Among a vibrant GBNews audience, Rishi struggles to cut it as a man of the people

I LIKE to put GBNews on in the evenings – just to frighten the neighbours – and what do I see? Aside from gold for cash adverts and “flog your granddad’s watch”, the UK Prime Minister live from County Durham, hosted by the affable Stephen Dixon and interrogated by the people.

Twas a coup for GBNews; a step-up for Rishi. His last TV interview was with Piers Morgan, and the audience halved when I fell asleep.

There were glitches, notably the decision to sit the audience in a horseshoe and film from Rishi’s perspective, which meant we got 60 minutes of the PM’S back (the whitest white shirt since the invention of Daz and a radio mic stuffed in his pocket).

But what an audience! Critics think GBNews is just Tory MPS interviewing Tory MPS about what they hate about Tory MPS, but the best-kept secret about this channel is its genuine heterodoxy.

The BBC will spend thousands trying to balance a studio audience yet they all turn out to be communist supporters of the militant intifada; whereas Rishi was challenged by a lady who said Rwanda won’t work, a Scotsman sick of devolution, a barrister concerned with LGBT rights and one of the “Covid vaccine injured” – who refused to take an implied “I’ve never thought about this issue” for an answer.

Prime Minister, you don’t watch enough GBNews! Neil Oliver’s monologues would blow your mind…

Up popped a fellow in a velvet smoking jacket and a white ponytail to ask about arts funding in Hull. These are my people. Are they Rishi’s though?

As he told a homeless student, “I want you to experience” the joy Rishi felt of “getting your keys to your first home”, one imagined the PM starting small with six bedrooms and just the one jacuzzi.

He struck gold when a questioner turned out to be a pharmacist, prompting one of two monologues about growing up in a chemist’s, a small biographical detail that he has turned into a raison d’être. Had his mum run a Rymans, the Government would be geared entirely towards the production of pens, staplers and paper clips.

There was, however, a glimmer of an election strategy: nobody likes Keir Starmer. On charging VAT for independent school fees, the PM said that to mock him for attending a private school was “not attacking” him but “attacking my parents”, a line that clearly impressed this crowd.

But the home audience was likely most taken with the lovely Stephen, who not only had to calm down an irate vax man, but navigate the PM when he refused to take a random question from the box and insisted someone ask him about the economy instead. He just wanted to show off his maths.

GBNews is now a fully mature broadcaster, so professional that I’m convinced that presenters occasionally fluff their lines or knock over a potted plant to retain some of the Acorn Antiques charm that got so many of us hooked in the first place. It takes a lot of talent to pretend to look into the wrong camera.