Two things that don't normally go together: 'Woman's Hour' and chuckles

 

I've never managed to form a fully-rounded opinion yet of Emma Barnett, the new presenter of Woman's Hour, but I chuckled at a few things in a laudatory report in The Times today about her debut yesterday. 

The first chuckle came on reading that that HM the Queen sent a congratulatory message to the programme on its 75th anniversary. Emma's first act yesterday was to read it out. 

The Queen professes herself a fan, and I bet the HRH the Duke of Edinburgh is a huge fan too. I can just imagine him being (like his eldest son) all ears for the very latest about gender bias in school books, sustainable fashion, student sex work policy, Extinction Rebellion, post-partum psychosis, female footballers and dementia, and the orgasm cult. 

The second chuckle came on reading that Emma's first interview - and Woman's Hour's opening interview - was with Sonia Khan, a woman "peremptorily sacked" by BBC bogeyman Dominic Cummings. 

How very BBC! - especially from someone who spent last year as a regular presenter on Newsnight, the BBC programme that went after Dom so hard and so personally. 

They're truly obsessed with him, aren't they?

The third chuckle came from reading that, apparently, this interview didn't work out well though for the BBC as Ms Khan said she was "not going into the detail" about it and that it was "not as dramatic as it sounds". No scoop then for Woman's Hour. (Ha ha! Classic Dom!)

The fourth chuckle concerned something that took me back before even reading it, having had a look at the BBC Radio 4 schedule prior to the programme being broadcast: There were two men listed as guests: Jeremy Hunt and Nazanin's husband Richard Ratcliffe. 

Men, on Woman's Hour?!? I thought Woman's Hour was a mans-exclusionary radical feminist (MERF) programme. 

Apparently though, "Before the show aired [Emma] Barnett had promised that she would have more men on it". 

At least the departed Dame Jenni and Jane, after copious consumption of smelling salts at that absolute outrage, can just about breathe a sigh of relief that the men in question weren't transwomen.

Ratings

       

How fascinating that Her Majesty the Queen's 2020 Christmas message beat everything else to win the annual Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (Barb) ratings prize on Christmas Day! 

Though she crossed channels, on the BBC figures alone Good Queen Elizabeth beat Call the Midwife, the revived Blankety Blank, Strictly Come Dancing and Michael McIntyre's The Wheel by almost a million viewers. 

The licence-fee-funded BBC claimed victory over its commercial rivals though because it got all the the non-royal top spots, with ITV's Coronation Street coming into sixth. 

Alas for the BBC though, former Christmas ratings giant Eastenders fell behind ITV's Emmerdale - and even behind the BBC programme BBC defenders are allowed to hate: Mrs Brown's Boys. 

Still, here's Kate Phillips, the acting controller of BBC One, crowing about the ratings:

BBC One had the most popular show on Christmas Day as audiences escaped to Poplar for the Call the Midwife special. 

I’m really proud of the range and quality of programmes we’ve shown across this special day. BBC One entertained the nation and provided something for everyone to enjoy after a particularly difficult year.

Don't forget though Kate. "Everyone" didn't watch your channel. 

Far from it in fact: All the four non-royal BBC programmes in the Top 5 ranged between 5.43 million and 4.66 million - under 10% of the UK population. Back in 1986 Eastenders on Christmas Day claimed 30.15 million viewers. Is 5.43 million for your top Christmas Day show this year really something to crow about, Kate?

Oddly, because of family circumstances, I did watch The Wheel and Blankety Blank. (I know!)

Nicholas Witchell on the Queen's corgis

Happy Birthday to the Queen!

Vive la Reine!

There were some sour comments on Twitter last night about the closing piece on yesterday's PM [and those agreeing with Robert Peston's view that the BBC is pro-establishment might have tutted too had they heard it], but I myself very much enjoyed John Laurenson's piece on why the French like our Queen.

John Laurenson: The Queen doesn't speak French like a native - how horrible would that be! - but she does speak it rather well. She's an even quite lyrical Francophile. "Paris is a light that glimmers in our imaginations", she said. And the people of Paris are quite keen on her too.

Une femme française: Quite a woman! She's been on the froon for sixty years now, more than sixty years...

John Laurenson: On the throne for sixty years?

Une femme française: Yes the throne, for sixty years.

John Laurenson: She's 88.

Une femme française: She's 88!! Quite good!

Un homme français: I think it's a way for you to have something strong in your institutions and maybe something like that is missing in France.

John Laurenson: It would be nice for France to have a king or a queen again?

Une autre femme française: Well, it would be nice for us to have anything except the one we have now! Anything!!

Peter Ricketts: I'm Peter Ricketts. I'm the British ambassador in France. I think a lot of French people feel that they've known the Queen for years, that there's a continuity. Now the Queen has been coming to France since 1948, when she came as a young princess, just married. They admire her sense of duty, her calmness, the fact that she's always been there.

John Laurenson: Next to the embassy, at the entrance to his English-style gentleman's club, I meet the TV and radio presenter Stéphane Bern, France's most famous monarchist.

Stéphane Bern: She reigns over us for...I say reigns over "us" because she's sort of the real sovereign.

John Laurenson: You say "she reigns over us" almost as if she has some influence even here in France?

Stéphane Bern: Yes she has, of course. Every state visit, it was impressive on the Champs-Élysées to see the people, the crowds, the waving. And they shout her name with love and with admiration.

John Laurenson: At a house in Dreux, west of Paris, next to the chapel where the kings of the Orleans dynasty are buried, I meet Princess Philomena and her daughter Antoinette. "The Prince is in a bad mood this morning", she warns. "Been struggling to make his internet router work". But when Prince Jean appears, striding across the garden laid out by his great-great-great-great-grandfather, the last King of France, the heir-but-one to the admittedly hypothetical French throne, is in a sunny enough mood. The router, like a wayward vassal, has been brought into line and the prospect of the Queen's visit is an uplifting one. He was there last time she came over for a D-Day anniversary and he saw how popular a monarch can be.

Prince Jean of Orléans, Dauphin of France, Duke of Vendôme: The American president came in a whoosh-whoosh noise with all the cars and the helicopters and stopping in front of the tribune and waving with a hand on one side and looking on the other side, and you could hear a kind of mood of disapprobation from the crowd that was almost 25,000 persons. And then when the Queen arrived you had only three grey range rovers with the British flag, and when she came out everyone stood up and applause. And a long, long, long time.

John Laurenson: Are you a little bit jealous of the British royal family that you were unable to survive?

Prince Jean of Orléans, Dauphin of France, Duke of Vendôme: We were always very jealous of England.

John Laurenson: "The French are republicans in their heads but monarchists in their hearts", says Prince Jean, who hopes they will end up reconciling the two and restoring a constitutional monarchy in this country. In the meantime they seem happy enough to make do with ours.

John Laurenson [à une femme française]: Can you sing it?

Une femme française [singing]: "God save our gracious Queen, Long live our noble Queen, God save ze Queen!"

John Laurenson [à une femme française]: Very good!