27/09/2012 This Week

From London, the greatest city in the world, the This Week Late Show,

with Andrew Neil. On tonight's show, Michael Portillo

and Jacqui Smith. Lib Dem leading lady Shirley Williams, political

heavyweight Andrew Rawnsley, opinion maker Janet Daley, and star

of screen and stage, actor Simon And now, Paisley's former U12

synchronised swimming champion, Evenin' all. Welcome back to This

Week and a new political year. So let's kick things off with a

whimper, in Brighton, where the nation's remaining Liberal

Democrats huddled together for warmth under the pier this week,

trying in vain to see the sunny side of coalition government, and

the funny side of Danny Alexander. Bring back Sarah Teather, I say.

All is forgiven! Well, nearly all. Anyway, the increasingly "boutique"

Lib Dem festival of free love, free muesli and sky-high tuition fees

stumbled to its climax yesterday, with Nick Clegg's conference call-

to-arms. The self-styled Deputy PM told delegates it was not all quiet

on the Lib Dem Front and urged his poll-shocked foot-soldiers to throw

themselves over the top once more. A tall order, he admitted, given

they're stuck in the coalition trenches, covered in double-dip mud,

thanks to the quartermaster at Allied Command, General Boy George

Osborne. But Corporal Clegg insisted retreat was not an option,

inspired them with memories of generations of Liberals marching

towards the sound of gunfire, and urged them to return to their

constituencies to prepare for more abuse and vitriol. Yes, it's the

charge of the Lib Dem brigade, almost certainly to be followed by

the tomb of the unknown Lib Dem leader, if Vince Cable has anything

to do with it. Speaking of mere footnotes in political history, I'm

joined on the sofa tonight by two of the more unmemorable answers to

obscure pub quiz questions, the fifth Beatle and second man on the

moon of late night topical chat. I speak, of course, of #jacqu-i-am,

Jacqui Smith, and #sadmanonatrain, Michael "choo choo" Portillo.

Your moment of the week? Events in Spain, demonstrations, emergency

budget, talk of Catalonia breaking away. The public spending cuts and

so on have no prospect of success whatsoever and will simply drive

the Spanish economy into a downward spiral because they cannot devalue

their currency because they are in the euro. And the brilliant irony

of all of this is that the vain politicians who created this euro

thing are not drawing Europe together, but driving it apart.

Indeed, may be driving Spain apart with Catalonia. Exactly. Greeks

hate Germans and Catalans hate custodians. This is all going

swimmingly. Jackie. In February 2008 I signed the extradition order

for Abu Hamza to go to the US, which was already several years

into the saga of Abu Hamza. This week, it seems we, touch wood, have

had the final judgment. He has appealed again. He has, and there

is a stay from the High Court. It was interesting that Lord Chief

Justice Judge today for us -- expressed his frustration with the

fact that it had taken as long as it has taken. And did the Queen

ever talk to you about Abu Hamza? am a privy councillor and the first

rule of Privy Councillors, don't talk about Privy Council. She has

not lost her touch. Good to see a member of the establishment here.

Now, you would have had to be living in a dark, empty, desolate

place, not unlike Diane's bank account after that recent BBC Trust

ruling, for gate-gate to have passed you by. The policeman who

stopped Andrew "Thrasher" Mitchell cycling through the gates of

Downing Street claims the Chief Whip called him an "F-word pleb",

and only in class-bound Britain could you get into more trouble for

using the P word than the F word. But was Thrasher's rant just the

behaviour of a frustrated man who'd had a bad lunch at the Cinnamon

Club en route to the Carlton Club? Or a peek at the real, darker,

nastier side of the Tory party? This is the Sunday Telegraph's

Janet Daley and her Take of the Someone has to tell the truth about

the nasty party. As someone who has defended Conservatives arguments

for so many years, I thought it was time to come clean. The Tories can

be bloody difficult people to like. As I watched the Andrew Mitchell

debacle unfold, something snapped. This was not an inexplicable,

deranged, uncharacteristic lapse of behaviour. It was just an extreme

example of something that those of us who travel in Tory circles have

It is certainly true that most people who associate with

Conservatives do not generally find themselves being sworn at, or

referred to as clubs. Those of us who were not in that small inner

circle of known from childhood into modes or reliable sycophants tend

to find we are dismissed, snob, or become invisible when confronted

with people who no longer consider Thank you very much. Oddly enough,

it is the Tory modernisers, perhaps because they are more likely to be

toffs than striving achievers, who are the worst. In fact, it is not

the aspirational Thatcherite, state-educated Tories who look over

your shoulder when you are talking to them. It is the snotty,

condescending, one nation paternalists who are only

interested as long as you are as faithful as a labrador. I sometimes

wonder if the Tory leadership was so anxious to be likeable, realised

that the answer does not lie in embracing unpopular

environmentalism, unaffordable overseas aid policies, but in

addressing the problem of their own deeply unpleasant social manners.

