Watching brief - Amanda Platell sees the Tories seduce the Sindy
Published 28 March 2005
Watching TV with Tony, how the tabloids stole the broadsheets' thunder, and how the Sindy kicked up a storm with the Tories
While Michael Howard's Tory party has spent the past year working up ideas and costings for its election manifesto, Tony Blair has been watching television. He was so inspired by Jamie Oliver's Channel 4 series Jamie's School Dinners that he decided to have a mini-manifesto for children.
The government's new election strategy is to jump on the latest TV bandwagon, latch on to the show's popularity, make big promises while promising no funding and, hey presto, it's an election winner. From The Naked Chef to naked political ambition in one easy step. And why not? But where to next? Albert Square's new storyline on street violence. Bingo, Blair policy - tough on EastEnders crime, tough on the causes of EastEnders crime.
Richard and Judy's book club is a fantastic success. One in five 11-year-olds in this country can't read properly, so let them watch TV. Another winner. Whether it's that nice Carol Vorderman from Countdown helping kids to add up, Little Britain's David Walliams advising how to feel OK about being the only gay in the village, or Ann Widdecombe from Celebrity Fit Club fighting obesity, the inspiration goes on and on.
The government tried listening to the people and that didn't work - so now they just watch TV with them. What a pity, then, that Blair couldn't have taken a bit more notice of BBC1's Panorama programme, which exposed the evidence (and I use the word as loosely as the PM did) cited to take us to war in Iraq. But then, there are no votes to be had from lies.
There cannot be an industry awards ceremony in the world that does not draw criticism, but the noises from this year's British Press Awards are the most alarming yet. Eleven editors are considering whether they will take part next year, after the News International-owned red tops News of the World and Sun took most of the top prizes. It is not journalistic snobbery driving this move, but rather a strong belief that the quality and mass-market papers cannot compete in the same categories - a view with which I have some sympathy, having worked in both areas.
There is a touch of the Chelsea Football Club about the red tops now. How can a detailed piece of investigative journalism ever be expected to compete against a Max Clifford buy-up?
The BBC's live Budget coverage left a great deal to be desired, and not just because Andrew Neil's must-watch The Daily Politics was canned to run it. How good do a show and its presenters have to be before the BBC breaks with tradition and allows them to do the big story of the day - at midday even - rather than just replacing it with traditional Budget coverage?
An effort was made to spice up events by bringing on Alan Sugar, star of the BBC's new series The Apprentice (a sugar fairy compared to Donald Trump in the highly successful American original), and Sahar Hashemi, the co-founder of Coffee Republic.
Hashemi behaved like a paid-up member of the Labour Party, while Sugar looked as though all he wanted to do was say to her: "You're fired." He was not alone.
Talk about value for money. The Tories continue their strategy of weekly ads in national Sunday newspapers to launch policy initiatives, recently announcing in the Independent on Sunday tough new planning laws to restrict the rights of travellers. The newspaper splashed on the story: "Howard stirs race row with attack on gypsies". Everyone then ran the story and the former Tory cabinet minister David Mellor began an assault on the Sindy's version of events on Breakfast with Frost. You couldn't buy that kind of publicity.
When will the marketing men get we women? First, they get arguably Britain's worst mum - and Sharon Osbourne argues that herself - to publicise the working mum's supermarket Asda. Then Sex and the City's Sarah Jessica Parker is paid £20m by Gap to flog their clothes, only to be unceremoniously dumped after a year for a virtual unknown. For those of us who look to Gap for cheap, simple, casual clothes, the sight of SJP - a multimillionairess style icon who spends more on her Jimmy Choos than the average shopper spends on her children's education - is no selling point.
David Blunkett is starting to sound like a third-rate soap actress giving yet another womb-trembler interview to a gossip magazine. The Daily Telegraph contained the latest outpourings of his grief: "She was the great love of my life, she meant everything to me." At this rate, Blunkett is in danger of invading not only Kimberly Quinn's privacy, but also his own.
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