Archive for October, 2008

I thing it became clear to me that my career at the BBC had reached its ultimate conclusion when I found myself insisting that the programme I was looking after had a card system for politicians. I wanted politicians to answer questions and not repeat themselves so I wanted to introduce a football style card system (eg: one repetition or none-answer gets a yellow – two and it’s a red).

OK, the Beeb were quite up for it. But I went over the top when I suggested that a red card meant the politicians were ceremoniously marched from the studio. That would have meant every interview with David Cameron or Tessa Jowell would have been over in 2 minutes – leaving us a big hole to fill! My suggestions that each politician was allowed to play one ‘joker’ when they didn’t want to answer a question was dismissed as ‘pantomime-style’ … with hindsight I tend to agree but it would have made great radio!

Then I had the unswerving misery of watching Gordon Brown react to the vote on the bail-out in the US. He was asked four different questions on Sky and, this is no word of a lie, he said exactly the same in answer to all four of them. He could have been told that David Cameron was suggesting all the cabinet should take up face painting and the same answer would have been trotted out. And then it struck me: