Fine and Dandy
The Today programme, yesterday. John Humphries intriduces a story about the new, glossy, relaunched Dandy.
He begins by fulminating that it’s on glossy paper, has new stories, and Desperate Dan has got rid of his gun. Isn’t this political correctness gone mad, he asks of the interviewee who isn’t from the Dandy’s publishers, DC Thomson.
‘I really liked it. Well done!’
Humphries is now flumoxxed. The wind has been drawn from his sails, and he actually has to say ‘what do you like about it’ and a reasonably interesting discussion ensues.
It was a fascinating insight into the faux adversarialism of much talk radio, and also, given a researcher will have rung the interviewee beforehand, surely they would have said ‘do you like it or agree that it’s a piece of political correctness gone mad?’. Therefore, either they put people on the radio with no idea about what their view is.
Or maybe they did, and they just set Humphries up because he’s a pompous ass in real life too.