Brian Walden, Thatcher fan who clashed with her on TV, dies at 86
ADVERTISING FEATURE THE Labour MP turned TV broadcaster credited with creating the “British political interview style” and who used it to tackle Thatcher, has died at 86.
Despite Brian Walden’s admiration for her, he told her in a TV interview she was “off her trolley”.
And, oddly, the feeling was mutual with Mrs Thatcher enjoying being interviewed by him.
He told the Prime Minister: “You come over as being someone who one of your backbenchers said is slightly off her trolley,” on The Walden Interview, shown on LWT in November, 1989.
“Authoritarian, domineering, refusing to listen to anybody else – why? Why cannot you publicly project what you have just told me is your private character?”
She replied: “Brian, if anyone’s coming over as domineering in this interview, it’s you, it’s you.”
Walden was well-informed, polite but tenacious and probing.
Veteran political interviewer Andrew Neil said: “With Robin Day, Walden was a Labour MP for 13 years he invented the political interview style. Emulated but not matched.”
Walden was born in 1932 in London and raised in a poor area of West Bromwich, West Mids. His dad, William, was an impoverished glazier. He attended West Bromwich Grammar School and then won an open scholarship to study at Queen’s College, Oxford, narrowly missing a first in history.
He was then a lecturer at the new Keele University.
He claimed to have flown jets on national service during the Korean war but was actually an RAF clerk.
Walden was the Labour MP for Birmingham All Saints/Ladywood for 13 years until 1977.
But he became disillusioned with the rise of the party’s left wing, and made the leap to TV, where he developed his “exhaustive but courteous’’ technique and presented ITV’s Weekend World for nine years from 1977. He was known as a fine and persuasive public speaker.
Among his most memorable speeches was in 1974, when he successfully argued against the return of capital punishment. But Walden angered many in 1998, when he used his TV series Walden On Heroes to brand Nelson Mandela feckless, arrogant and autocratic.
His widow Hazel said his biggest regret was that he didn’t live to see Brexit happen.
She said: “To be dominated by a capricious and undemocratic Brussels-Berlin axis is not something he would have wanted.”
He died at his home on Guernsey from complications with emphysema on May 9, and leaves four sons. ANDREW NEIL VETERAN POLITICAL INTERVIEWER
Walden interviewing Margaret Thatcher in 1989 on TV
Walden left politics for career on TV
He invented the political interview style. He was emulated, but not matched