Bbc

Tuesday

Steerpike

A modern-day lynching for BBC’s North America Editor Jon Sopel

The news that Harper Lee has her long-awaited second novel on the way (just a casual 55 years after her one hit wonder To Kill a Mockingbird) came as a surprise to those who did not realise she was still even alive. Once that news had settled in, it came as an even bigger shock to the BBC’s North America Editor Jon Sopel that Lee was a woman:   Sopel swiftly becoming acquainted with the modern-day equivalent of a lynching: the fury of the Twitter mob. Sopel soon deleted the original tweet and seems to have recognised the error of his ways: good point everyone…. — Jon Sopel (@BBCJonSopel) February 3, 2015 Mr

Thursday

Steerpike

Plot thickens over which Tory MP planned to push over cameraman

After Mr S’s disclosure that a Tory MP plotted to knock over a BBC cameraman to cease filming for Inside the Commons, speculation is rife as to who the backbencher could be. Steerpike was curious to hear the show’s presenter Michael Cockerell deny that the culprit was Bill Wiggin. The Tory MP had very publicly lost his rag with the crew back in September 2014, when he could not hear the PM speaking about Iraq: Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You will have noticed that the House is very full. My constituents expect me to be able to get into the Chamber and hear my Prime

Steerpike Steerpike

Tory MP ‘plotted to knock over’ BBC cameraman

Michael Cockerell’s new documentary series inside the House of Commons saw the reporter gain unprecedented access to parliament. However, while many MPs were keen to be involved, a group of Tory MPs plotted to knock over a BBC cameraman in order to stop them filming. The astonishing claim was made by Cockerell at a press screening today of Inside the Commons ahead of its release next Tuesday. ‘There was a plan by some backbenchers to knock our cameraman over so that proceedings would be suspended and we would be blamed for it,’ he revealed. ‘But it was thwarted by the man in charge of security. The doorkeepers are the eyes and ears and the

James Walton

Could it be that Wolf Hall is actually the teeniest bit dull?

In January 1958, the British government began working on the significantly titled Operation Hope Not: its plans for what to do when Winston Churchill died. The plans, it turned out, wouldn’t be needed until January 1965 — but the intervening seven years were obviously well spent, because, as Churchill: A Nation’s Farewell (BBC1, Wednesday) made resoundingly clear, the farewell in question was a triumph. London came to a standstill and Big Ben fell silent as huge crowds watched the procession of the coffin from Westminster to the spectacular state funeral in St Paul’s — and its boat journey along the Thames afterwards. For the 50th anniversary, Jeremy Paxman talked us

Wednesday

Steerpike

Robert Harris: BBC’s books coverage is a ‘disgrace’

Lord Hall will be glad that he didn’t attend last night’s Costa Book Awards. Robert Harris, who chaired this year’s judges, took the opportunity to criticise the corporation’s book coverage when announcing the winner. Harris says that it is ‘an absolute disgrace’ that there is ‘no dedicated book programme’ on television. The 57-year-old author urged Tony Hall to do more given that the BBC is a ‘monetary funded organisation’. ‘The Costa Prize attracts people into the trade and it has being doing that for 44 years ever since 1971 and one thing I would just like to say is that in the 1970s books had it a bit easier,’ he told guests at the champagne bash

Thursday

Taki

My four great loves were unrequited (though I had a chance with Ginger Rogers)

I had a short chat with BBC radio concerning the actor Jack Nicholson, whom I knew slightly during the Seventies and Eighties. Alas, it had to do with age, his and mine, 77 and 78 respectively. No, the man on the other end of the telephone did not ask me anything embarrassing. All he wanted to know was if women still come on to an oldie, or are they, as Jack Nicholson claims, a thing of the past. Well, for starters I do not believe that Nicholson is telling the truth, that he’s now alone and fears he will die alone because women have abandoned a sinking ship. He has

Thursday

Jasper Rees

Shirley Williams: Saving my mother from the scriptwriters

Shirley Williams sits at the head of a table in a large conference room in Lib Dem HQ. She will be 85 this year, but still has a finger in many a pie, most of which we’re not to talk about here, including the predicted wipe-out of a generation of her party’s MPs at this year’s election. It’s one of the reasons she never made it to see the Tower of London poppies. Too busy. She also had to dash to Russia where she is on the board of the Moscow School of Political Studies. ‘It is all about teaching people about democracy and has fallen under the frown of