Believe it or not, the great mass of voters, whom most of these

politicians will never meet, pick up the vibrations of a hint of

contempt for the anxieties and concerns of ordinary people on

immigration, say, of disrespect for senior politicians of a previous

generation, who are not sufficiently cool and modern. The

real lesson of Blairite politics which the Cameron project seems not

to have absorbed is the need for open friendliness and receptiveness

to sincere argument, even from people who are not your usual sort.

I wonder if Mr Cameron and his friends will ever feel really

comfortable with that. Janet Daley joins us in our little

dining room. Janet, how could it come to this? Good question. What

has gone wrong with you and the Tories? This has been going on, not

just with me, because it was the consensus in my newsroom and a lot

of other journalists, judging by the Twitter campaign. This is the

consensus of the Telegraph newsroom? Not officially. It is a

lot of people who e-mailed me, texted and rang to say, I have had

almost identical experiences to this. It is not about politics,

oddly enough, because the political arguments, we are fine with. It is

the man has, the arrogance, the supercilious attitude, of people...

This is a generation of Tory leaders who seem to feel rather

like people did in the 1950s, that you are born for office, and you

have a kind of divine right to office, and anyone who does not

give you uncritical, unconditional support must be beyond the pale.

you feel better that you have got this off your chest? Oh, yes.

Sleepless nights? Just exasperation. What about sleepless afternoons

after that lunch? I did not eat it. That was for television purposes.

You gave the game away. Michael, do you agree that the Tories are

"bloody difficult to like"? I said they can be. They can be. I think

people like Oliver Letwin, Francis Maude, Michael Gove, have some of

the loveliest manners of people I have ever met in politics. She does

not agree about Francis Maude. slightly gives the game away by

saying in the middle of the film that these are people who do not

feel they have any use for her any more. This, I see. That was a joke.

But it is fundamental. The Tory party made a decision five years

ago in opposition that allying itself with the Daily Mail and the

Daily Telegraph and the right wing columns was the passport to getting

30% of the vote and no more. And what they had to do, if they were

going to get 37%, or 42% to win an election, was brought on their

appeal. So it is absolutely true. They made a strategic decision to

leave people like you behind. is not actually empirically true.

Jacqui is going to be neutral and measured. So does that mean if we

go to the Guardian they are talking about how charming the Tory

politicians are because of the way they treat them? I am not sure that

is true. David Cameron, there was an election in 97, in 2001, and in

2005. When David Cameron changed the strategy, which was no longer

to be the mouthpiece of the Daily Mail - I know you are not from the

Daily Mail - when he changed the strategy, he got 37%, the best

result for 20 years. And the most discredited government in post-war

history was what he was up against. 37%! Do you believe that Kadlec

thrasher Mitchell used the word "pleb"? I do not know. OK, you do

not know. Do you think his behaviour is characteristic of

Cameron's ministers? No. You don't! Why did you go through all this?

said in the original piece that gave rise to this, this was an

extreme example. This was not deranged, out of the ordinary

behaviour, but an extreme example of the kind of behaviour that

certain Tory ministers are manifest. The importance of that behaviour is

that it shows the contempt that Michael was just very articulately

expressing, towards the mass of popular opinion in this country,

which has now, unfortunately for David Cameron, manifested itself as

far more to the right, to use a cliche, then David Cameron was

bargaining for. So now that virtually the entire country is

Euro-sceptic, does not believe we should be paying, for example, 0.7%

of GDP in overseas aid, that it has become very jaundiced about mass

immigration, all of these things, David Cameron finds himself left

behind. And he has deliberately repudiated not just right-wing

newspapers, but elder statesman of the party who were held in high

regard. Now we're getting to the heart of it. This is because you do

not like the policies of the That's exactly what I said.

should make a minute point. Did you tap my arm there? I did.

