If you didn't see last night's Newsnight discussion on the Gordon Brown bullying uproar, watch it on iPlayer immediately. It was brilliant TV. Paxman mediated, and stoked vigorously, a rumble between Andrew Rawnsley (the Observer journo who broke the story), Roy Hattersley (indignantly spraying like a tomcat), David Steel and a Times hack while John Prescott's disembodied blubbery head floated above them all, bellowing incoherently via videolink.
It was a strange discussion - a group of political and media professionals attacking a journalist for not being willing to reveal his confidential sources. You would have thought the "off the record" concept would be one with which they would be intimately familiar, but apparently not. Prescott worked himself up into a particuarly petulant tizzy, howling like a wounded bison at one point when he though Rawnsley was being given too much airtime.
There was also a very odd example of the BBC's namby-pamby terror of causing any offence to anyone. Paxman read out an extract of our poor doomed PM's alleged ravings that included a Bad Word. I didn't really notice at the time, because I'm an adult who interacts with other adults in the year 2010. Like literally 100% of the Newsnight audience. But a few minutes later, under orders from an earpiece minion, Paxo apologised for his dreadful lapse, his big horse face clearly registering his disgust at having to do so.
It was a full 2 hours after the watershed and the Bad Word was important context as part of the discussion. Any youngsters inexplicably watching would have been more traumatised by the scary melty-faced man on the video screen and his terrible grammar than sweary old Paxman. A brainless concession that patronised rather than respected the audience. Harrumph!
Yours,
Disgusted of Oval
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