Douglas Murray

‘Religion of peace’ is not a harmless platitude

The West’s movement towards the truth is remarkably slow. We drag ourselves towards it painfully, inch by inch, after each bloody Islamist assault. In France, Britain, Germany, America and nearly every other country in the world it remains government policy to say that any and all attacks carried out in the name of Mohammed have ‘nothing to do with Islam’. It was said by George W. Bush after 9/11, Tony Blair after 7/7 and Tony Abbott after the Sydney attack last month. It is what David Cameron said after two British extremists cut off the head of Drummer Lee Rigby in London, when ‘Jihadi John’ cut off the head of

James Walton

Channel 4’s Cyberbully: an unashamedly old-fashioned drama in being both well made and moral

Channel 4’s Cyberbully (Thursday), written by Ben Chanan and David Lobatto, turned out to be a brilliantly gripping drama, even if the average middle-aged viewer might have found the early scenes as baffling as Finnegans Wake. Teenage Casey Jacobs (Maisie Williams) was alone in her bedroom, although not in the way we used to be: with an LP playing and the latest NME to hand. Instead, she was skyping her friend Megan (‘Hey, bitch,’ they greeted each other cheerfully), while also tweeting, texting, instagramming and wondering who’d hacked into her Spotify playlist and replaced all the good stuff with dreary old Led Zeppelin. But then she saw a tweet from

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Everyone says they’re Charlie. In Britain, almost no one is

Je suis Charlie indeed. This is the problem with placards — there is rarely enough room to fit in the caveats, the qualifying clauses and the necessary evasions. I suppose you could write them on the back of the placard, one after the other, in biro. Or write in brackets and in much smaller letters, directly below ‘Je suis Charlie’: ‘Jusqu’a un certain point, Lord Copper.’ Then you can pop your biro into your lapel as a moving symbol of freedom of speech. Only a few of the British mainstream national newspapers felt it appropriate to reproduce the front cover of the latest, post-murder, edition of Charlie Hebdo, which shows the Prophet

Tuesday

Steerpike

No dry January for the BBC’s finest

It was no expenses spared last night at One Great George Street to toast the departure of long-time Andrew Marr Show editor Barney Jones. Most ‘leaving dos’ in journalism involve a few beers down the Dog and Duck but Aunty was an extremely kind benefactor, providing fine wines and canapés as well as music from Nick Lowe across three of the most expensive function rooms in Westminster. Three cheers for the licence fee! Ed Miliband and George Osborne were there, alongside half the cabinet including Danny Alexander and Michael Fallon. Andrew Mitchell and David Davis plotted in the corner while Harriet Harman and Peter Hain represented Labour. Even Norman Tebbit made

Steerpike Steerpike

Nick Robinson vs Russell Brand: Round Two

Last week Nick Robinson took a swipe at Russell Brand’s call for the public to refrain from voting, claiming that it could undermine democracy. He went so far as to say that in a choice between quitting the BBC and defending democracy he would choose the latter. Happily it didn’t come to that and instead the BBC’s political editor got to pester Brand on Radio 4 in the first episode of Can Democracy Work? During the programme Brand is asked by a member of the public why if he has such a problem with today’s politicians, he won’t stand for parliament himself. ‘I’d stand for parliament but I’d be scared that I’d become

Monday

Nick Cohen

The BBC: Blaming the Jews for attacks on Jews

Heaven forbid that such an atrocity should happen, but suppose white racists attacked a mosque today, murdering four people. Crowds gather to show solidarity with the dead. They profess support for their friends and families and their horror at sectarian murder. The assassins killed their victims for no other reason than they were Muslims. That was it. All they had done was stick to their faith. A BBC reporter called Tim Wilcox joins the mourners, and buttonholes an elderly and not very articulate Asian lady. ‘The situation is going back to the days of 1930s Europe,’ she says, as she recalls the last time racist murders swept the continent. ‘Do

Friday

Steerpike

BBC to revise its restrictions on depicting Mohammed

Last night’s Question Time saw David Dimbleby chair a debate on freedom of expression following the Charlie Hebdo shootings. During the programme, Dimbleby stated that the BBC’s policy with regards to representations of Mohammed was to not depict the Prophet in any shape or form. This policy was met with criticism from panel and audience members alike. @bbcquestiontime that is utterly disgraceful bbc. #shamefulbbc — IAN REA (@ianrea7) January 8, 2015 Here is the part of the BBC Editorial Guidelines that Dimbleby read out on #bbcqt http://t.co/qFOxuMVws2 pic.twitter.com/nRc6Y43zKk — BBC Free Speech (@BBCFreeSpeech) January 8, 2015 So, Mr S was curious to learn that the website page detailing its guidelines is now down. When you click on

Thursday

Kate Chisholm

Without childhood traumas, how did Alan Bennett ever become a writer?

