Into The West Tv Schedule

Greg Dyke, not surprisingly, chose the BBC as the setting for signings of his book, Inside Story; what was surprising was that the BBC let him in. His media schedule was executed like a military operation. The book was even turned into a Channel 4 film, Betrayed by New Labour, after which Dyke's daughter said: "You're a bloody crap presenter. Don't do any more." With all due respect to the teenager, she's wrong. Dyke's combination of rough diamond and cuts like one, too, works very well--plus he cried on camera, which proved pure TV gold.

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For the first time since we met more than a decade ago, I felt sorry for Bob Marshall-Andrews. He was speaking in the West Wing Debate at the RAC Club in Pall Mall against the motion: "A George W Bush election victory would be good for Britain". Iain Duncan Smith was proposing and I was chairing. Looking out at the faces in the room, even I had to admit the odds were politically stacked against him.

Yet by force of argument and the even greater force of right, Marshall-Andrews won the day, by almost two votes to one. Such is the depth of feeling now against the Iraq war that even political journalists, who usually express an opinion only on which wine they would prefer for lunch, put their hands up and voted.

The sisterhood is alive and high-kicking in its Manolos, celebrating the life of Cherie Booth. First we had Janet Street-Porter telling us why we should love Cherie, then Mary Ann Sieghart, ditto, and finally the highly respected Mary Riddell in the Observer. Suddenly (thanks to Richard and Judy and Cherie "just being herself"), she "is one of the most popular public figures in Britain".

So popular is Cherie that half the British press fell on Sieghart's shoulders when she wrote a piece in praise of Cherie in the Times. The non-broadsheet press knows its market, and Ms Booth is about as popular there as council tax.

Yet, so stung was Sieghart, she devoted almost her entire column to defending her actions. Who could take umbrage at her central claim that it "is not sycophantic to write a fair portrait of politicians"? But is it fair to subject your loyal readers to one long, self-justifying whinge? Her point, well made, could have been dealt with in a few pars, and more powerfully for it.

To add injury to insult, she then subjected us to a discussion on whether couscous or honey is the worst thing to spill on your kitchen floor, springing from another Times columnist's column. Come on, Mary Ann, surely you can do better than that.

In the end, The Goldfish Bowl engenders utter contempt, not just among real authors, but in anyone who loves books. More cuts job than cutting-edge, this bilge should never have been published. It was so typically Cherie: nothing but a Gold-digger's Bowl. I challenge anyone, for instance, to find a single new fact or story in the section on Denis Thatcher. The book did no one involved any credit.

A very silly Sky News presenter wittered on about the arrival back in the UK of the triumphal Ryder Cup team. "How odd, they're all coming out of the back door of the plane. I would have thought they'd be up the front in first class. Now they're posing on the steps." Yes, indeed, right in front of the huge Virgin airline tail fin; which Sky proceeded to leave in shot for the next few minutes.

Advertising like that, you cannot buy.

COPYRIGHT 2004 New Statesman, Ltd.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

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