Tottygate

If there's one thing that Ian Katz's Newsnight has made its own it's its coverage of social media storms and spats. So it was inevitable that it would cover 'Tottygate'. 

Here's what happened: An unnamed Tory MP called Isabel Hardman of The Spectator "the totty". She complained to the whips. The MP apologised. Twitter went mad. Isabel Oakeshott wrote in the Mail that her namesake shouldn't have complained as it was no big deal and actually a compliment. Twitter went mad again. Newsnight decided it was a must-cover story. And Newsnight duly covered it.

Isabel Oakeshott was set against Jenni Russell of The Times. Jenni compared the situation to the civil rights movement in America, with Isabel Hardman as Martin Luther King. Isabel Oakeshott really didn't buy the comparison.  

Evan was straight in with the burning question to Isabel O:

Did you really mean it? Did you really mean it? Or were you trying to be provocative when you said she should possibly really have been pleased as being called 'totty'?

******

And then it was onto a film with "explicit depictions of nakedness, vomit, diarrhoea and anal sex".

Yes. Peter Greenaway. And his new film about Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein.

Mr Greenaway has made Eisenstein gay. The Russians aren't happy.