- Peter Barron
- 22 Jun 07, 03:31 PM
On Newsnight my phone rarely rings at 6.14am. But it did this morning. It was our deputy editor Robbie Gibb, who was looking after Gordon Brown: Prime Minister's Questions, a for News24 and Newsnight in which the soon-to-be-PM was to face questions from a panel of the 91Èȱ¬'s sharpest minds. Robbie was involved in a last minute flurry with Mr Brown's people over the exact seating arrangements for the programme, which - because of the EU summit - could only be recorded at eight in the morning. It was symptomatic of a process of negotiation to get Mr Brown onto the programme which was at times tortuous and always subject to change.
But when Mr Brown swept into the studio - at roughly twenty past eight - he was a vision of relaxedness. The make-up lady remarked how warm and chatty he was - more so in fact than Blair - his warm-up small talk was easy, his jokes surprisingly good.
And when the intense and wide-ranging grilling from Martha Kearney, Evan Davis, Nick Robinson, and John Simpson began, the old Brown, sticking rigidly to his sound bites, seemed to have disappeared. No prudence, no steering a steady course, not even much listening and learning.
Could it be that Mr Brown - famously uptight and brooding as Chancellor - will, like Nicolas Sarkozy, find the top job strangely relaxing?
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
- Peter Hanington
- 22 Jun 07, 09:10 AM
The current editor of the Today Programme is easily the hippest Today Programme editor ever. I'm not saying that just because he's the first editor to let us broadcast from Glastonbury but for lots of other reasons too, and I'll come back to those.
Under previous Today administrations the question: "Can we do a programme from Glastonbury?" has met with a range of responses, none of them positive.
When we asked Kevin Marsh, the reply went something like: "Glastonberry? Ah yes... same family as the Loganberry? Generally thought to be derived from a cross between the Red Antwerp raspberry and the American blackberry Aughinburgh. Accidentally created in 1880 in Santa Cruz by the American lawyer and horticulturist James Harvey Logan I believe..." He then spoke at length about various berries but nobody here understood what he was talking about so we left it.
's response was more concise....his full answer cannot be reprinted in a quality blog like this but it went something like "Go completely away and stick your rude thing up something else even ruder." The problem wasn't that Rod didn't care about Glastonbury, more that he didn't want his staff turning up in the Healing Field and cramping his style. He also said that taking Today to Glastonbury would just "drive up the price of black and alert the filth" but nobody here understood what he was talking about so we left it.
Anyway, this year things were different. Ceri Thomas embraced the idea immediately and with passion. Well, his voicemail did... it said: "Leave a message and I'll get back to you soon" and as far the planning desk is concerned that's a big Yes.
By the time he'd got back from holiday, Carolyn Quinn had already bought a Cath Kidston cagoule and so it was too late to turn back.
Why Carolyn you ask? Why not John Humphrys? Well, John wanted to go, and in fact he'd been invited to camp backstage with Gordon Brown Arctic Monkeys but as you probably know he has a severe mud allergy and so as soon as the long term weather forecast came through it was clear that that wouldn't work.
Carolyn was the obvious second choice….Not a lot of people know this, but Lemmy out of Motorhead is Carolyn's godfather and she was regularly dangled on Lemmy's knee as a young girl… no one knows why Lemmy was dressing as a young girl at the time but I guess that's his business.
On top of that Carolyn had seen "We Will Rock You" 37 times and she can play "Whole Lotta Rosie" on the kazoo, so she seemed the obvious choice.
The Today team is camped in the Circus Performers' Field… come and see us if you can… we're just past the dwarves, first left at the Bearded Lady… look for the VW van with a "Never Trust Anyone Under 50" bumper sticker.
Peace and Love.
Peter Hanington is assistant editor, Today programme
The Independent: Law Editor Robert Verkaik on how Martin Bashir's Panorama interview with Diana, Princess of Wales, changed the 91Èȱ¬'s relationship with the monarchy. ()
The Times: Article in which the 91Èȱ¬'s deputy director general Mark Byford's responds to allegations of "an innate liberal bias" at the corporation. ()
The Guardian: "The 91Èȱ¬ is reviewing the generous relocation package it promised to staff moving to its new base in Salford." ()
