A Tale of Two Interviews

I was going to write something long and detailed about Sarah Montague's interview with Conservative London mayoral candidate Zak Goldsmith on this morning's Today, but Dateline London regular Alex Deane has already said all that needs saying via Twitter:

The interview was certainly a good deal more hostile than Sarah Montague's equivalent interview yesterday with Labour's Sadiq Khan. There was no laughter today, far more questions, far tougher questions and a lot more interruptions. 

Indeed, were I to revive my old 'interruption coefficients', Zak Goldsmith would have scored an IC of 2.5 (being interrupted 20 times in just over 8 minutes) and Sadiq Khan an IC of 1.3 (being interrupted 8 times in just over 6 minutes), meaning that Mr Goldsmith got almost twice as tough an interview (interruption-wise) than his Labour opponent - a stat that neatly matches my general impression of the contrasting nature of the two interviews.

The whole interview with Zak Goldsmith was quite extraordinary, not least the way Sarah Montague first called Mr Khan "a Muslim candidate", then "the Muslim candidate", as if she seemed to believe that he's standing for mayor 'as a Muslim' -  which probably isn't what he'd have ideally preferred her to insinuate (even though he'd not be the first in exploiting it if it suited the circumstance.) 

Sarah Montague's whole line of argument here seemed to boil down to: So because he is a Muslim he can't be labelled 'radical', even if it's meant in the non-religious context (as it clearly was here).

Is that where we're getting to now, with the BBC's help?