The grass isn't always greener

 

Andrew Neil is a big fish. The BBC is a big pond. Will he find GB News a small pond? 

I do hope not. He deserves to succeed, and GB News deserves to succeed. They are both very much needed.

But sometimes people who are considered - and especially who consider themselves - 'BBC stars' have sunk rather than swum after leaving Auntie's protectively ample bosom.

Take the case of former 'BBC Breakfast star' Steph McGovern - the one who boasted to Boris Johnson about being in her job longer than he would be in his job. 

She's now at Channel 4 with a new show, Steph's Packed Lunch. 

This new 'star vehicle', the Daily Mirror reported this week, "failed to record a single viewer earlier this week":

Exclusive: Channel 4's Steph's Packed Lunch registered zero viewers at one point during the show on Tuesday

That's one heck of an achievement. It doesn't even sound possible. I'm assuming the ratings went so low they couldn't be detected by BARB (the Broadcasters Audience Research Board). 

Reading the Mirror piece it's hard not to feel sorry for her. She's up against ITV's Loose Women and appears to be receiving a cruel wake-up call. 

Maybe, in a few months, she'll be asking Andrew Neil to "gizza job"?

Offence to some

Watch: McGovern v Johnson 👊 pic.twitter.com/Xl78oJ0mU0

— Tom Newton Dunn (@tnewtondunn) September 13, 2019

As the Sun's Tom Newton Dunn put it yesterday: 

BBC Breakfast presenter and conference compere Steph McGovern sticks one on the PM after he leaves the stage: “I'd just like to point out, I am a girly swot and I’m proud of it. Let’s see who’s in the job the longest”.

Steph (whose birthname is Stephanie) has now, as is the way of such things, apologised for her joke. Or, at least, half-apologised (as is also the way of such things):

At a non BBC event I was hosting today, I made a light hearted remark after the Prime Minister’s speech. Sorry that this caused offence to some. That was absolutely not my intention.

Opinion has split is the usual sharp way over the story, but I'll quote recently-departed (from the BBC) Giles Dilnot on the matter and end there:

Lots of people loving Steph McGovern's witty burn on the PM and frankly it was a good line, lots of people less impressed. Actually in the end it doesn’t matter what she said or what we think: in her job, like when I had the same, you can’t, you just can’t. Still a good line tho. 😏  

She’s great. Really good broadcaster and sharp, but you can’t do that stuff as a BBC presenter in news and she is in news. 

Another beauty

Donald and Steph

Good grief! This was one of the main stories on the front page of the BBC News website last night and it's still one of the BBC's Top 4 news stories this morning (some twelve hours later):

So Donald Trump, the multi-millionaire with the model wife, called Steph McGovern orfa BBC Breakfast "so beautiful", and she says she replied, "Aye love, I've heard better lines down Club Bongo". 

And, my, how the  Have I Got News For You panel and audience larfed when she told them about her encounter with "creepy" Donald and her comeback line! 

Comments on Twitter haven't been going quite as well for Our Steph. Here's one of the kinder ones:

I think the BBC must be giving out vouchers to all the people who have a go at DT. One snide remark = a free meal, two snide remarks = a chance to be on another programme, three = regular employment.

I do like this passage from the BBC report though:

In the interview McGovern grilled Mr Trump about his status as a business tycoon, his previous bid for the US presidency in 2012, and whether his wealth made him happy.

If you watch it for yourselves, I don't think the word "grilled" will spring to mind! It was a lightweight interview. She even asked him about his hair!

Shampoo

Nick Robinson is miffed, they say, because the BBC is replacing him for their upcoming election coverage with young ladies, namely Steph McGovern and Tina Daheley. I suppose it’s a case of diversity gawn mad.

I have to make a couple of ad hominem comments - well I don’t have to, but I will.

Steph McGovern’s accent is…. I don’t know .… for election coverage at least - an accent too far. And as for Tina Daheley, with whom I’m familiar only because of her occasional news-reading stints on the Andrew Marr show, has found an original way of being annoying.

She seems reluctant to face the camera ‘fully frontal’, so to speak, like a proper newsreader. That is to say, her face is always tilted slightly away from the camera, so the viewer gets a good view of her hair, as in a shampoo advert. This may sound picky, but once you notice it, you can’t un-notice it. Trivial, perhaps, but there it is.

Rectifying a surprising omission

The paper reviewer on this morning's BBC Breakfast was writer and barrister Zia Chaudhry, founder of the Just Your Average Muslim project (and author of the book of the same name). 

One of the things about keeping records about the BBC - even incomplete ones - is that they allow to to keep track of changes to BBC editorial policy over time. 

A couple of years ago, I listed all the guests from a couple of separate runs of BBC Breakfast weekend paper reviews - one from 2011, the other from 2013/14 - and noted that, between 2011 and 2014, there had clearly been a determined effort (a) to feature more female paper reviewers, (b) to move away from using print journalists , and (c) to invite more religious guests - especially vicars.

A curious thing looking back over those two lists (which you can read here) is that they only included one Muslim guest, Mehdi Hasan - and even he'd (seemingly) been dropped over the intervening period, leaving no Muslims guests throughout the 2013-14 period. That was a very surprising omission for the BBC, wasn't it?

That has clearly changed now. Within the past month alone, Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra (on Boxing Day), Nazir Afzal and now Zia Chaudhry have all been on the weekend BBC Breakfast sofa reviewing the papers. A editorial decision has, therefore, obviously been taken - and put into practice - to include more Muslim paper reviewers on BBC Breakfast.

I will return to closely monitoring this for a while. Will any other editorial decisions be discernible?

******

Anyhow, here's part of how the start of this morning's paper review went:

Jon Kay: Zia, thanks for coming in. What's attracted your attention in the papers? 

Zia Chaudhry: Well, the Prime Minister, not surprisingly, in his opening to the new year had something to say to those who don't seem to subscribe to British values. And, of course, he's addressing the terrorist threat and how it's not just those who pull the trigger and who set off the explosives who need to be tackled but those who...in the past he's used the phrase "quietly condone". But it's along the same lines that we need to subscribe to British values. But he's used a phrase, "loyalty to Britain" which is going to be interesting to define because a lot of people say one of the best things about being British is that you can dissent, you can take part in an anti-war demonstration without committing a crime. And it might be that some people interpret "loyalty to Britain" as meaning that we can no longer do that. I don't think that is the position but its perhaps a timely reminder that we need to be clear in the way we define these things and avoid a 'them versus us' sort of narrative that seems to be developing. 

Steph McGovern: Hmm, and interesting as well because, of course, it will be this year when we have the EU referendum. So that kind of plays into that as well, doesn't it?

Maybe it's the after-effects of all that New Year cheer, but I really didn't quite follow Steph's logic there. Did you?