Wanted: presenter for downmarket reality TV show
Next week the BBC is holding auditions to find a new presenter for Question Time. The current presenter, David Dimbleby, is stepping down in December after 25 years in the role. Here’s a rundown of the leading candidates to replace him.
Jeremy Kyle
Thanks to his eponymous daytime programme on ITV, Kyle, 53, has extensive experience of whipping a studio audience into a froth of bellowing self-righteousness while guests demean themselves for attention. But could Question Time’s producers persuade him to make the move downmarket?
Nigel Farage
The occasional leader of Ukip, 54, is a longstanding Question Time favourite, having appeared on every edition of the programme since the outbreak of the Boer War. Producers are said to be weighing up an offer to make him the presenter, all five panellists and the entire studio audience.
Nigella Farage
Should the BBC insist on a female presenter, producers are understood
to have settled on their favoured candidate.
Vladimir Putin
The Russian president, 65, is known to take a keen interest in British politics, and would surely welcome the chance to play an even more influential role in the national debate.
The Gravesend whale
A BBC focus group revealed that 98.3 per cent of the British public would rather spend 45 minutes waiting fruitlessly for a brief glimpse of grey blubber than listen to Rod Liddle and Diane Abbott argue about whether crisp packets are racist.
The key theme of Labour conference was class war. On the final morning, shadow minister Dawn Butler gave a speech stressing that, under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour was for the downtrodden “many”, not the elite and privileged “few”.
“We are the many!” she proclaimed to the hall. “You are the many!”
To reinforce this feeling of solidarity, she urged us all to take part in a bit of audience participation. “I want every one of you,” she cried, “to turn to the person sitting next to you, shake them by the hand, and say to each other: ‘We are the many!’”
The person sitting next to me was Daniel Finkelstein, a man I often bump into during the party conference season. As instructed, we shook hands, and enthusiastically voiced our support for the class struggle. “We are the many!” he said to me.
“We are the many, your Lordship!” I said to him. Well, he is a Conservative peer.
Speaking of Lord Finkelstein: one evening a few years ago, he and a friend were eating at a burger restaurant. They were served by the owner, who was a friendly, chatty woman. She struck up a conversation with them and, during the
course of it, Lord Finkelstein happened to mention that he writes a newspaper column about politics.
“Oh, I’m really interested in politics!” said the owner, and began to pepper him with questions about life in Parliament.
At no point during this discussion did she appear to notice that his dining companion was the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne.
But Mr Osborne isn’t the only major political figure who can pass unnoticed in public. This week, since it was Labour conference, Yougov asked voters which of Labour’s most senior politicians they’d actually heard of. One result stood out. A full 47 per cent of Labour voters – I repeat, Labour voters – have never heard of John Mcdonnell.
Think about that. At last year’s election, Labour got 12.9 million votes. If this poll is right, more than six million came from people who’d never even heard of the man they were prepared to put in charge of the economy. That’s quite something. Imagine a season ticket holder at Manchester United saying they’d never heard of José Mourinho.
Let’s be honest. None of us like elections anyway. It would save us all a lot of time if we just asked the Queen to draw the winning party out of a hat.
I’ve just finished reading an extraordinary new book about the Second World War. Agent Jack, by the journalist Robert Hutton, recounts the previously untold story of an MI5 spy who infiltrated groups of British fascists – by telling them he was a Nazi spy.
It’s a cracking story. Disturbing, though, to read all the quotes – genuine, verbatim quotes – from British people who wanted Hitler to win the war, and their own country to lose. These were, on the face of it, ordinary, unremarkable members of the public – yet, unknown to
colleagues and neighbours, they were Nazi sympathisers.
A lot of them, for some reason, seem to have been women. We read of a middle-aged woman from Wembley in London who says she would do “anything” to help the German war effort – even, if necessary, “go there and scrub floors”. We read of a 30-year-old divorcee who remarks that the steelworks at Port Talbot in Wales would make “a lovely target”. And we read of a female council worker from Brighton who declares wistfully that Nazi rule “would make a better race of us” – and who celebrates successful bombing raids by the Luftwaffe. “One large bomb demolished a block of flats and a Baptist church! Oh, it was marvellous… A greengrocer had his head blown off…”
In those days, of course, prospective traitors faced two difficulties that were difficult to surmount. First, identifying other prospective traitors to join forces with; and second, communicating with them in secret.
If the internet had existed, perhaps Hitler would have won. follow Michael Deacon on Twitter @Michaelpdeacon; read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion