Bbc

Friday

Steerpike

Watch: Anna Soubry speaks for the nation on Question Time… for once

These days Mr S rarely – if ever – finds himself agreeing with Anna Soubry on politics. The arch-Remainer has made it her mission to keep Britain in the customs union, the single market and ideally – Steerpike suspects – the EU. Yet, on Question Time this week, the Conservative MP managed to briefly strike a chord with many Brexiteers and Remainers alike: ‘Good Lord, no.’ That said, if Soubry does go ahead with her customs union rebellion on the EU withdrawal bill, things may get very fraught indeed…

Thursday

Freddy Gray

The BBC gave Steve Bannon a platform – and it was fascinating

If the BBC really is, as Steve Bannon says, a communications department of the global elite, they messed up badly last night. Emily Maitlis’s 20-minute long interview with Bannon on Newsnight was mesmerising television — even, or especially, if you can’t bear the subject.  It was also the longest advertisement for economic nationalism yet delivered to British viewers. No doubt Raheem Kassam, the close Bannon associate who’s just left Breitbart and has been on Newsnight a few times himself, had something to do with it. By airing the discussion, the Beeb disproves the Bannonite idea that it is part of an elite conspiracy to silence populist points of view on immigration.

James Delingpole James Delingpole

Notes on a scandal | 24 May 2018

Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little, so you can imagine how sickened I was by the magisterial TV adaptation of John Preston’s A Very English Scandal (BBC1, Sundays). I’ve known Preston for years. It’s himI have to thank for the compendious collection of CDs rotting in my attic, from the ten years or so I spent working under him (he was the arts editor) as the Sunday Telegraph’s rock critic. But though I’ve hugely enjoyed all his quirky, low-key, sardonically amused novels — loosely on the theme of ‘quiet desperation is the English way’ —I never imagined he’d luck out quite so spectacularly as he has with

Kate Chisholm

Faulty connection | 24 May 2018

‘Do you ever imagine your audience?’ was a question thrown at James Ward, creator and presenter of The Boring Talks podcast, at a recent seminar on podcasting organised by the BBC. ‘I try not to,’ Ward replied.‘I wouldn’t want to meet them.’ Such antipathy is all part of Ward’s alternative persona. The Boring Talks’s USP is to explore those topics usually considered too dull to explore, let alone talk about for half an hour. It’s become very popular, emerging from the Boring Talks conferences that have been held annually now for eight years. But his comment was very revealing. You can really tell when listening to his show that he

Sunday

Steerpike

Watch: Emma Barnett skewers Barry Gardiner over Brexit comments

Oh dear. Although Theresa May’s divided government is currently in a state of deadlock over Brexit, the Prime Minister can at least take heart that the Tories aren’t the only party experiencing difficulties here. This morning Barry Gardiner was the victim of a car crash interview on the Andrew Marr show. With Marr on sick leave, Emma Barnett was Gardiner’s interviewer – and she did not hold back. The BBC presenter took the shadow International Trade secretary to task over comments he made about the Irish border in March while at an event held by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. At the event, Gardiner described the Good Friday Agreement as ‘a shibboleth’

Sunday

Charles Moore

Why the BBC weather forecasts wind me up

One of George Santayana’s most famous dicta is that ‘To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.’ This may be a metaphor for life, but it is also literally true. It matters in countries such as ours, where no season is so extreme that it cannot be enjoyed. If you agree with Santayana, you will be irritated by our BBC weather forecasts, which misrepresent the weather as a constant, and generally losing, battle to get warmer. In their language, temperatures are forever ‘struggling’ — always to rise, never to fall. This is an extract from Charles Moore’s

Friday

Steerpike

Watch: Martin Lewis schools Labour MP on Question Time over tuition fees

In the flurry of excitement over the local elections, Chi Onwurah’s Question Time appearance has been cruelly overlooked. Happily, Mr S is on hand to right this wrong. The Labour MP’s attempt to criticise the Tories over student loans backfired last night. The Labour MP spoke of her apparent fears that a working-class student could be put off university by the amount they would have to pay back. But Onwurah didn’t account for a furious Martin Lewis, who was also on the Question Time panel, taking her to task for her comments: Astonishing scenes on #bbcqt as a furious moneysaving expert Martin Lewis destroys Labour’s Chi Onwurah over her attempts use student debt

Thursday

Adam Sweeting

Partners in crime

It’s not every day that a television screenwriter is threatened with a trial for sedition, but G.F. Newman was after his series Law & Order aired on BBC2 in 1978. ‘The political fallout was enormous and there was a move to try and get me prosecuted by Sir Eldon Griffiths and a gang of MPs, but it didn’t go anywhere,’ Newman remembers. ‘It would have been a wonderful case had it done so.’ Law & Order rocked the boat by doing the unthinkable, so much so that BBC director-general Sir Ian Trethowan was hauled over the coals by the Home Office minister John Harris (later Lord Harris). It depicted the

James Walton

Recipe for success | 3 May 2018

From time to time, a TV show comes along which is so thrillingly original, so wildly imaginative, that you can’t even begin to think where the makers got the idea. Britain’s Best Home Cook (BBC1, Thursday) isn’t one of them. Nevertheless, it has a serious claim to being the most important new programme of the week — if only to the BBC which, despite the failure of The Big Family Cooking Showdown (whose title I just had to check via Google), clearly hasn’t given up on the possibility of finding a way to replace The Great British Bake Off. But in fact there’s another series that some viewers might feel

Thursday

James Delingpole

Missing the point | 26 April 2018

Because I’m a miserable old reactionary determined to see a sinister Guardianista plot in every BBC programme I watch, I sat stony-faced through much of Cunk On Britain (BBC2, Tuesdays). Philomena Cunk (played by Diane Morgan) is a spoof comedy character who used to appear on Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe and has now been given a full series. Though the character is amiable enough — a heroically thick Northern woman in a smart jacket who goes around Britain making stupid observations and asking celebrity historians dumb questions — I can’t quite work out what the point of the joke is. Is it a send-up of dumbed-down Britain? Is it designed

Richard Bratby

By ’eck, petal, it’s gorgeous

The opening of Mark Simpson’s new Cello Concerto is pure Hollywood. A fanfare in the low brass, an upwards rush and suddenly the screen floods with lush orchestral sound — as confident in its onward sweep as Star Wars or ‘Tara’s Theme’. Waiting, poised, in the middle of it all was the soloist Leonard Elschenbroich, for whom Simpson has said that he wanted to write a concerto that celebrated the cello’s ‘expressive and lyrical force’. He has, too. From the instant Elschenbroich entered, it felt right. The cello soared over a chiming marimba, like in Walton’s Cello Concerto. It lingered over its farewells, like in Elgar’s. And it rocketed headfirst

Friday

Steerpike

Watch: Emily Thornberry booed on Question Time over Russia

This week Question Time moved to Chesterfield with a panel comprised of Liz Truss, Emily Thornberry, Vince Cable, Nesrine Malik and LBC presenter Iain Dale. However, the talk that proved the most newsworthy related to international affairs. Discussing the government’s strikes on Syria over an alleged chemical attack by the Assad regime, Thornberry suggested that the delay in inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) testing the site of the suspected chemical attack was the result of the United Nations and its ‘red tape’ – rather the Russian and Syrian governments not permitting their presence. Given that the OPCW were this week prevented from entering the site after a

Thursday

James Walton

The great pretenders | 19 April 2018

For a while now, the Korowai people of Western Papua have been the go-to primitive tribe for documentary-makers. The Korowai were unknown to the outside world until the 1970s — but they’ve certainly made up for it since, with their Stone Age tools, jungle treehouses and penis gourds becoming almost as familiar to TV viewers as Brian Cox on top of a mountain. No wonder, then, that Will Millard’s introduction to My Year with the Tribe (BBC2, Sunday) smacked of mild desperation as he sought to distinguish his new series from its many predecessors. (No fixers laying on anything in advance! Not just one snapshot of Korowai life, but four