Knowing the four of us as I do. I expect anyone of us, if confronted

by a stuck-up official who decided that this gate could not open or

that gate could not open. Or we were going through the airport and

faced by people who think it is their job to tell you the things

that we can't do, I expect anyone of us if you had had a befy, that

the response would be... Oh! Excuse me, you are not the former Home

Secretary! Neither are you! Both of you, shut up. People may be

frustrated, Michael, but I don't think you would have behaved in the

way in which Andrew Mitchell behaved. You certainly wouldn't

have done it as a Government minister at the gates of Downing

Street, to a police officer! That's what's really terrible about this.

It is an attitude to other people, to public service.

Do you not believe that one of the things that has changed about

Britain, for the worse is that we now have people all the time in

uniform in official positions, telling citizens what they can't do.

Oh, Michael... I think it is a sad state of affairs. We are not

talking about... Excuse me, there is no point talking at the same

time. One of the problems with this, we are not talking about a

bureaucratic security guard, we are talking about a police officer who

is part of the diplomatic protection group. Therefore, Janet

said earlier, she did not know whether or not Andrew Mitchell used

word "pleb", but according to the police officer's log, he was clear

he had used the word "pleb". So there is a difficult situation

here. You believe Andrew Mitchell or the police officer.

I have to move it on. That is how TV works. Not like newspapers! How

deep are David Cameron's problems with his party? Especially the

backbenchers? The people you are to meet at the Tory conference?

Serious. Lots of Tories talk to me. The

danger is you could get killed in the scrum of discontented Tories

talking to you. They are not all on the backbench es, I have to say.

There are frontbenchers who are seriously unhappy with the way that

David Cameron and his people, not just David Cameron himself, but his

people, how they behave towards them there. Is a contempt, a

supercilliousness, a resistance to criticism, I'm sorry to say.

Criticism is unacceptable. People say that if they utter a word of

criticism they are out. They are sent to Coventry. That is extremely

unpleasant. Let me get Michael Portillo's

reaction to that? I think there might be a lot of truth in that. I

dare say that John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown felt an

exaspiration with backbenchers as they have little understanding of

what are the difficulties of holding power. So if you are going

to say that the backbenchers are concerned about the behaviour of

the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister may have concerns about

the behaviour of the back benchers. It is fair to provide balance, I

think it was lovely in Janet's log that New Labour ministers were

charming and remembered him, but it was not always the case that New

Labour ministers were not charming to each other.

Before you go tonight. In the interests of public service

broadcasting at its finest, are you prepared to name and shame?

Absolutely not. Oh! A waste of time having you on,

then, really. No names, no... would like to say, even though it

has been disagreeing to have Janet here, she has been charming.

If Michael would zip it. I would be able to say thank you very much for

being on This Week. My pleasure. It may be late. It is

late, dam you Crimewatch update, damn you! But that lickior will not

pickle itself. Coming up, master of the spoken word, Simon Callow, who

will be bowing and scraping before us all. Talking the language of

deference. For those of you who fail to show us any respect,

whatsoever, like our new Director- General, George, blow your own

whistle, why don't you join him and abuse us via the Twitter, the

fleece book and the internet. Now, it is tough at the top. I can

tell you that. History, never mind. Any way, it is very tough, but also

tough if you are Nick Clegg. Boom! Boom! One minute riding high. The

world is your oyster. Two years later you are saying sorry for a

policy you knew you could never deliver, but you thould would

deliver you a barrel load of simple-minded student votes. Yes,

it's been quite a week for the Deputy Prime Minister. Never one to

miss a grovelling apology, we spent Robinson to Brighton for our round-

He knew before he had been in Brighton three hours that they

meant to murder him. I thought re- reading Graham Green's classic

novel about Pinkie, a boy gangster in the Brighton underworld was as

good as any for preparing for Nick Clegg and his party politics.

Nick Clegg looks hunted by terrible opinion polls breathing down his

neck. Double crossers in the Blue gang and rivals in his own. Hello,

Vince. Even party members, norm aeth the most polite, voice their

grievances. We were the party not to break

promise. The first thing we did was to break a promise. People find it

difficult to forgive. People are disstressed, angry. They have come

here upset. They think you are too right-wing.

On the mean streets of the political underworld it is normally

considered a bad idea to ever admit to doing anything wrong. Apologies

are for losers, but the Lib Dem thought he would not get a hearing

from the voters for anything else he wanted to say until he fesed up

to something big. # We made a promise before the

election # That we would vote against any

change of fees # Vote against any right of fees

# It was a pledge made with the best of intentions

# The best of intentions # But we shouldn't have made a

promise # We were not absolutely sure we

could deliver # Only time and many opinion polls

will tell if it works that apology from the tuition fees pledge. At

least the musical spoof have done him a favour by ensuring that many

more have got tonne hear it. The song entered the charts at number

143. It is something it proved popular here in Brighton.

# I'm sorry # I'm so, so, sorry

# It's very hard to say that I'm sorry. # In the treacherous razor

slashing world of politics, the people you must have to fear are

not the enemies, but your supposed friends.

