Being inside an unfolding story
It’s fun as all journalists know when you’re inside an unfolding story. I’ve been on The Wright Stuff on 5 through much of the expenses saga and when Hazel Blears resigned while the show was on air, there was a massive cheer from the audience that took even the cynics by surprise. One would hope that would sound a warning siren to others still clinging onto jobs they perhaps no longer deserve. Now the phone keeps ringing with requests for me to appear on such and such radio show to opine about celebrities standing for Parliament. So far I’ve impersonated the cleaning lady and said I’m out but sooner or later I’m going to have to admit that yes, I would absolutely love to be an MP, but I honestly don’t think I can afford it, or whether I’d ever get home often enough to help the offspring revise their GCSE’s, A1s, A2s and find work experience and summer jobs! Plus, I did once buy a duck house when I had the village pond in my front yard, and also, I was coached in the art of expenses claiming by a top executive at Lew Grade’s ATV in Birmingham many years ago. That’s not to say I did anything dishonest. We just claimed within the rules… Mind you, the rules were part of a culture in which Lew Grade used to hand out wads of cash to stagehands and crew every weekend just to ensure that Saturday Night At The London Palladium didn’t suffer wildcat strikes and blackout. TV people still call those The Golden Years of TV but they were rife with twisted values. Perhaps that’s how politicians will soon recall their working practices. ******************************************************* I’ve just met a smashing bunch of would-be journalists at Radley College, where I was speaking at their careers seminar. They asked me to bring any interesting bits and pieces from my career – and I managed to look out my NCTJ certificate, my first front page byline (on the Bridgwater Mercury) and my shorthand certificate (110 wpm!) There was a gloomy mood, though – because the jobs outlook is so bleak for the class of 2009. The sixth formers were all moaning about how hard it is to get work experience, despite having A stars at GCSE. Even worse, some Old Boys were regaling us all with dismal stories about how hard it is to find a job even as a graduate. In my career I have met some wonderful politicians and inspirational statesmen but these youngsters were thoroughly disillusioned with politics and disgusted by MPs who’ve feathered their own nests but failed to help them even find their first job. I think it is so sad. The teachers were incandescent. As a mum and a professional, what comfort could I give? Our education system makes me scream. Kids are put under continual pressure to pass exams which themselves fail the quality test, then a recession slaps them in the face, and who do they have to look up to? Certainly not those incumbent at Westminster. ********************************************************* Been standing in on the morning show on BBC Berkshire while my old mate Henry Kelly went on his hols. As ever when you’re working on a regional programme, you always have to find the local angle. It can be a desperate quest when there’s a major national story and you want in on it – but you’re not working for a national outlet. It landed right in my lap. Hardly had the Telegraph got its saga underway than rumours hotted up of the first major casualty – just down the road in leafy Berks – in Andrew Mackay’s constituency of Bracknell. Who better to reflect the mood of the people than local radio? The “least believed” people in Britain today are reckoned to be MPs, red-top journalists and estate agents. This story banged all three right on the head – an MP who once was an estate agent, in trouble over his housing and hounded by a baying crowd of journos. So I did a phone-in the morning after the public meeting in which he was heckled and supposedly called a thieving toad. At the start of my programme at 9am, he promised me faithfully he’d come on to respond to his accusers. By midday and after I’d tried to phone him back repeatedly, he’d fallen on his sword – as nearly every caller had demanded. Yet I finished the show feeling anything but triumphant. I just felt sad, disappointed, and panic-stricken when I nearly put a taxpayer-funded BBC biro in my handbag. ***********************************************************
Someone’s put a load of new clips from TVam onto YouTube. There’s even one of me chatting away to Denis Healey about the economy in 1985. Some pundit has written underneath, in the comments section “Nothing changes. Our economy is still a mess. Bring back both Healey and Diamond and things might look up again!” They’ve obviously forgotten that Denis and I had a great falling out – in 87, when I was eight and a half months pregnant but unwilling to leave the studio because I was enjoying the run-up to the election too much to miss it. I dared to ask him about the Sun’s front page that very morning, splashing his wife’s private hip operation , shortly after he’d slated Margaret Thatcher for going private. Denis, who’d always been so genial to me became a rampaging bull, calling me a shit and storming out of the studio, dragging the sofa with him because his tie mike was still plumbed in. My other guests that day were a shocked Des Wilson and Michael Heseltine, who grinned like a Cheshire cat as he saw Labour’s hopes of election victory cascading down the toilet. Anyone got that clip? Now there’s one I’d like to see again!
This article was originally published in TotalPolitics
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