Fighting talk

Radio Four listeners have been complaining about the John Humphrys ‘interview’ with David Cameron on Today a fortnight or so ago. So they must have been even more irritated to hear the programme’s deputy editor, Gavin Allen, defending the encounter on Feedback last week (Friday, repeated Sunday), even going so far as to describe it as a successful interview in which he thought Humphrys didn’t interrupt too much. The presenter, Roger Bolton, put it to him that according to the head of radio news even Humphrys didn’t think the interview had gone as he intended. Allen doggedly stuck to his line that he wasn’t at all disappointed by it.

Obviously, there’s a need to defend your staff but, really, no one can honestly say the interview was successful. Hearing it at the time and familiar with the Humphrys technique even I thought the interruptions were ridiculous, as indeed did Cameron himself.