John Wayne gets a baffling lesson in diplomacy from Sir Humphrey
MURDERBOARD! It sounds like the perfect Christmas party game for psychopaths, a cross between Cluedo and charades, with bloodstains on Colonel Mustard’s lead piping and live bullets in Miss Scarlet’s revolver.
In fact, the real Murderboard is nearly as deadly for one of its players. This is not a game but a training exercise dreamed up by attachés at the American Embassy in London, to prepare the Ambassador for that most lethal encounter — a dawn interview on Radio 4’s Today programme.
Inside The American Embassy (C4) saw billionaire diplomat Robert Wood Johnson, 71, ‘ murderboarded’ or battered with quickfire questions that bordered on insults, from a dogged PR team that seemed to be enjoying the simulation a little too much.
Johnson thought so. Known as ‘Woody’ to his friends, who include Donald Trump (Johnson raised $ 18 million for the victorious presidential campaign), the Ambassador called a halt when he realised that his inquisitors were deliberately picking questions on topics he hadn’t yet revised.
The heir to the Johnson & Johnson empire, Woody has no more political experience than the President. This behind- the- scenes
INCUBATOR OF THE NIGHT: Olive Ridley sounds like a regular at the Rover’s Return, but in fact it’s a type of turtle. Dr George McGavin filmed eggs hatching in Nature’s Turtle Mystery (BBC4) before millions of babies set out to the Pacific Ocean. Magical.
documentary showed him struggling for patience with the policy wonks and mandarins, and frustrated at the pall of cynicism hanging over London.
He was especially angry at Project Fear, the attempts around Westminster to thwart Brexit with prophecies of doom. ‘As an American, I’m not used to hearing that,’ he barked. ‘ Don’t be pessimistic. How can you have a country with this great a history, this great a language, this great a legal system, this great a presence and not be successful?’
The attitude of Sir Alan Duncan, Minister of State for Europe and the Americas, left Woody bewildered. With a professional smile, Duncan explained his allpurpose formula for deflecting criticism: ‘Blame the French.’
It was like watching Yes Minister’s Sir Humphrey Appleby attempting to teach the fine art of diplomacy to John Wayne. Neither man understood the other in the slightest.
This was the second documentary in two days, after the New York Times programme on BBC2, to highlight the effects of Trump’s scattershot policies. Even Woody was wrong-footed when, just days before the opening of the new U.S. Embassy offices in Vauxhall, the President tweeted his disgust at the move: the sale of the old building, he said, was a ‘bad deal!’.
No amount of murderboarding could prepare the ambassador for that. The cameras caught waves of panic flitting across his face. All credit to Woody for letting such candid footage be included.
Murderboard might be too strong a name for Jo Brand’s new gameshow, starring panels of young medics, but anything would be more imaginative than Britain’s Best Junior Doctors ( BBC2). This is University Challenge for graduates who spent their tutorials dissecting bodies, and did 30-hour hospital shifts rather than reading the classics. But the sheer depth and specialism of their knowledge makes it difficult to play along at home.
Only Connect has shown there is an eager audience for really challenging quizzes. This pilot, though, was so difficult that one team barely scored a point.
Running every evening this week, after the historical celebration How The NHS Changed Our World (marking 70 years of the National Health Service), the game promises to give us lots of ailments to worry about.
It’s a show aimed squarely at hypochondriacs.