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…Let alone listen to the radio or use the website. Maybe he hadn’t had his morning cup of coffee but he didn’t even get the name of a successful prime time BBC One show right! Grade: “celebrity come dancing, strictly dancing, Strictly Ballroom dancing – must get the title right, was enjoyed by millions of people” And he was on FiveLive yesterday and didn’t even know about “Only Fools ON Horses”. You can watch him balls it up here BBC NEWS | Programmes | Breakfast | Michael Grade. Reminds me of a Dead Ringers sketch that went “And now on Channel 4, how clean is your celebrity builder from hell?” He just seemed really stuck for good examples of programming. He could have said, Doctor Who, Planet Earth, The Apprentice, Secret Policeman, Festival coverage, Trafalgar celebrations… big landmark stuff that only the BBC can do.

Come on Mikey, have a scan of the Radio Times once in a while eh? Members of the public are going to mention very specific programmes that they like/dislike and while you don’t have to comment on them directly you should at least know what they are, there’s more to our output that Today and Newsnight. And I’m sooo glad I work in a ‘healthy wealthy’ sector!

Ahh, such a simple formula. Take one salt of the earth husky voiced Northerner and dress her up in the trappings of the aristos and you’ve instant ‘my fair lady’ sex appeal, no? In short, well fit.

Mind you, I’m attributing this to what we’re calling the charity-fancy halo effect. This revealed itself in the office the other day when a couple of ladies I work with found themselves strangely attracted to David Walliams after he completed his post channel swim. See for youself… is he sexier now he’s raised £500,000 for charity?

So this afternoon I went to a mock recording of Question Time to put four young panellists through their paces and eventually come up with a winner to appear on the real show. I also got to ask a question. I did a promo for this back in… late May as you can see… The competition invited users to submit a statement via mobile phone video clip. And these were the best four.

I had a great time, and David Dimbleby is a top chap. My only reservation was at the political bent of the student panel. Let me put it this way, it wasn’t exactly Paris ’68. They were all Blairbots or Cameron-o-trons, who often agreed with each other (crime on QT surely?)…. Well schooled in spin, they seemed to be pro-Iraq war, pro-private healthcare, probably pro-nuclear power and pro-immigration cards if asked. They said things like “I saw on the news” or “I read in the papers” a lot rather than “In my experience..”, dangerous stuff indeed.

I thought the job of the young was to piss off their elders with talk of descent and sticking it to the man… if you can’t do that when you’re young when can you do it? Certainly not when you’ve got a mortgage and a 9-5 a la moi? I’m just not sure these were a cross representative of young adults, mind you if those with more leftist (or right to be fair) leanings can’t be arsed to get off their.. arse and enter a
two minute clip about themselves then that’s their fault. I dunno, I just expected to see a bit more ‘yoof’ issues.

Anyway, we got a winner, and he’s on question time tomorrow night.

As I was in Millbank and this finished at around 5, I decided to drop in on my old employer the Tate Gallery where I had a cheeky pint with my old mate Rich. He then had to go back to work, but I then spent an hour talking about photography to the young bar man, who’d just finished his degree in Teeside and moved to London over three more beers and then chipped of home to watch the football.

UPDATE: And the winner was Matt Pollard, you can see my pictures here and some video of the candiates here.