29/03/2012 This Week

Tonight, join This Week for the Great Political Bake-Off. A week at

Westminster dominated by tasty pastry and kitchen suppers. I am a

pasty eat her myself. Why go to Cornwall and I love a hot pasty. I

think the last one I bought was from the west Cornwall pasty

company. The BBC's baker-in-chief, John

Pienaar, has been eating all the pies. This is my last one. It has

been a bit of a pie fight at Westminster, but this time the mess

could stick. Maybe kids should stay at home

baking with mother rather than rampaging on the streets, but after

a critical report into last summer's riots, celebrity charity

chief Camilla Batmanghelidjh thinks we should stop blaming young people.

Stop this child bashing. It's time to end the war against our children.

And we all like drooling over a good looking cake, but do looks

really matter more than flavour? Singer-songwriter Katie Melua

thinks first impressions can often be wrong. I like surprises, but I

don't like it when there is too much potato in my pasty.

Elasticate those waistbands, rolling pins at the ready.

Evenin' all. Welcome to Steak Bake! And what a week it's been for puns

involving zero-rated bakery products. Mmm! Zero-rated bakery

products. Yes, apologies. Our scripts tonight are as predictable

as a Tory fundraiser selling kitchen suppers in Downing Street

to the highest bidder. But how could we resist the smell of a

freshly baked fiasco? Pasty-faced Boy George got the sausage rolling

by sniffing that he wouldn't be seen dead eating a pasty with the

oiks down at Greggs. Call-me-Dave quickly realised his Tory de-

toxification strategy was looking like a re-toxification strategy,

and embarked on an emergency pleb- ification strategy, claiming he was

"totally down with the pasties, OK, yah". And that he had even bought

one once, in a faraway place called Leeds, or was it Liverpool? Hard to

tell the difference from Chipping Norton. But at least he remembered

the name of the pasty shop, until it turned out it had closed years

ago. The crack Shadow Cabinet Team woke up from their slumbers and

smelled a photo opportunity and the Ed Mili-bandwagon duly rolled into

the Redditch branch of Greggs, proving to everyone just how down

on their luck Labour really are. Then, as if things weren't surreal

enough, the Minister for U-turns, Francis Maude, caused panic on the

streets of Padstow, declaring a national pasty shortage, calling on

people to top-up their reserves, storing them safely, in a jerry can

- that'll fool the VATman - in the double garage before a tax-hike

robs the proles of their last remaining pleasure, fags having

already been priced out of their reach. No wonder Theresa May once

called the Tories the nasty pasty party. Speaking of those who don't

know their flaky from their short crust, I'm joined on the sofa

tonight by two of life's lotus eaters, the Marie Antoinette and

sun king of late night chat. I speak, of course, of

#sadmanonatrain Michael Portillo and #manontheleft Alan "AJ" Johnson.

Good evening. Help-yourself if you feel hungry during the programme.

Your moment of the week? I have to join in your theme. My moment was

on Monday seeing the Prime Minister with a sign behind him that said

the Alzheimer's Society, who he was addressing, and the dressing that

society on the names of his donors, who had had supper in his flat. He

went into a long explanation about that. It was a metaphor for the

absolute chaos in which the Government found itself. That

morning, the Prime Minister had said he would not be releasing the

names. He did not go to the House of Commons on that day, notable by

his absence. And there he was, having to come out with it all to

the Alzheimer's Society. This is not a well ordered Government.

compounded it by getting the press corps to go there because he was

going to talk about party funding and said he would take questions,

and then said he would not take questions. That really endear at

him. And that was at the beginning of the week before things got

really bad. Something I think will be a bigger problem for the Prime

Minister, on Monday his independent review of counter-terrorism

legislation presented a report to Parliament on control orders. He

said control orders fulfilled their primary purpose of disrupting

terrorist activity. Government got rid of them in December. He said

they were effective and enforceable. Even more worryingly, he said their

replacement, a watered down version, he said, "they are unlikely to

further the requirements of national security, rather the

reverse". This is serious. I thought the decision to get rid of

Control Orders was incomprehensible and it looks like the independent

review of counter-terrorism legislation feels the same. Feeling

vindicated? Yes. I think they were necessary. That was all we needed,

yes or no. Or a pasty. You can have a pasty.

