IT was the black-and-white newsreels wot done it.
How else to explain the gangbuster attitudes of some politicians when faced with inquiring into the phone hacking scandal. On the Home Affairs Select Committee they were so fired up it was touch and go whether they would ask John Yates, assistant commissioner of the Met, whether he was now or had ever been a member of the communist party.
As Yates of the Yard demonstrated, there is a knack to appearing before a select committee, one which Rupert Murdoch, Murdoch Mini-Me, and Ginger Murdoch, the one who quit yesterday to spend more time with her inquiries, might consider adopting next Tuesday before the culture committee.
The strategy is similar to that to be deployed when facing a horde of zombies. The mob will advance en masse, slowly at first then surprisingly quickly. Each hopes to fall on your neck with a cunning question or an outrageous statement that will land their mush on that night’s news.
The trick is to keep cool. Above all, remember that with a few honourable exceptions, Frank Field and John McFall come to mind, your average select committee member is more Perry Como than Perry Mason.
Such people are the paper shufflers of Parliament, the kind of bods whose briefcases carry different colours of highlighter pens. Ensconced on a committee, they like to think of themselves as having specialist knowledge, when really it’s the clerks who keep them right and make sure the reports don’t read as though they were written by an irate five-year-old.
Culture committee chairman John Whittingdale, perhaps mindful of how the home affairs committee appeared, said next Tuesday’s session would not be “about a lynch-mob”. There will be a sight to see, though, as Murdoch Snr uses the chance to appeal to the public direct.
While no one would dispute their right to hold individuals and institutions to account, there is something decidedly whiffy about politicians turning on the press as savagely as they have done in the past week. It’s like a fight between mutts who two minutes previously had been sniffing each other’s bottoms. I expect the war will be over in time for the Christmas parties.
COME Monday morning one lucky (discuss) Apprentice will be going into business with a Sugar daddy. This year’s winner, revealed tomorrow night, will be given £250,000 to start up their own business in partnership with Shuge.
It’s a tough choice. There’s the skinny bun lady, the chick who has even more teeth than Ed Miliband, the nutty professor and smarmy charmer Jim, Northern Ireland’s answer to George Clooney without the looks, talent or maths ability. It has been a slim series, with no obvious pillocks to put in the nation’s stocks, which rather defeats the point of The Apprentice. There has even been one candidate, skinny bun lady, who knew all about profit margins. Madness. Money on her to win, and for James Murdoch to be in the next batch of hopefuls.
TUCKED up in the countryside, I bow to no woman when it comes to going feral fast. Within two minutes of going through a five-bar gate I can make Worzel Gummidge look like Jackie O. Some things still take me by surprise though, like the tiny creature that scampered into view the other day. I greeted this miracle of nature in time-honoured, townie fashion by shrieking, “What the bally Springwatch was that?” and battening down the hatches as though Godzilla was outside. One internet search later I discovered it was a stoat. Beautiful thing, cheeky too. Despite the earlier shrieking, it keeps coming back to have a peek at the big lumbering creature who made all the noise. Clearly a Worzel Gummidge fan.
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