I make no apology... Naughty Vince! He had a policy to announce, a new

business bank, but the main interest in his speech amongst the

colleagues was how he would advertise himself as a replacement

leader of the gang. Ka I also made sure that I have

good communications with politicians across the spectrum.

Sorry, I think there is an urgent message here. Please, Ed, not now,

this is not the time. You may find this hard to believe,

but that was one of the better platform jokes of the week. It

ashroud Vince to present himself as a man who could do business can the

Red Gang. Compare and contrast with Danny, the Cut, Alexander.

Labour don't like us talking about their record in office, but the

country can never be allowed to forget their mistakes in banking,

regulation, in the public finances falsely promising the British

people they could end boom and bust. The conference defeated, the

leadership over secret trials, but in the end tp was not that big a

trial for Nick Clegg. A lot of Lib Dem MPs remained convinced that

Vince Cable is the cure for their difficulties, some of the party

grandees are angry with Vince Cable for showing too much lug. Despite

the traumas of coalition, many Lib Dems like the idea of being a party

of power. If voters want a party of

opposition, a stop the world I want to get off party, they have lots of

options, but we are not one of them. There is a better more meaningful

future waiting for us... APPLAUSE There is a better, more meaningful

future waiting for us. Not as the third party, but as one of three

parties of Government. So, Nick Clegg was not measured

after all. To be honest, I never really thought he would be, but if

the economy is tanking and the party's prospects still look bleak

next year, well, then, he really had better watch his back.

David Cameron, his party rested on many fronts, has a tricky

conference ahead, so I guess that the happiest of the gang leaders

should be Ed Miliband, he has the opinion poll lead. His challenge,

to show that he knows what to do Bugs, y Rawnsey there.

Shirley Williams. Welcome. Hello.

I am bony. You will find me hard to bite.

We would never bite you, Shirley girl. You live to fight another day,

your leader? Yes, he did. Even the Guardian had to swallow some

objections and to its great despair, that they were then mostly sticking

with him. They are a love the Lib Dems, they are sticking together.

They are not going to be used to murder.

Is Vince Cable the responsible now? No, but he doesn't intend to be.

Age will not stop him becoming the leader? No. Nor did it William glad

zone, don't forget, who I think was Serbing at 84.

Do you grow with Paddy Ashdown that cleling Clegg -- Nick Clegg is the

greatest leader in 100 years? not really.

So, is he not, though, is it not just a case of he lives to fight

for another year? If things have not improved by the next conference,

he could anybody real trouble? first of all, I think they will

have done. I think that several things will have happened that will

have helped with the Liberal Democrats. The main one is the

reform of the banking system. We have not heard a lot about the

Vicker's report, but I think that is importance.

Is not the danger of that, even if things do come right. The economy

has a bit of a spring in its step. That you have the banking reforms,

all of the rest of it, you will not get the credit for it, the Tories

will grab the credit or there is no credit. Either way you lose? I am

not sure of that. I have been a very long time, as you may recall,

in the Lib Dems since' 81. They have seen the polls fall to single

figures, go right up to high double figures. Many of us are used to the

sky-rocketing of modern politics. Vince Cable said he thought that

the next election would be another hung Parliament. He may not be

wrong? It could be? I think he may well be right. When you listen to

what your party wanted at Brighton, a mansion tax, maybe some kind of

wealth tax, tougher inheritance laws, a lot more Government

intervention on a whole range of things, you would be better off in

bed, if there is a hung Parliament again with you not be better off

with Labour? No. If you assume that the politics will be a coalition,

then the last place one wants to anybody is bed.

But you are closer to Labour than the Tories? So is your party?

party, the rank and file probably is, but hang on, Labour is

currently, Jacqui Smith will jump on me. I will come to her now.

She is good at jumping on me. She does it nicely, unlike some you

have on your programme, but Labour is in a state it is not clear which

of the two parties it is. The Conservative Party, the same thing.

We heard Janet Daley. The Conservative Party is not unified.