Now, according to an independent report into last summer's riots,

society urgently needs to set about improving the character of children

and young people. Poor parenting and schooling is highlighted by the

report, which I guess we kind of knew already, as are some 500,000

"forgotten families" who bump along the bottom of society. Which I

think we knew too. But how important is developing moral

strength in Britain's underclass? And how on earth do you do it?

Camilla Batmanghelidjh, whose charity, Kids Company, deals with

some of the most vulnerable young people, joins us for her take of

This might look like a tranquil space, but last summer this strip

of Clapham was absolutely devastated by rioters, raging,

breaking into shops, looting and burning spaces down. Nearly eight

months later, it seems as if the nation has entered a phase of child

bashing, and our children and young people are being blamed for the

disturbances of the summer. The recent riots inquiry adds to this

argument by suggesting that the blame should be placed with

character flaws within children, and disturbed parenting. The truth

is that the riots did not happen because children had bad character.

Individuals in a group setting, when the mob is rolling, will

always behave according to the mob, a because that is a psychological

law of group think. The truth is that you are looking at

approximately 1.5 up to 2 million individuals within these families.

Currently, our social work, housing and mental health departments are

completely at breaking point and unable to cope with the family is

that they are dealing with, let alone to absorb some more disturbed

individuals into the system. Disturbed children do not get to

write reports. They do not turn up on our airways to put their points

across. So they make convenient victims for articulate, middle

class people who want to put the blame at their door. Last summer, a

minority of children and young people exhibited truly hateful

behaviour. But we generated this hate in them. A tidy inquiry with

middle class-framed solutions is hardly going to solve the problem.

Camilla joins us in the studio. Welcome back to This Week. Lovely

to see you. You say the report is wrong to blame children and parents.

What do you say to people watching who saw the rioting and the

pictures and they might say, we need to condemn more and understand

less? I do not think rioting has the right thing to do. And I do not

condone it. But I think we need to arrive at a point where we

understand the drivers that created the riots on our streets in the

summer. And what is very evident, at street level during the summer,

is that the riots did not happen by accident, and run. You could feel

that things were escalating and children and young people were

talking about revenge, because they felt that society had absolutely

nothing to offer them. And repeatedly they were being

described interrogatory ways. lots of people who come from

deprived backgrounds and feels society has nothing to offer them

do not riot. That is true. Because I do not think it is deprivation

that makes you riot. And I don't think the rioters were all the same.