Monday

Steerpike

BBC’s car-crash television

They say the term ‘car crash TV’ is over-used these days. However, Mr S is pretty sure a case of car crash television occurred this afternoon on BBC news. As a BBC correspondent reported from outside the drink-driving trial of Ant McPartlin – of Ant and Dec fame – a vehicle collision occurred. Well, that footage could come in useful…

Thursday

Steerpike

Simon McCoy adds yet another BBC gaffe to his list

Simon McCoy has a reputation for being the BBC’s most gaffe-prone presenter. On Wednesday, he reminded viewers why. As Jane Hill presented the news, McCoy wandered onto the set and walked into the line of the camera: https://twitter.com/liarpoliticians/status/984054620392652802 Here’s a brief reminder of some of McCoy’s greatest hits: Simon McCoy ‘no news’ royal baby broadcast Standing outside St Mary’s hospital in Paddington, McCoy showed no signs of experiencing royal baby-mania: ‘Well plenty more to come from here. Of course, none of it news, because that will come from Buckingham Palace. But that won’t stop us. We’ll see you later.’ 2. Simon McCoy takes a nap… on air We’ve all been

Kate Chisholm

Good morning, Martha

Like a breath of fresh air Martha Kearney has arrived on Radio 4’s Today programme, taking over from Sarah Montague (who will now host the lunchtime news programme formerly presided over by Kearney). Her presenting style is just so different, less confrontational, more investigative, perhaps developed by her because at lunchtime the mood is different, less rushed, more ambulant. The tone on the World At One was always much more reflective than reactive, Kearney pondering events rather than racing through to the next interview, butting in, hustling, flustering her guests. On Monday morning’s Today, she interviewed the author of a book on ‘elastic thinking’. Leonard Mlodinow, a theoretical physicist who

Sunday

Cindy Yu

When will people learn to pronounce Sajid Javid’s name properly?

Earlier on this morning, Andrew Marr tried his hand at Urdu. Or was it Punjabi? In any case, he made a point of introducing Lancashire-born and bred Minister Sajid Javid as ‘Sajeed Javeed’. The Communities Secretary didn’t flinch – as you’d expect, given that this is definitely not the first time his name has been mispronounced. He’s probably given up correcting people, or even noticing mispronunciations. But his name is hardly a tongue twister: he’s a northerner, his name rhymes with avid. As all schoolchildren know, words ending in –id are pronounced with a short ‘i’. Lid, kid, hid, quid. So where did Sajeed Javeed come from? As a member

Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Christopher Wylie – ‘I want a democratic mandate for Brexit’

The former director of research at Cambridge Analytica, the data-mining firm notoriously suspended by Facebook for harvesting details of up to 87 million Facebook accounts without their consent, has told Andrew Marr that the 2016 referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU should be re-contested. Wylie’s suggestion comes after it was highlighted that Vote Leave – the official Leave campaign – had employed the services of AggregateIQ (AIQ), a company which Wylie claims to have founded in order to support Cambridge Analytica. AIQ was also suspended from Facebook on Saturday for improperly receiving users’ data, charges which AIQ denies. Wylie argued that Vote Leave’s connections to alleged misconduct by

Thursday

James Walton

Friday night refreshment

BBC2 has a new drama series for Friday nights. The main character is a world-weary middle-aged police inspector with an unshakeable commitment to smoking. His work partner is a feisty female officer in her twenties who combines salt-of-the-earth irreverence with being a damn good cop. Between them, they’re investigating the murder of an attractive young woman who their colleagues immediately assumed was a prostitute, and whose death reminds the inspector of a previous investigation that continues to haunt him — which is why his boss is constantly trying to take him off the case. But if this makes you think that The City & The City is yet another identikit

Kate Chisholm

Communal listening | 5 April 2018

To Herne Bay in Kent for the UK International Radio Drama Festival: 50 plays from 17 countries in 15 languages broadcast over five days to the festival audience. It’s an opportunity to find out what radio plays sound like in other countries, but also to experience a different kind of listening. About 25 of us were invited into a suite of rooms furnished with flock wallpaper, floral sofas and armchairs to take us back to the great age of radio listening in the 1950s. A kettle boils in the background; buttered scones on a tiered rack are sitting ready for us to pounce on at the next pause between plays.