Beeb Bashing Of The Pointless Kind

The BBC’s move out of Television Centre continues: this week, the Breakfast TV show has moved into its new home at Media City on Salford Quays. The presenters are more or less as before – minus Sian Williams and sports man Chris Hollins, who have decided against the move – and most politicians are still being interviewed from the Westminster studio.

BBC Broadcasting House - Still In London

But all this, for the obedient hackery of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre, counts for nothing. The Beeb is to be attacked whatever it does, because those who inhabit this organisation are not the Daily Mail’s kind of people. So obedient hack Liz Thomas has been ordered over the top to perform the first of what will doubtless be a series of many crude hatchet jobs.

There is the customarily patronising styling of presenter Susanna Reid as “Miss Reid”, because she is not married, even though she and partner Dominic Cotton have children. This means that she, too, is not the Daily Mail’s kind of person: readers are to be reminded of this at every opportunity, when they’re not being reminded, in detail verging on the voyeuristic, about her clothing.

So BBC Breakfast is already out of favour with the Vagina Monologue. Added to this, readers are told that the move to Salford Quays cost a lot of money (this, too, will be trowelled on at every opportunity). And then there are the guests: there are too many of them from the North West. Like Connie Fisher, who is from, er, Northern Ireland (and Wales). But the Prime Minister might not come and sit on the sofa, it is argued.

Young Dave could always send his pal George, though, whose constituency is less than 20 miles away. Other party leaders are closer to Manchester than to London, too: Mil The Younger in Doncaster and Corporal Clegg in Sheffield are less distant by rail travelling time from Piccadilly than they are from St Pancras or King’s Cross. This is an argument that doesn’t stand any scrutiny.

But Ms Thomas has a clincher to shoo away all of this: the presenters look too close! Someone said that you could see up Bill Turnbull’s nose!! It was like they were in your living room!!! Is that it? That the new studio might not have absolutely everything 100% right on the first morning? Yes, it looks different – we in the North West already have experience of the new setup – but, so what?

Whatever the Beeb does, Dacre and his attack hacks will carp. The Corporation’s management will identify with the sentiments of Lyndon Johnson, under attack from the press over the direction of his Presidency. He explained to one aide “If I went down to the Potomac, and walked across to the other side, the next day’s headline in the [Washington] Post would be ‘President Can’t Swim’”.

No win for the Beeb with the Vagina Monologue. No change there, then.