I have fallen out with the man who likened the Today programme to a rowing boat adrift from modern Britain
Published 19 March 2001
It is never nice. Only the other day, when I was having a chat with a good friend after my Radio 5 Live programme, I had a falling out with him. This has left a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach. I really do hate it when people criticise the BBC gratuitously and unfairly - and this was both. He likened the Radio 4 Today programme to a handful of people in a rowing boat drifting away from the shoreline of modern Britain. That's not fair. First, he isn't within the Today listener age-profile, although he will not see 49 again; and second, as Helen Boaden, the super-bright controller of Radio 4, told me when I interviewed her at a session at last year's Radio Festival, there is still a place on British radio for that all that "curmudgeonliness".
She is quite right. All that shire county-speak of people "using" cannabis and being "on" soft drugs is stunning. It really is just what my mum would say. That is brilliant broadcasting. It is a beeline-direct connection to the perspective of that audience and that generation. Incidentally, I had lunch with Jim Naughtie recently for an Aberdeen University old boys' piss-up (different generations, though) and he was great fun. He was full of mischief and badinage and showbiz asides. He would be my tip for the Jimmy Young show when the mighty one eventually steps down.
I have just signed up as the new presenter of Watchdog, replacing the doughty Anne Robinson. She is a tough act to follow and I feel positively Majoresque. Well, who would have thought it? Being of unimpeachable integrity, I did not accept the job for the money or the kudos or any such meaningless folly. I did it so that I can sashay into shops as if my first name were Naomi and be waited upon by a retinue of quivering attendants . . .
The interview process for the position was bizarre: the only criterion required seemed to be an abiding passion for, knowledge of, and intimacy with, all things Welsh. I narrowly beat John Redwood to the post. Here's to you, Mrs Robinson: a nation turns its angry eyes on you.
To call it the 5 Live phone-in does it little justice. These are not so much phone-ins as, to put it unpretentiously, socio-anthropological happenings. They are about Zeitgeist and Weltanschauung giving each other Lebensraum. (I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel as if I'm living in a foreign land.) Of course, ours is a far broader remit then merely politics. We deal with the current affairs that people are interested in and engaged by, and we tend to get our fingers badly burnt when we obsess about Westminster scuttlebutt and dwell on politics as a media spectator sport. As one broadsheet editor told me, the 5 Live phone is the best way to catch a glimpse of the national mood and determine what people actually care about. I'll buy that, Mr Kelner.
Conducting an interview, with listeners' questions added into the mix at appropriate times, can be an effective pincer movement, which requires the nation's masters and mistresses to have mastered and mistressed the elusive art of appearing to be from this planet. This takes us to our leaders. Of our contemporary political titans, Blair and Hague and Kennedy are all pretty good at dealing with real people - or "callers", as we term them - although everyone has the occasional Belgrano moment. However, Gordon Brown comes across particularly well because he has to modify his entire approach. He can't bluster and bully and bang the line quite so easily to a nurse or a pensioner or a farmer - and paradoxically, that gear change suits him.
There are others who fear the format so much that they wouldn't touch it with a press officer. One government minister even demanded to see the questions from the callers beforehand. Most disappointing of all is the ex-minister who pointedly refused to do it at all and effectively boycotted the entire network just because we have Charlie Whelan on our books. He shall remain shameless - or should that be blameless?
After the flyaway success of Big Brother, the show that turns "ordinary" people into celebrities and in its latest manifestation makes "celebrities" look very ordinary, is it too late for a political version of the show before the election? In fact, is it too late to set one up instead of the election?
This would conquer voter apathy in one fell snoop - look at the viewing figures - and make for some red-hot arguments. Imagine the mutual bitterness and contempt laid bare, as the contestants let fly at each other in the cloistered atmosphere of the Big Brother house, while we vote on ejection between mouthfuls of sweet and sour chicken. If we let the Tories and Lib Dems in, it might be quite good, too.
After three hours a day for five days a week on the radio and a weekly dose of live TV, I get through loads of research and stacks of facts pass through my mind. After taking up temporary residence there, most just drift away and the next time I tackle education or health or Zimbabwe, or whatever we are discussing, I have to mug up all over again. I really envy those who have that kind of fly-trap mind that keeps it all in and knows where it is. By the time I am reading Peter Rabbit to my little girls of an evening, I can hardly remember the names of Flopsy, Mopsy or Cottontail, although I know their faces and the points they want to make. I wish I could remember the name of the friend who said all that horrible stuff about the Today programme.
Don't worry.
I'll get him back.
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