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28 March 2023

GB News host Eamonn Holmes and his £135 tie

Inflation hits Curly Wurlies and menswear.

By The Chatterer

The next time you have a dull workday, spare a thought for the journalist who recently spent 18 hours straight watching GB News. Bron Maher, a reporter at Press Gazette, a sister title to the New Statesman, has recounted his ordeal in detail

The Chatterer was particularly amused by some of the nuggets of wisdom offered by Eamonn Holmes, who presents GB News’s breakfast show with Isabel Webster. At one moment, Holmes mused: “I look at my dog every day and I think: ‘I wish I could talk to you.’ ” Earlier in the show he had described Rishi Sunak as a “tiny little leprechaun person”. On the subject of inflation/shrinkflation, Holmes claimed to remember Curly Wurly chocolate bars measuring three feet in length and Mars bars the size of bricks.

In possibly the oddest moment of the morning, Holmes invited Webster to guess how much his tie cost. The answer? £135. Webster told him it was “lovely”, then Holmes asked her: “Would you like to stroke it?” Webster took him up on the offer. 

Later on, in the evening slot, the Press Gazette report noted that Dan Wootton had used the term “MSM” – usually used in a conspiratorial manner to talk about the “mainstream media” – seven times during his two-hour show. His guest, Amanda Platell, also used the term. (Wootton and Platell write for the Daily Mail and Mail Online respectively – very much part of the MSM, you might think.) 

All in all, the Chatterer was pleased to conclude that GB News remains far from a must-watch television station. Phew.

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[See also: “We’re going to disrupt”: A year inside GB News]

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