It has a strong right-wing, that is resisted by David Cameron. Not just

by him. The case for the Labour Party they have to go through a

difficult transition, which they have not addressed, that is how on

earth to create an economy that Labour can live with and that the

blasted markets will take seriously. Could you do a deal with Nick Clegg,

if it is a hung parliament? If you took an election tomorrow, Labour

would be the largest party, but you may have to do a deal with the Lib

Dems. Could you do a deal with Nick Clegg, or would they have to change

the leader to more Labour-friendly Vince Cable? Labour will be

fighting the next general election to win a majority government and

that will be the priority, and that is where people have focused their

attention. The answer to your question is, if that is the

situation we are confronted with by the election, then, in a similar

way to last time, Labour, the Tories saw anybody will need to

work out what they think is best for the country in terms of forming

a government. It is not what is best for the country, but how you

can stay in government. Nick Clegg felt he could not do a deal with Mr

Brown last time. Do you think Labour will feel, in similar

circumstances, it cannot do a deal with Nick Clegg and will need Vince

Cable? Everything Nick Clegg has done this week makes it more

difficult. He made a speech in which he argued that they were now

the party of power. Therefore, the only way they can be the party of

power is to be the party of coalition. He then very clearly set

out, in terms of any personal attacks, to lay them much more

strongly against Labour politicians than against Tory politicians.

was to balance Vince Cable. If Nick Clegg is the leader and the one who

needs to do the deal, he said he was between Ed Balls and Liam Fox.

So you would not like to do a deal with Nick Clegg. What about Vince

Cable? I think the way in which he has behaved and talk personally

about Labour politicians make it difficult, and more significantly,

the policies he pursued when he had the opportunity and Government.

What about Vince Cable? He was a Labour councillor in Glasgow before.

Shirley also used to be in our party. She is a bit too left-wing

for you. I would be happier doing a deal with her than any of the

others. We are singing from a bitter of the same hymn sheet at

the moment. Glad to hear it. Michael, despite all of the stuff

that Nick Clegg was going to face leadership problems at Brighton, he

has actually emerged more solidly, in his leadership, and with more of

a united party than Mr Cameron has. I thought Nick Clegg made a really

good speech. I thought all the arguments he made were exactly the

right ones. Did you watch on BBC Two? Have only seen extracts.

you have not seen the full speech. I was just wondering if you were

watching us. I had more important things to do. Carry on, Shirley.

Would Michael said his music to my ears. It was amazing house allowed

say anything. Nick Clegg is always polite, never cause anybody a pleb.

He gets bashed all over the place and comes up smiling. I will have

to bring in Michael. I watched it. Can I say something? What I was

going to say was that nothing would delight Nick Clegg more than this

discussion, where you are postulating that at the next

election the only people who will continue to be in power who are in

power at the moment are the Liberal Democrats. This is an extraordinary

proposition because on the whole the view is that the Lib Dems are

about to be massacred at the general election. But I agree it is

possible that the dice will fall in such a way that the Lib Dems are

the one continuity between this and the next Government. The other

point is that there are two-and-a- half years to go until the general

election and the thing that was missing from Nick Clegg's speech,

which was impressive in terms of the arguments, the thing that is

missing is any programme for the next two-and-a-half years. We have

to leave it there. I wanted to ask if you thought Nick Clegg would

still be leading the party into the next election. Yes or no? Yes.

Yes. What a pleasure to have you here. Finally to get some quality

on the programme! Pleased to see that. Now, what did the Romans ever

do for us? There's just so much to admire from such a great

civilisation. Former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has a soft spot for

public executions. Michael's ringside seat at the Olympic Greco-

Roman wrestling didn't go unnoticed. And I've never turned down an

invitation to a toga party in my life. But with Thrasher Mitchell

raising the spectre of a society once again divided into plebs and

patricians, we decided to put the language of deference in this

week's Spotlight. I am clear about what I said and

did not say. I want to make absolutely clear that I did not use

the words that have been attributed to me. Whether he said it or not,

Andrew Mitchell's rant brought an ancient Roman word into modern-day

Westminster and on to the front The BBC's Frank Gardner also failed

to show due deference this week, breaching royal protocol and

spilling the beans on Her Majesty's concerns about terror suspect Abu

Hamza. She spoke to the Home Secretary at the time and said,

surely this man must have broken some laws. Why is he still at

large? British Prime Minister, David Cameron. And David Letterman

refused to doff his cap to our very own Prime Minister. He teased him

when he struggled to remember his schoolboy Latin. The literal

translation of Magna Carta? Again, you are testing me. It would be

good if you knew this! Yes, it would be. Proving that an expensive

education is not always money well I hear that the cameras are

speaking to Eton tonight and asking for their money back, which will be

a look after all these years. -- the Camerons. We are joined by

Simon Callow. Nice to see you. to be here. Has difference to power

and social status come to an end? It has declined rapidly in my

lifetime. I remember -- remember when it was possible for someone,

on a bus for example, to just look at someone and it would quell them.

