DIARY
JONATHAN DIMBLEBY Ihad not intended to start here but the new editor of this magazine has played a prank on me and I must respond. After inviting me to do this Diary, Dominic Lawson used his moonlighting space in the Sunday Correspondent (a better and better paper by the way) to attack the credentials of the programme which I present, BBC l's On the Record. As he must have guessed, I had two choices: either to ignore it (which would have seemed wimpishly aloof) or to rise to the bait. He wins and my apologies to those of you who might have hoped for better things — here goes. His charge against the programme is a tribute to the haymaking skills of Kenneth Baker's merry men who attacked the BBC for failing to publish an opinion poll which, they believe, reflects warmly on the Prime Minister and even, they may hope, on the Chairman himself. That the details of the dispute between the BBC and the pollsters concerned are tedious and entirely apolitic- al did not, of course, stop the Mail on Sunday and other lesser organs of opinion charging poor old Auntie with — yes, you're right — political bias against the Tory Party. Now the editor of The Specta- tor is too cool for such blockhead journal- ism. Instead he reaches into the recesses of his memory and detects not so much a case of bias as of Birtism. He claims that John Birt, the deputy Director General of the BBC, has introduced a pseudo-scientific form of journalism to the Corporation; and — how wicked can you get? — that we at On the Record have acted as bad Birtian scientists by ignoring evidence incompati- ble with our theories. Here I should declare an interest — or rather an opinion: the term Birtism should have been buried years ago on the grounds that what mean- ing it might once have had has been sedulously destroyed by the combined efforts of young acolytes and old enemies. We may respect the identity of Bennites, Owenites or Thatcherites but a modern Birtist is a character in search of an author, a blank page waiting for an imprint. The term originated with some pieces written thousands of years ago by two luminaries of our trade, John Birt and Peter Jay, who also now graces the BBC. The former was then an executive at London Weekend Television, the latter had close associations both with LWT and with the Times, where he had been economics editor, and which printed their 'Bias Against Understanding' articles. (Peter beat me at tennis last week, which should be taken into account and held against my judgment). In those arti- cles the two authors argued in favour of some sensible propositions about television journalism which for some time had been the subject of debate in NW1 and Shepherd's Bush. To the best of my memory, they were on the side of preci- sion, fairness and accuracy, arguing in favour of rigorous analysis by specialist correspondents and against the Miss Whip- lash school of journalism which allows sexy pictures to dominate clear ideas: all sound stuff (if rather pedantically expressed) in the service of the extremely effective but narrow form of political journalism which they had successfully pioneered in the studios of Weekend World. Their certain- ties irritated some of their peers who detected in their blueprint an intolerance for alternative ways of seeing. Others become zealots for the cause, occasionally interpreting the Birtist mission to explain as their right to insist.
That (though I would rather be telling you the real motive behind Ken Baker's little contretemps with the BBC but that is your editor's fault) brings me back to the young offender. Dominic Lawson suggests that On The Record junked the poll because its findings failed 'to prove the premise of the programme' — namely that Mrs Thatcher was vulnerable to a lead- ership challenge. Since the programme is a product of Birtism and its staff are clones of the man himself — so runs the Lawso- nian inference — On The Record is not to be trusted: it is either dishonest or brain- washed. Now there may be those — even in the BBC — who are stricken by a pernicious form of Birtism (a mutation of the original virus) who begin with a conclu- sion and then force-feed appropriate evi- dence into the argument accordingly. If so, they don't have house-room at On The Record — where, so far as we have any `mission' (a rather overworked and self- important term to describe the humdrum purposes of political journalism) it is first to explore, and then to explain — which is why so many Cabinet ministers give up their Mad-Cow free beef on Sunday to make the front pages on Monday. Domi- nic, you have leapt to your conclusion when all the evidence is to the contrary the offence of which you accuse us: repent!
And this is where I had intended to begin. The cynical conclusion to be drawn from Kenneth Baker's spat with the BBC is that the political greenhouse effect has arrived — the warming of the Westminster atmosphere that presages the onset of the general election. The truth, I have to report, is otherwise and much more sinis- ter: the Chairman of the Conservative Party is not so much concerned with polls as with me. Indeed I have incontrovertible evidence that he is merely using the BBC to pursue a personal vendetta over a matter which has nothing whatsoever to do with the small change of party politics. It concerns an incident which happened almost two years ago. Mr Baker was at a private party which was also attended by my daughter, then eight years old. 'Do you like poems?' inquired the great antholog- ist, looming solicitously over her. 'Yes, and I write them as well. Would you like to hear one. It goes like this . . . .' There followed a lengthy lyric, vividly detailed, about a nose-picking maiden called Rose. The grisly verse ends thus: One day she woke
And before she even spoke She went to pick her nose.
But Rose got a shock, For there was no nose.
And that was the end of Disgusting Rose.
Although he tried to disguise it with a kindly word, the Secretary of State for Education (as he then was) was clearly shocked. However, it took me some time to realise not only that he held me to blame, but that he could be so unforgiving. Now that the truth is out, he'd better lay off. Otherwise I'll have her poems pub- lished to coincide with his next volume and have them dedicated to him as well.
The usual ritual of Any Questions is to eat before the programme (of which perhaps more next week) but as we were marooned on Deeside we were free to dine afterwards at a restaurant run by a friend of mine (the White Cottage on the road from Aberdeen to Braemar; don't miss it). The last time I had eaten food cooked by our host was just before Easter in a small boat on the grim chill of the Irish Sea, when Laurie managed to provide us with a perfect vegetarian soufflé (like the Speaker of the House, vegetarianism is my favoured 'unnatural practice'). He also gave me just enough courage to round Land's End in a gale, which was wet, cold and frightening (miss it, if you can). As we sloshed along I tuned in to Any Questions to hear Edwina Currie's apercus• about prison reform. Even so, I wished fervently to Mayday myself ashore and join my team — not least because Jim Naughtie sounds altogether too comfortable in my chair.
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