Was there not an element of pure criminality among some of the

rioters? They were opportunists who had -- who stepped in and took

things and broke into spaces. But the real driver's of the riots were

actually people who were deeply enraged. And that is what we are

not facing. We are describing the riots as a shopping orgy. It was

not. There were some really disturbed people in that space and

we need to tackle that. Do you recognise the description of

Britain as at war with its children? No. I do think that

sometimes you get a view in the media that all youngsters, if they

are wearing a hoodie they must be bad. I see that. But I do not think

the riots created that atmosphere. I agree with David Lammy, the black

MP for Tottenham, who said it is nothing to do with unemployment,

although that is a big problem in London - 50% of black kids are

unemployed - but he said the riots were nothing to do with

unemployment or Government cuts, but were an explosion of hedonism

and nihilism. I think he is right in the sense that there were not

riots in Hull. They have very poor communities there. The report,

which I agree was a bit bland, there was a fascinating description

of what happened in the Lozells district of Birmingham, a very

tough area. No riots there, although there were elsewhere in

Birmingham. There were a community leaders dealing with the issue

straight away and there was a sense of community. That sense of

community obviously was not recognisable in some parts where

riots took place. He mentions David Lammy, MP and the Tottenham area,

where the riots took place. What do you say to his remark that he felt

parents were not free to discipline children, and that makes the job of

building character, giving youngsters a moral compass more

difficult? I think we are looking at this the wrong way. Children are

fundamentally good individuals. They want to be law-abiding and to

participate in society. What we are not looking at is how our agencies

are behaving in an anti-social way, and demonstrating to the children

that humanity is not that worthwhile. I want to give you an

example. When you are four years old and your mother goes to social

services and pleads for help and the social work department says, I

cannot do anything about it, and then the mother screams and shouts,

and eventually security comes and removes the child and the mother,

that a little four-year-old watching that exchange will begin

to think that actually being a human being in distress, no one

will step in to help you, and you become responsible for your own

survival. And that is my point. We are creating a generation of

children and young people who believe that belonging to society

is not worthwhile, because society is not protecting humanity. It is

not taking care of them. Do you buy that, Michael? I feel despair,

really. I have been following Camilla's work for some time and I

understand what she says about the damage done to children, and that

many children are woefully abused at home and that in many cases it

is not even appropriate to talk about the family because it is not

something we would recognise as a family. But as I understand it

there are so many of these people, and in a way it is too easy to

blame social services. It seems to me that the numbers and the

conditions are beyond a scale on which we can hope to deal with this,

which is why... I am not blaming social services because individual

workers are doing a great job. I am blaming politicians, because what

is required is a Royal Commission to look at the structure of social

care for children in this country, both child protection and child

mental-health. Because what is evident, because of research, is

that the brains of children who are exposed to maltreatment are

changing in their neuronal Pathways, biasing children towards much more

aggressive, savage behaviour. It is The work you do is fantastic but it

can only be of necessity on quite a small scale. The amount of energy

that has to be devoted by you and your volunteers means you can only

ever reach a small group of kids. This is what makes me desperate.

That the numbers are just beyond what any society can hope to cope

with. I think there is an enormous amount of money being wasted

because we keep funding a service structure that's not fit for

purpose. Our child care systems haven't changed since the Victorian

times. At the Victorian times they had Barnardo's and the large

orphanages supporting it, there's no support mechanism are to it at

the moment. If all you say is true why didn't the riot in the 30s when

poverty was much more grinding, unemployment was much higher, the

kids had the same brains? I don't think it's about poverty and

unemployment. I think it's about perversion. It's about children who

are being severely maltreated. It's about the fraying and breakdown of

social care structures. Families hadn't broken down. The neighbour

could have perhaps fed the child who wasn't being fed and now the

neighbour's too frightened to step in and do anything because they

might be accused of being a speed fill file -- paedophile or whatever.

The social care structures informally have broken down and the

formal ones are no not fit for purpose. Camilla says the

politicians should take the blame. These riots happened after 13 years

of quite prosperous Labour Government. Should you be taking

the blame? Well, look, I am not blaming the Tories for those riots

even though they were in power when they happened. These kids grew up

under Labour. Is that relevant, is that even worth pointing out?

the same time crime was going down. Crime amongst young people was

going down. If you look at the statistics of crime of adults on

children, it's dropped by an incredible two thirds since the

early 70s, so we shouldn't have a council of despair here. I agree

with what Camilla says about the need for early intervention,

psychological therapies, dealing with disturbed kids. But there must

also be an issue about families, and about absent fathers and about

gangs. What are families apart from individuals? What we have got is a

generation of disturbed children growing up unable to parent their

own children, not having the emotional resources. It's not about

lessons in parenting, they don't have the emotional fibre because no

one's taken care of them properly and somewhere along the line we

have to break this cycle and be truthful. What's the point of name-

calling kheufrpb and -- children and you say children are not being

blamed but recently there was a massive PR company sort of

assessment of trust in Britain and three sets of people ended up being

described as least trustworthy, politicians, the media and the last

one was young people. We have become a nation where we are

describing as young people untrustworthy, what's wrong with

us? You could have done that poll at any time in the last 100 years

and you would have got the same result, always always the media in

there and politicians and young people have always been bad for

3,000 years. Camilla, thank you for being with us. Now forget all these

queues outside the 24-hour pasty places and simply pour yourself

another glass of Blue Nun from your copious panic-proof supplies that

even Francis Maude couldn't undermine because coming up:

Singer//songwriter Katie Melua, who'll be refusing to judge us on

first impressions. And for those who prefer to do just that,

remember we're happy to ignore all your ill-judged comments on our

interweb page, The Facebook and on The Twitter.

