Thursday 16 May 2019

Read this now

You need to read this - it's by Robin Aitken.

You might as well go and do it now.

Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber

Before you go, I’ll just explain that it’s about the BBC, impartiality and interviewing strategies. 
It explores the recent car-crash interviews from which the two Andys emerged, moderately bruised, to fight another day. Remember Andrew Neil’s quote which appeared towards the end of
my previous post?
“It’s part of my contract that I don’t join any political party in their campaigns… it’s also part of my contract that I don’t have to be in favour of antisemitism. But I don’t get involved in your campaign. My job is to test your campaign.”
The general principle is:
 ‘I am here to ask questions and get answers and I have no politics of my own’, 
but, and it’s a big but, them thar politics always show through.

Off you trot. Do come back when you’ve finished, and tell us all about it. It’s just up your street.

(I think I've been temporarily taken over by Joyce Grenfell) Not now, Sidney!

Update:
Look out! I dozed off during Question Time (who were those people?) But I awoke, refreshed, to see Andrew Neil. Blimey!

You’d almost think someone had been coaching Portillo’s sidekick (Who was that person?) No, not Sandra Oh! but Melanie Onn! (So confusing, a kind of Oh No!) Andrew Neil is obviously bruised. You’d almost suspect that Melanie Onn had been coached by “the team” to feed Andrew Neil by alluding to the US abortion issue as a ‘dark ages’ type of a thing, just so that Andrew Neil could bring up his Ben Shapiro ‘demolition jobbie’ all over again, but this time do so in that dismissive, ‘laughin’ at myself’ manner, as in ‘I haven’t a care in the world’ to show that.... he. ain't. bovvered.

But I think he’s rattled. Because they even dragged in Galloway to opine about the state of broadcasting and the art of interviewing. Admittedly they hung it on the hook of the death of Brian Walden, but to me, it looked like damage limitation. By the BBC, and by Andrew Neil. And wasn’t he welcoming to the point of smarmy to Galloway? (Whom I have to concede, on this occasion, spoke sense.) I do hope we don’t have to see much more of him and his hat in future. (Obsessive attachments to wearing hats and big overcoats indoors signals deep insecurity verging on mental illness) While they were at it they also had a go at Andrew Marr. 

And wasn’t Ian Austin good? He didn’t get nearly such a warm reception as GG, but his despair at Corbyn’s leadership and at his former colleagues’ spineless acquiescence was heartfelt and long-awaited.

If This Week is past your bedtime and you didn’t see it, do catch it on your Listen Again facility
 (Do stop doing that, Sidney!)

1 comment:

  1. Spot which one was once a member of an extreme Maoist revolutionary group? And which one was once editor of an extremist magazine that promoted no-borders world capitalism...

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