Matters of opinion
Michael Vestey
Sunday Service on Radio Five Live is often an engaging listen, combining news and current affairs with jokey, quirky items, balancing the conflicting views of Gordon Brown's former spin-doctor Charlie Whelan and the Conservative-leaning Andrew Pierce of the Times; all held together "by the deservedly popular presenter Fi Glover.
The programme's latest wheeze is to copy television's Big Brother series, neither of which I watched. I found the whole idea boring, like so much else on television. Nor does the Sunday Service version particularly appeal, if the foretaste we were offered last Sunday is anything to go by. Seven people are spending the week in a Norwich hotel discussing their views and, throughout the week on Five Live, listeners can vote to evict them until only one remains next Sunday. Listeners have been able to hear their debates each afternoon this week.
Apparently, the participants are not members of any political party but merely opinionated individuals. Although the programme contends it wishes to explore the 'mood of the nation', it sounds to me more like a smart gimmick but we shall have to see. If, by the time you read this, the General Election has been postponed, it might lose some of its impact. I also think there's scope for some political meddling with the party machines phoning in to evict those whose opinions are not to their taste. After all, Labour tried to vote Tony Blair as Today's Personality of the Year and this annual item has now been abandoned as a result.
Incidentally, listening to last Sunday's programme, it struck me how impossible it is for Whelan to give up his addiction to spin-doctoring. One can understand loyalty to his friends Gordon Brown and Geoffrey Robinson but it goes far beyond that. He blandly dismissed Tom Bower's fascinating book about Robinson, serialised in last week's Daily Mail, as 'a load of old nonsense' when it clearly isn't anything of the sort. It was a forensic study of a man completely unfit to be in politics, or business for that matter.
Whelan's attitude to the foot-and-mouth epidemic is equally blinkered. He thinks it's being blown out of all proportion by the media. Although he's trying to defend the government's incompetence and ignorance about this matter, he clearly cannot grasp the consequences. He doesn't come across as a vegetarian so does he really want to see all livestock in Britain wiped out? Is he content to eat only imported meat from countries where meat-hygiene rules are either ignored, non-existent or lax? If so, then we must all start hoping that the curse placed on Whelan by the Brazilian witchdoctor friend of Peter Mandelson's lover bears fruit, though there appear to be no signs of it yet, more's the pity.
Between the jokes on Sunday Service there are some quite good interviews with politicians. As the programme lasts two hours, they're allowed time to expand an argument. Chris Smith, the Culture Secretary, was interviewed about the affect of
foot-and-mouth on tourism. Although I do not believe a word any member of this government says on any subject. I have to say that Smith is by far the most plausible. Unlike his colleagues, he doesn't smear farmers and country dwellers but manages to talk quite sensibly on the subject. I suspect politicians like appearing on this programme as they did on the now axed Andrew Neil's breakfast programme on Sundays.
In fact, I'm beginning to wonder how long Sunday Service can last under the present controller Bob Shennan. He's one of those bland, interchangeable executives who flourished under John Birt. As a former BBC head of sport he's increasing that element on the network at the expense of news and introducing an indistinct homogeneity to the programmes. In the Guardian on Monday he spoke of bringing 'clarity and logic' to the network. What on earth does this mean? It's the sort of phrase Birt would use and, of course, it's intended to sound impressive but is in fact vacuous.
Some surprise has been expressed that Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time on Radio Four (Thursdays) attracts an audience of 2 million. Most Radio Four listeners would find nothing unusual about this. Such intelligent, well-argued programmes of this type were once a regular feature of Radio Four and listeners cry out for them but during a
period of dumbing down — now over, I think — they stood out like a giraffe in a penguin enclosure. Two recent editions, one about Shakespeare, the other the Restoration, were outstanding. I don't hear it every week but when I do I am usually not disappointed.
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