Now, this afternoon the This Week office received a special phone

call from the greatest impresario in high-waisted trousers, Simon

Cowell, who asked if we can put an act together for this year's

Britain's Got Talent. No problem, we said. Michael, as we all know,

is an expert on the triangle. When he manages to hit it Alan's guitar-

strumming days are not that far behind him. And me - well, I can

hula dance with the best of them. And we've also got the BBC's John

Pienaar, a man with endless talents. Here he is showing off just one of

them, with his round-up of the OK guys. Come on, let's go!

Impressed? Well I bet you thought we political hacks were a bunch of

lazy slobs, didn't you? Barely fit enough to lift up a scrap of gossip

or raise a glass? Well, that's absolutely true. But after last

week well I am giving up the pasties and posh dinners and

learning how to twist and turn and do flip-flops better than our

political leaders. I could hardly do worse, could I?

Cameron knew last weekend was going to be wobbly, obviously after that

Budget but then it came out his party Treasury had been offering PM

on a plate. Quality time with David Cameron, and all at the bargain

price of a �250,000. Well, the Treasury obviously had to go.

Quickly. And the rebuttal was almost as quick. This is not the

way that we raise money in the Conservative Party. It shouldn't

have happened. It's quite right that Peter Cruddas has resigned.

But now David Cameron was having to pick up the pace. The Sunday Times

scoop had left all the other journalists looking flat-footed so

all the press were playing catch-up. Who had David Cameron had for

dinner? What questions had they asked? What had they been

discussing? After first saying that was no one's business, David

Cameron ended up doing one of these. In the two years I have been Prime

Minister there have been three occasions on which significant

donors have come to a dinner in my flat. None of these dinners were

fundraising dinners and none were paid for by the taxpayer. OK guys,

let's do a pyramid. Number 10 gave out Dave's guest list at Downing

Street. It revealed, well nothing much, frankly. Is it really

surprising that Cameron has the odd cosy dinner with the very rich

Conservatives who keep the party going year after year? It would be

good to know if they discussed policy. But we don't. It would be

different if the taxpayer financeded party politics, but we

won't. But it's still a bit embarrassing

for the Conservatives because it feeds the perception that Cameron's

Conservatives were a kind of mutual support group for the wealthy. A

pyramid of plutocrats, but will it come tumbling down? Sorry guys.

Let's try again. Ed Miliband knows a political

opportunity when it's right in his face, towering overhead. David

Cameron was tottering a bit. But Ed Miliband wanted to tear the story

down. Especially the bit about the inquiry.

A Conservative peer appointed by the Prime Minister. An inquiry into

the Conservative Party, by the Conservative Party, for the

Conservative Party. Is a whitewash and everyone knows it.

So, a scandal followed by another lot of slap-stick in the Commons.

Sound familiar? If anyone isn't already thinking they're all the

same, well the Tories keep reminding us that Labour gets most

of its cash from the unions. Maybe all the parties will get so sick of

scandal they'll agree on a new system. And maybe I will end up as

the star of the circus. Poor Cameron. The economy's

struggling, there's a fuel strike looming and ludicrously he is he is

having to defend his pasty cred. He can thank his friend George Osborne

for that. This is positively, I promise you, my last pasty. When

was the last time you bought a pasty in Greggs? Look, I can't

remember the last time I bought a pasty to answer... That kind of

sums it up. I love a hot pasty, I think the last one I bought was

from the west Cornwall Pasty company, who I seem to remember I

was in Leeds station at the time. The choice was whether to have one

of the small ones or large ones, I have a feeling I opted for the

large one and very good it was, too. Mm, when was the last time these

two bought a pasty in Greggs? Still, good PR and you can't blame them

for looking pleased. It turned out that shop mentioned closed down

five years ago. There is a fuel strike coming possibly, it hasn't

even started. But a Minister got himself into a bit of a tangle with

this bit of advice that upset the firefighters and the health and

safety people. The greater the extent to which people have petrol

fuel in their vehicles, with maybe a little bit in the garage as well,

in a jerry can, the longer we will be able to keep things going.

dear, over to you Prime Minister. No need to queue to buy petrol, of

course people should take sensible precautions if there is an

opportunity to top up your tank if a sraoeubg is potentially on the

way, it's sensible if you are able to do that. No mention of jerry

cans this time, another U-turn. Ed has to be careful. Unite is

Labour's biggest backer and a strike will ruin a lot of weekends.

