The Labour deputy leadership contenders were on Radio 5 Live in a Radio Bloke type gimmick-laden quasi-speed dating feature. The contenders were questioned by Simon Mayo (typical question: who are your heroes?), a former Labour party member Jed (typical question: do you feel that the introduction of HIPs indicates that policies are announcement driven and implemented before being fully thought through); and Miss Wigan, whose connection to the Labour party is not clear (typical question: I want to be Miss England because I want to do work for cancer research because there’s been a lot of cancer in my family and I want to help that continue. What would you do?)
Jed didn’t like Peter. He thought he was over-rated. He didn’t like Hazel – for reasons he didn’t explain, but which do not really require explanation – she was very Hazel. He did like Alan and Hilary (edited correction Friday, with thanks to Chris Paul’s blog)
Miss Wigan liked Hazel because she had a passion for Salford, but her favourite was Harriet, because Harriet asked her a question and would engage with young people like herself. She didn’t like Hilary, because he was too bland.
Interesting moments: Hilary (who sounds very like his father over the wireless) indicated he would vote for Alan if he wasn’t standing (because we deserved a staright answer – unlike Paxman on Newsnight); Peter reminding us again that he used to run the anti-apartheid movement; Hazel eulogising Salford; Jon answering question and indicating once again that he doesn’t want a cabinet job but wishes to re-energise the LAbour party membership; and Alan smoothly easing over disputes about post offices.
Moment of the session though was Harriet being asked by Miss Wigan what her special talent would be if she was trying to be Miss England?
GIven that,
Is it me or has Radio Bloke got much much worse in the last 18 or so months?
Much worse. I associate the decline with the replacement of Adrian Chiles on Saturday mornings by chubby funster Eamonn Holmes. Richard Bacon’s recent sojourn was compelling, though, in an I can’t believe it’s not Alan Partridge kind of way.
Going back further the death of Vincent Hanna didn’t do much for the channel.
In fact, bring back Dominik Diamond’s Sportscall or Danny Baker on 6-0-6 or Des and the original Room 101.
Yes quite. Adrian Chiles is excellent, as were Diamond and Baker though not to the same extent.
6 Music has gone down hill too, with an outbreak of pointless blokey over pleased with themselves zoo format toss-pots at the weekend (*) and the amazingly irksome new weekday breakfast presenter.
(*) Ironically Russell Brand was the best of these, he at least has some ‘one step away from a genuine nervous breakdown’ charm.
Standards on Five Live, and much of the rest of the BBC, has gone nioticeably down hill since they made their massive redundancies.
Which is not very surprising.
Miles
http://www.action-without-theory.blogspot.com
So far Jon and Harriet have written to me asking for my support.
The Grauniad suggested that there was a certain degree of overlap in their support and the best placed at the end of the first round may end up doing pretty well overall.
I havent seen a list of which MPs nominated who.
Harriet lists the 65 who backed her on her letter but Jon’s was just a large postcard.