There was a language of authority which everybody possessed. That has

absolutely gone completely. And now they would come and whacked you.

Exactly. Certainly in the world and which I move, theatre and so on,

there has always been a very diminished sense of status in that

way of deference. For example, titles and so on are always dropped

in the theatre. They are dropped on this show, too. We never use them.

You are lucky if you get spoken to if you are Michael Portillo!

Speaking deferentially to people in power, is that also in decline?

do not meet many people in power, to be candid. You are one of the

most powerful people I have ever met. You are always deferential to

me. When I was a kid, you were always polite to a policeman.

but police were always polite to you and that is not always the case

now. There is a general feeling, mentioned earlier, that there are

many more people who seem to have power over us, the right to tell

you what to do. There is a general feeling now that they have to be

protected, like the people at Customs, who are often

extraordinarily bossy and aggressive. They are protected by

signs saying, you must not be aggressive to these people. You see

it everywhere. You follow the use of words quite carefully. Plebeian

has ancient roots going back to Roman times. It does not mean

working class, as I am sure we have established. They were landowning

people. They could be more powerful than the Senate when plebiscites

came in. I was going to say, has the word been used in modern

discourse, modern politics? I don't know about politics, but in the

playground it was in use in my childhood, plebs. But now

apparently it means much more, don't be such a fool. Someone said

that a player be is somebody who had a cucumber replaced for his

brain. -- a pleb. It is not to do with class, it just means stupid.

Presumably that was what he was saying, Mitchell. It is not a nice

word at the best of times, but did and did become particularly toxic

with Thrasher Mitchell because of the Cameron Government existing

image problem? So toxic that one could imagine that somebody had

invented it. It is said it is a word that Andrew Mitchell users and

I daresay that is true but I have struggled to see why he would have

used it in that context. Back to the point about deference, there is

still plenty of difference. Massive difference to the Royal Family,

enormous difference to celebrities. The number of times I get barged

aside because policemen are shuffling through David Beckham, or

Victoria Beckham. There is masses of that. I think on the whole

people are still quite polite to each other. What I think we lack in

English, and I would like to be invented, is the polite form of

address that you have in most European languages. We do not have

this. Lots of people come and talk to me, and I have more and more

taken to calling people "Sir" how do you deal with somebody who comes

up to and says, it is nice of you to say that? But that is a double-

edged sword. In America, it is aggressive. The Americans say ma'am,

rather nicely, which we would not do. It is surprising what can get

you into trouble. Not that long ago, using the F-word would have got him

into trouble but now it is the other word. But that is because it

tells you something more, plays into something people already think

about this Government, the whole idea that when he gets angry David

Cameron turns into Flashman at the dispatch box. Flashman went to

rugby, which was Andrew Mitchell's school. You are doing a show on

Dickens at the moment. Abusive language, words that are not

acceptable, they change over time, don't they? They certainly do.

Dickens is not strong on invective. But Shakespeare is wonderful on

invective. You cannot beat what one of the witches so as to the mother.

-- says to another which. Part of the difference was shown by the BBC

this week when they apologised for one of their correspondence

revealing what the Queen had said to him. Was the BBC right to do

that? I think they were. On a journalistic basis, I was surprised

Frank Gardner reveal his source. -- revealed his source. But also

because if we are going to have a monarchy and have a relationship

with the Queen, you really do need to keep those things confidential.

You think the BBC was right to apologise? Absolutely. What are you

doing at the moment? The mystery of Charles Dickens, a one-man play

examining his life, his brain, his heart, his soul, his work. You have

read the new biography? I wrote a new biography! Great to have you.

That's your lot for tonight, folks. But not for us, because we're off

to Annabel's, where it's Swear At A Pleb night. But no such good, clean

sport for us. We're off to drown our sorrows and fill the Sarah

Teather-shaped hole in our hearts. Yes, This Week's favourite pocket-

rocket joke machine was cruelly dropped in the recent ministerial

reshuffle, and we fear the Lib Dem conference will never be the same

again. So let's just remember the good times and the punchlines.

Nighty-night. Don't let the sound I thought I would not keep you for

too long because I want to get back to my hotel room to watch Strictly.