Ed does not want to slip. We have to avoid the strike and the strike

must not happen and the Government shouldn't be ramping up the

rhetoric. No, Ed and go easy on the pasties, that's not what they mean

when they say Labour needs a heavyweight. Dave, George, when the

papers start pelting you with pasty and you are ten points behind in

the polls and the cuts haven't started you know the mid-term

blewser here -- blues are here. Guys, the pasties are on me.

He fooled them, he ran out and they couldn't catch him.

They are currently performing in the Roundhouse in calm Ren. --

Camden. There are reports from Bradford west, there has been a by-

election there, George Galloway, running as independent there is

doing very well. Indeed, some reports are suggesting he may even

have won the seat which would be a major upset and disappointment for

Labour. We can't confirm that. We do know that he is counting well,

we don't know if he's won. If we hear that he has, or get any more

we will come to you before the end of the programme. Chances of a

major political upset happening in Bradford West. We are joined by

Miranda scan Green again. Pasty- gate. In a sense, the jerry can

story and the rest they're not quite serious, do they not add up

to a damaging week for Mr Cameron? I would say the worst fortnight the

Government has had since it was elected. That bad? Yeah, I think so.

And we don't know whether it's over yet because the press has the scent

of the hunt and is after the Government for everything. But it

has been extraordinarily contact- handed. And the Lib Dems have kept

their heads down. Nick Clegg has been at a nuclear summit looking

statesman-like which is convenient, only to return to these shores to

be asked when he last ate a pasty which must have been surreal for

him. But yes, I think you are right. They're silly stories individually,

is it the weather, have we silly season early? No it adds up to

something serious, which is a continuing problem with the Tory

Party being seen as elite and defending their own and not in

touch with the ordinary person who is facing difficult times. And it's

all about pastry snacks. That's become the dom tphept Labour

narrative about this Government now, a bunch of to haves out of touch

with ordinary people? Yeah, they fed into it. You couldn't have

followed the Budget when it looked as if they were looking after rich

elite at the expense of grannies and goodness knows who else, with

the Sunday Times expose and then of course that made John Man's

question, which would be irrelevant at any other time, made it

something significant. And the other thing that's changed is there

were - the left-wing press would always have made something about

this for a Tory Government, Mr Cameron now faces a battering day

after day from all the right-wing press, too? Yeah and there is

another factor, this fundraising scandal, it must be so depressing

to the Prime Minister. I mean, I don't think any party leader

actually enjoys having to go grubbing for money, which is what

they're forced to do because they need the money. I think David

Cameron's a fundamentally honest man and to have your integrity

questioned and dragged through the mire-- is really a debilitating

experience and then to have Peter Cruddas say as he apparently did,

there might be ways of avoiding the ban on overseas donations which

makes it difficult for the Prime Minister to resist having a public

inquiry, I mean the whole thing is just funmently depressing. I am

told that's why he is in a foul mood at the moment.

The Prime Minister. Because he does find his integrity

being questioned. It's the worst possible thing. Miranda, all

parties have problems with funding, certainly all the major ones. Is

this paving the way to something which will be unpopular with voters,

Perhaps. One of the estimates from the latest report into funding

political parties was that it would cost up to �4 per voter, which

people might swallow. What could be interesting is that we have had

this disastrous couple of weeks, specifically for the Tory party,

rather than the coalition, because it is the image problem with the

elite. How do they detox again? Luckily, this is mid-term, so

perhaps there is time before the next election to recover again,

again on Labour and get the polls back to where they were. But they

need something to help them detox again. One of those things could be

to clean up party funding and to try to actually build a cross-party

consensus on reform for this that might work. Another project might

be to tackle the House of Lords, to show you are a modern, clean party.

