This is in my notebook but I can't remember where it's from or who the subject is. Can anyone help?

"Terrified of bores, he devised various ways of avoiding them.When on a train carriage, he would put on a skull cap (?) and a pair of 'comical' glasses and entreat people to join him. Anyone foolhardy enough to do so would not last long as he would anally take his temperature every ten minutes."

(Gah! Thank you. It's Lord Berner from 'Brewer's Book of Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics' by William Donaldson (every home should have it))

 

 

Hell of a week.

(Pic: John Gress, Reuters)

OK, so. The Today Programme issued a statement after my original post on the Ladykillers interview, which I characterised as an ‘ambush’ . "There was certainly no intention to 'ambush' Mr Linehan and we are sorry if he took it that way, but our producers felt they had clearly explained in advance how the discussion would play out."

Aha! Except, well, how can I put this delicately....that’s not the truth. Let’s rewind to the day before the interview, when I received the following email from one of the minions at team Ladykillers.

"Sorry to disturb on a Sunday. The Today prog, has rung to confirm tomorrow. With a slight twist. You will be having a discussion with Michael Billington theatre critic about the challenges and excitements of adapting a film for the stage. The idea of trying to capture all that was good about the old film and put that into a stage version that both presents something new and also doesn't disappoint fans of the original."

See anything in there that seems familiar? Neither do I.

I mean, that’s pretty clear, right? As a brief? Fairly unambiguous? Well, here again is the broadcast to remind you of how the interview played out.

The email finished with a request to do a quick ‘research chat’ later that evening.
They asked me to call at 9.30pm, which kind of cut into my Sunday evening in an annoying way but what the hell, this was important. Six seasons into 'Larry Sanders', I know how useful these pre-show interviews can be to the host of a live programme. So I twiddled my thumbs till the appointed time and phoned the number I’d been given.
The researcher (producer?) on the other end of the line seemed surprised to be hearing from me. I told him why I was calling.
"Oh, well, we don't really need to do that."
Huh? “Really? I was told to call...”
"Hold on a second."
Pause. After a moment I heard the receiver being picked up again.
"No, I'll do it now..."
Great start! He then asked a few perfunctory questions (maybe three? Certainly not as many as five). My impression was that he humoring me, even though it was they who asked me to make the call. I can’t remember the precise details of our chat, but at no point did anything he say contradict the contents of the email I’d received. I would have remembered that.
This was his final question. “Have you seen the Tom Hanks version?”
“Er...yeah. It was...you know...it had its moments.”
“OK, I think that’s fine! Thank you!”
That was it. That was the research chat.
 So anyway, the show went how it went, the presenters had some fun at my expense after I left the studio and later that day Justin Webb started tweeting about me, calling me ‘Father Ted’ every time in an attempt to belittle me (not a big fan of the show, I guess).
Here, he accuses me of being evasive. The next day, he’s still annoyed at me for having the temerity to answer back. The next day again, he obviously reads my blog post but doesn’t try to speak to me directly (very easy on Twitter, Justin)... and finally, he runs afoul of BBC’s rules regarding social media (rules which were pointed out to him by some of my followers, I should add) and takes a final swing
It’s frustrating that I have to bother y’all with this silliness. But I need to write this down so I can forget about it, because as you can imagine, this stuff is sort of annoying to have to carry around. I would possibly have even let it all slide but their statement really rankles. “There was certainly no intention to 'ambush' Mr Linehan and we are sorry if he took it that way, but our producers felt they had clearly explained in advance how the discussion would play out”.
 As the above email proves, I was deliberately mis-briefed by The Today Programme and in their statement afterwards, they flat-out lied about it. It’s a show with a proud history, but at the present time, their default mode of bunfight journalism is lazy, poisonous to the national conversation and leading them down some ethical dark alleys. They should stop apologising for how I "took it" and start apologising for what they did.

****************************************

To finish up, a few links.
I added a comment to this excellent post. (Although while it’s kind of Stephen to say so, I wasn’t being brave, I was just taken by surprise.)
Thank you, David Hepworth .
A few notes from Twitter.
David Arnold is a film composer
A good point from Iain White, Director of CURE research centre.
I can well believe this from @eroticpuffin (sorry mate, don’t know your real name)

Gavin Martin told me about a similar incident, and Gideon Coe, who was his unwitting dance partner, joined in the conversation.

"Whatever your feeling about Today's combatative style and whether it is an effective method for political interviews, there's no reason why it should be assumed to be by default the best format for arts coverage." Nice piece in The Stage.

Thanks to all the people on Twitter and elsewhere who took my side in all this. You had nothing to go on but my word, and I hope this post  clears up any doubts you may have had. Thanks also to the Telegraph’s Christina Odone, who apparently had a pop at Graham Lineham (sic), a guy I have always hated.

(Not sure who to credit for the above photograph. If anyone can help, please let me know on Twitter.)

 On Monday, I was invited to go on the Today show to talk about my part in the upcoming production of The Ladykillers. I would be asked about the "problems in adapting a classic film for the stage", I was told, and critic Michael Billington would be there to "provide a wider context". As soon as Michael arrived in the green room, I realised that he had, in fact, prepared for something else entirely.

 Michael, somewhat embarrassed, told me that he was actually providing the opposing side in an argument about the wisdom of adapting the Ladykillers at all. So what I thought was going to be a discussion about the technical challenges afforded by turning a classic film into a worthwhile play, was actually going to be a typical Today program bunfight.

 Fine, if they were going to ambush me, I would ambush right back. I decided not to play. (Athough no-one appears to have told the guy who wrote this blurb.)

 Since we were changing briefs, I thought I'd introduce one of my own, and what a treat it was to to be able to complain directly to Today's pompous John Humphrys stand-in about the squabbling that passes for debate on that programme. Of course, they shut it down as quickly as they could, so let me finish my point here. The style of debate practised by the Today programme poisons discourse in this country. An arena where there are no positions possible except diametrically opposed ones, where nuance is not permitted, where politicians are forced into defensive positions of utter banality...none of it is any good for the national conversation.

And they wanted to impose this nonsense on me? Michael in the red corner, me in the blue! Ding! Defend yourself! Justify yourself!  What the host didn't realise is that because I'm not a politician, like the fellow I saw in the green room preparing his lines with an aide, I didn't have to be held hostage to their artificial, reductive, harmful format.

Finally, some questions for the Today show producers. Is mis-briefing your guests ethical journalistic practise? In giving an accurate brief to one side of the discussion, am I to conclude that someone in the show had already made up their mind on the subject, and wanted to skew the debate to their liking? Are little bits of dishonesty like this the only way you guys feel you can maintain your little fight club?

Dog lovers in my manor will be shocked to hear that Brent council are thinking of forcing people to put dogs on leads in Tiverton Park. Essentially, the park is just a big open field and the only place for miles where owners can give their dogs a bit of proper excercise....consultation period ends TODAY, and it's not the only park being targeted, so if you're a dog owner in Brent, you've not got long to make your voice heard. http://www.brent.gov.uk/contact