My part in Iain Duncan Smith’s sullen, sarcastic and ill-tempered outburst

Iain Duncan Smith and his party have thrown two big wobblies about BBC coverage in recent weeks. One episode occurred in the small hours of Friday 2 May when David Dimbleby compered BBC Television’s local- election-night programme. The other unfolded last Sunday lunchtime on Radio Four’s The World This Weekend as the presenter, James Cox, took a look at the Tories’ post-local-election prospects.

Iain Duncan Smith is furious about both broadcasts. As it happens, they have something in common: me.

But in each case I was little more than a chance witness. Hardly seen by the Tory leader as an exceptionally fearsome creature, I will feature in these complaints as no more than symptomatic of what the Tories think is wrong with the BBC. The Conservative party is right to feel occasionally niggled, wrong to think itself uniquely abused, right to keep up the pressure on the Corporation, but very wrong to let the leader himself get into scraps he should rise above.

First to David Dimbleby’s programme. The results of May’s local elections were just beginning to come in. In the BBC’s Millbank studio at Westminster, Mr Dimbleby was chairing a big round table with a shifting miscellany of studio guests and commentary from Peter Snow and others elsewhere. Guests alongside me included Michael Howard (the shadow chancellor), Lord (Tom) McNally from the Liberal Democrats and someone from the Labour party – it was Tessa Jowell. From a street somewhere David Mellor briefly joined us, too. From time to time we would go over to an announcement at a local count.

Crispin Blunt’s resignation from the Tory front bench was on every front page, not unreasonably. But first we looked at the handful of results already declared which (in my view) were not too bad for the Tories but did not guarantee the better news that was to come.