is the Welsh Rugby Union banning this song from being sung by the choir at Cardiff’s famous Principality Stadium during Wales rugby international match days?

The reason is apparently due to one line of the song, telling the story of a jilted and jealous lover, which reads:

‘I crossed the street to her house and she opened the door; she stood there laughing, I felt the knife in my hand and she laughed no more.’

‘The WRU condemns domestic violence of any kind,’ said a stadium spokesperson. One can almost picture the said humourless, wooden, and stone-faced representative, completely devoid of irony and most likely not Welsh, who have a robust and irreverent sense of humour, as this classic Welsh joke shows…

Dai was watching a Six Nations game in Cardiff.

In the packed stadium there was only one empty seat, right next to him.

‘Whose is that seat?’ asked a man in the row behind.

‘I got the ticket for my wife,’ said Dai. ‘But she died in an accident.’

‘So you’re keeping the seat vacant as a mark of respect?’

‘No,’ said the fan, ‘I offered it to all of my friends.’

‘So why didn’t they take it?’

‘They’ve all gone to the funeral.’

Notwithstanding the fact that these dwellers in officialdom, up in their ivory towers, have apparently never met a working-class person in their lives, it is clear that the idea that songs like Delilah have been reclaimed by the masses and reified beyond their surface-level meaning is beyond their comprehension. Do they think that the riffraff rugby fans, having belted out Delilah at a game, and who probably drank pints of lukewarm beer with their rarebits, will go home and murder their wives?

No, I think even those corporate elites aren’t quite as detached as that. This is clearly an attempt at virtue signalling. There have been recent accusations levelled at the WRU of having a ‘toxic culture’. To pacify those whose opinions they care about they are whitewashing their guilt by denying their fans the simple joy of singing a song that has now been associated with Welsh rugby for half a century.

The attempts of the Woke to destroy culture have been relentless. Various statues, books, movies, and songs have been increasingly targeted in recent years for disclaimers, warnings, and outright bans or removals – all for the ostensible purpose of protecting some vulnerable individuals who might be offended.

But anyone with any sense can see where this is leading. Once you start banning Delilah, what’s next? What about Cole Porter’s Miss Otis Regrets, the Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal, or Aerosmith’s Janie’s Got a Gun? Or indeed, any of the much more explicitly violent and lurid rap songs.

Or what about operas like Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which contains rape and murder, Bizet’s Carmen, with its stabbing, and Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, in which the titular lady poisons her father-in-law? Should these too be banned before they offend susceptible opera-goers?

Sport in general is going to be tricky, considering many national anthems have violent lyrics. Will the WRU ban the French rugby fans from singing La Marseillaise, because the first verse, favoured by sports fans, states: ‘They’re coming right into your arms to cut the throats of your sons, your comrades!’?

The instinct of the Woke seems to be strangely ostrich-like, as if by not talking about the nasty things in life, they will simply melt away. Whereas everyone knows that art, of all the avenues of human expression, can allow for the sense-making and catharsis around the inevitable dark aspects of the human condition. By trying to ban a song, the WRU is doing their fans a disservice, doing culture a disservice, and helping absolutely no one.

I am sure that the Welsh crowd, sensible as they are, will make sure that Delilah reverberates around the stadium … which is exactly what they did.