‘So — take heart,’ said Alan Bennett, sending us out from his play, Cocktail Sticks, on a cheery note. The treatment for cancer had been gruelling, but that was 15 years ago, so… This Radio 4 production was adapted (and produced) by Gordon House from the stage version at the National Theatre but was perfectly made for radio, a monologue interrupted by dramatic scenes that take us back into Bennett’s childhood. Why, he wonders, is there nothing from that past for him to write about — no trauma, no deprivation, no disappointment? Surely, his parents could have done more to help him become a writer? With anyone else this would

James Delingpole James Delingpole

It’s because Corden is such a dick that The Wrong Mans was so blindingly brilliant

God, it must be awful to have been at school with James Corden. As he sat fatly at the back of the class farting and flicking bogies and distracting the teacher with his relentless smartarsery, you’ll have consoled yourself with the happy thought that at least this repellent, maddeningly irritating waster was never going to make anything of his life… Then, years later, you’ll have opened the papers to read rave reviews of his hit sitcom Gavin & Stacey. A fluke, you’ll have thought, till you saw the similarly impressive notices of his West End triumph One Man, Two Guvnors. And any schadenfreude you might have experienced over the recent

Monday

Steerpike

Another day, another departure at Newsnight

Since Ian Katz took over as editor of Newsnight, an illustrious roll call of staff have left the flagging current affairs show, including presenters Jeremy Paxman and Gavin Esler. Now, one of Katz’s newest recruits has jumped ship. Mr S hears that Newsnight deputy editor Rob Burley has handed in his notice. Burley is leaving the show to succeed Barney Jones as editor of The Andrew Marr Show. The news will come as a blow to the former deputy editor of The Guardian given that Burley started work on Newsnight at the same time as him. One of Burley’s former Newsnight colleagues certainly thinks his departure is a one-sided loss. @RobBurl

Friday

James Walton

James Walton’s five favourite TV programmes of 2014

1. Fargo, Channel 4 In a particularly strong year for thrillers (Line of Duty, The Missing and Homeland ­among them) this was for my money the best of the lot, with a fantastically sinister central performance from Billy Bob Thornton, and story-telling that remained entirely sure-footed throughout, no matter how weird the events became. 2. Detectorists, BBC4 When it comes to sitcoms, the words ‘gentle’ and ‘idiosyncratic’ are often euphemisms for ‘not funny’ – but not in the case of Mackenzie Crook’s affectionate and affecting story of two metal-detecting friends in small-town Britain. 3. The Roosevelts: an Intimate History, PBS One for fans of old-school documentary-making: seven two-hour episodes covering

Thursday

Kate Chisholm

Why Serial is the future of radio

The fuss may now be over, the last episode of Serial revealed. But if the global success of WBEZ Chicago’s latest weekly podcast is a portent, then the future of radio lies not in static daily programming but in the fleeting pursuit of the latest internet download. No scheduling necessary. Listeners can just choose what they want to hear (based on what’s trending online), sign up for the podcast, and listen to the episodes any time they want, once they have been released for download. Just imagine how much easier and cheaper this could be for production companies. Non-stop, live, on-air programming would become redundant. The listener would no longer

James Walton

BBC1’s Esio Trot: like Fawlty Towers played at quarter speed

As a New Year’s Day treat for all the family, Esio Trot (BBC1) seemed to be taking no chances. It was based on a book by Roald Dahl, had a script by Richard Curtis and his Vicar of Dibley co-writer Paul Mayhew-Archer, and starred Judi Dench and Dustin Hoffman. So. The appeal of the original story to Richard Curtis isn’t difficult to fathom. Not only is it one of Dahl’s late works with, according to his biographer Jeremy Treglown, ‘a new kindly tone’, but it also features a male protagonist who’s both lovelorn and tongue-tied. From the balcony of his London flat, Mr Hoppy (Hoffman) could gaze down on the