It is quite a jump, but you got the House of Lords in there.

projects, to show you are clean and modern. I am not sure people care

about that. Labour is having a field day at the moment, good luck

to them on that. They have done pretty well and Mr Milibands set it

up well last week in his response to the Budget, which paved the way

for this. But party funding is a problem for Labour, too. Well, it

is a problem that we could not reached the agreement when Hayden

Phillips was close to an agreement. But what Francis Maude was saying

this week - he had a bad week - he was suggesting nothing happened in

13 years of Labour. We reform the overseas donations, put a cap on

donations, and made them transparent. They were important

reforms. Can we go that step further? I am against taxpayers

paying for elections. The only way I think it might be acceptable is

as an interim measure while new arrangements their dinner and they

can get their acts together to raise funds. -- while they bed in.

I will tell you what could change the Labour Party from being on the

offensive, which they definitely are at the moment, and it would

change the terms of trade and involve party funding, a tanker

strike. Yes, that would be bad. But at a higher level - and Alan will

not accept this - at a higher level, the Labour Party is massively

hampered like being funded by trade unions. It distorts what the Labour

Party talks about. It distorts their attitude to industry,

distorts who gets elected as party leader. The reason we have Ed

Miliband is because of the union vote. I think they would do better

if they were not funded by trade unions. The trouble is that we do

not have hedge fund managers donating to the Labour Party.

Mr Blair had quite a few rich people giving money. I am not sure

being dependent on which people is better than being dependent on the

unions. My point, in the short term, is that party funding could

boomerang on Labour if there is a tanker strike, because the Tory

narrative would be, all right, you have had fun with the pasties and

the jerry can, but the country has been brought a halt by a union

which is Labour's biggest donor. is part of their problem. Part of

that advice was to try to embarrass us at a stage when, what has

happened, a union has balloted on industrial action. That is part of

the process. If you believe in free trade unions and the right to

strike, grow up. They had a ballot. They have not named a date for

industrial action and they are going to ACAS, so the chances are

there will be a settlement of this dispute. And their timing was

absolutely appalling. Most people remember 2000 when it was a bunch

of unelected people without any ballot that were creating the chaos,

and the trade unions actually stepped in and help to resolve it.

And all of what Alan has said was known by the Government. Being out

of touch is one thing, and frankly almost all governments to come out

of touch by the nature of being in government. But being incompetent

is another thing. I have not understood throughout this week

when anybody would advise you to fill up your tank when the strike

is 10 days away, and in the next 10 days you will empty your tank again.

What is the point? That seems incompetent. It is incompetent in

terms of political PR, but it also has this tinge of being incompetent

in terms of being in charge of the country. What was damaging for the

Blair government about the wildcat fuelled protests was the idea that

they were out of control. And then Labour plunged in the polls and it

looked very bad for a while. This is not a wildcat strike, but

planned industrial action. And it probably will be resolved.

queues at the petrol stations makes it look out of control which is bad

for any government. The issue about competence is important. The VAT on

pasties and hot Cornish pasties is one thing. He stuck 20 cent VAT on

static caravans. We will lose thousands of jobs in East Yorkshire.

-- 20%. They will save 14 million and spend 45 million on the people

who will be unemployed. It was a bad Budget in the sense that it did

nothing for growth, and you see this week there are statistics on

the economy, the last quarter of 2011, the OECD are saying a second

recession. I stick to saying we will look back and say this was an

extremely good Budget. The reduction in corporation tax and

income tax will stimulate investment. Are we agreed or not

that you will not hear the phrase for quite some time now, if ever a

game, "We are all in this together". Morally repugnant is a phrase that

will come back to haunt people. has gone, it has joined the lexicon

of the Big Society. I'm afraid so. We end on agreement.

Now, if you're a former tax exile called Peter Cruddas, picked by

Call-me-Dave to pick the pockets of the rich, don't be surprised when,

if secretly filmed pimping the PM and his policy committee to anyone

with a spare quarter of a million, your former mates start to distance

themselves. And if, when forced to resign, you claim to "deeply regret

any impression of impropriety arising from my bluster", you'll no

doubt forgive the public for thinking there could be more to it

than simply an "impression". So we've decided to put first

impressions in this week's The world's most extensive face

transplant has helped Richard Norris put an end to 15 years of

living as a recluse and given him the chance to rebuild his looks and

his life. It is still a surreal experience to look at him and it is

hard not to stare. Before, people would stare because he wore a mask.

