Just an update on a previous post, BBC Correspondents Look Back...In Embarrassment....
Last night saw the broadcast of this years BBC Correspondents Look Ahead, again presented by Owen Bennett Jones. Mark Mardell, Lyse Doucet and James Robbins returned to face the music over last year's many, many awry predictions and to lay out their predictions for 2012. Sadly Paul Mason, whose prognostications were in a league of awryness all of his own, was a no-show (being replaced by Stephanie Flanders). Was he otherwise engaged, or just too embarrassed?
The programme didn't entirely avoid airbrushing some of the wrong predictions from last time but, all in all, they did an admirable job in 'fessing up. James conceded he'd had a below-average year and Mark was made to squirm over some of his predictions - gales of laughter surrounding his off-target man-to-watch from last year!
I was intrigued to hear Owen say, "A rather unkind blogger put up a comment the other day saying we don't need any wild predictions on this programme because all the predictions are badly off-the-mark so it's not a necessary category" - which, I believe, is a free paraphrase of a crack of mine from that post.
I was also intrigued to hear Owen say, "I hope you enjoyed listening to that and agreed with some of it and kept notes or digital records so that everyone can be held to account."
I will be doing precisely that.
Rather disappointingly, however, this year's predictions seem to have been made in a much greater spirit of caution, with a greater number of safe bets being made. There were few examples of the correspondents really going out on a limb this time. Surely reading my hatchet-job on their last set of predictions hasn't spooked them into playing safe?