But first impressions don't always have to be about appearance with

the new talent show claiming to judge purely on vocal ability.

known as the voice. And this show is called the Voice. And with a

musical based on the life story of Susan Boyle opening this week, the

former Britain's Got Talent runner- up has shown that looks can be

deceiving. And you shouldn't necessarily judge a CD by its cover.

As for politicians, first impressions can be lasting

impressions, with Cameron and Osborne desperate to distance

themselves from the idea that dinners for donors means we are no

longer all in this together. Just to give you an update from Bradford

West, we are learning that George Galloway is now texting journalists

saying he thinks he has a one in Bradford West. He is confident. We

do not yet have the result but you will get it, News Channel later

tonight. Good to see you again, a pleasure to have you back. Thank

you. First impressions, in your business, they matter. Of course.

But I think in the long term I do not think they do as much. A lot of

people come and they tend to go, but you can only maintain a certain

level if you are really talented and really good. We have had this

BBC show which I rather enjoyed, the first one, and the constructor

is that you just listen to the voice. To begin, you do not get to

see the person. Camber work? Is it ever only the voice? I think it can

be. Image plays such a huge part, especially in the history of rock

and roll. Sometimes it does not have to be a beautiful image. It

can be a controversial image. Look at Bob Dylan, or any other artist.

The Beatles had their hair cut in the 60s and that was there look. It

is a mixture of both but you definitely need the talent and the

music to back it up. If you were a talent scout in your business, you

would not just judge somebody on the voice alone. In the

entertainment business, doesn't it have to be a package? Yes, but if

it is a truly exceptional voice, then I would. You can get away with

it. Are there examples of that other than the obvious one? Gosh. I

hate to say it, but when Adele first came out there were people

who thought she was not the right size. That is ridiculous, and look

how well she has gone. And it is harder for women? Expected to look

good in general as well as singing well. Perhaps, but blokes have it

bad, too. The guys do not seem to mind so much. I get that impression.

Women tend to mind more if their looks are made a fact of. We have

seen that impressions matter in politics. As we said earlier, the

impression is abroad that Mr Cameron and those around him are

out of touch. And it is by a simple thing that you probably could not

predict was going to happen, but it has left an impression. And I

guarantee, pasties will be slung around George Osborne's neck more

than any other controversy he has had. It will be what the bicycle

was to Norman Tebbit. But these are not first impressions, they are

mature. But it is interesting that the polling showed after the

election that one of the reasons the Tories had not won an overall

majority was the impression that they were too posh. Yes, but then

again, if you remember that election, Nick Clegg and I agree

with Nick. He made this amazing impression on the very first debate

between the party leaders. That is a very good example. And yet it did

not materialise in the ballot box. But remembering what the first

impression was of Nick Clegg, because for the public it was their

first impression, and what the more mature impression is, of the

trouble of a student loans and the health service, it is very

different. You say that men can have it hard in the entertainment

business as well, but the media, particularly newspapers, are

usually more bitchy about women. Everything is analysed so much.

Everything is literally magnified on such a huge scale, so it can be

quite difficult. But the thing is, first impressions come and go. He

might have that first impression initially and then it is the next

day and it changes and something else comes in. So, what was your

first impression of Michael? You met him when you were last on. Have

you changed? Well, I would say it is perfect for both of you. There

anything I would say is that you should swap shirts. Should we do

that now? I would not wear that. have good ratings but that would

destroy it altogether. Change their shirts. But as will the audience

think, too. You have a new album, Secret Symphony, which is doing

well across Europe. I am delighted with it. It is an orchestral based

record, a mixture of covers and songs that I have written, and I

worked with the producer from the first three records, so it was

wonderful to be back in the studio with him. Thank you for coming

tonight. You will get the Bradford West result on the BBC News

channels through the night. That's your lot for tonight, folks.

But not for us, tempted as we are to head to the all-night pasty

garage in Peckam which also does a nice line in jerry cans. And even

though we promised to look in on Annabel's, where it's pasty and

caviar night, plus a free gallon of unleaded with every Jeroboam of

Blue Nun, we're off instead to our old fav' Kebabylon on the Holloway

Road for one of their rather pricey "donor" kebabs, with lashings of

extra-hot access to the Prime Minister. But we leave you with