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Blond Ambition
Friday, August 22, 2008  Send to a friend
The Evening Standard have picked up on my forthcoming interview with Boris Johnson for Total Politics magazine. I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one surprised by his knowing use of Heseltine's "I cannot foresee the circumstances.." when asked whether he still harboured PM ambitions...
Update 24.08.08: Amid the hundreds of acres of newsprint coverage Boris has been garnering in the run-up to taking the Olympic flag from the Beijing mayor, the TP interview has also been name-checked in The Daily Mail, The Observer and three times in John Rentoul's column in the Independent on Sunday. Meanwhile, The People pulled a quote from the interview, but didn't source it to TP.
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, August 22, 2008
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Charisma bypass
Thursday, August 21, 2008 Send to a friend
Mr. Showbiz-Jazzhands (otherwise known as Gordon Brown) strikes again. As the New Statesman's Martin Bright points out, our PM - already upstaged by Mayor Boris over the Olympics - finally crawls out of the woodwork (and what was he doing during the Georgia crisis exactly?) only to declare of 'Team GB': "I think the whole nation is totally delighted and really proud of everything that's been achieved." How very press release. How do you feel, Gordon? No one's saying you need to become Oprah and rent your garments, but sound human at least, man!
Posted by James Silver - On Thursday, August 21, 2008
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Me, me, me
Tuesday, August 19, 2008 Send to a friend
Wonderful and revealing slip of the tongue from BBC TV news anchor Kate Silverton on the lunchtime news today. When introducing a correspondent in Georgia, she said: "Helen Fawkes is in Igoeti for me.."
Yes, love. She's in Igoeti for you ...
Posted by James Silver - On Tuesday, August 19, 2008
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Writing + wall
Monday, August 04, 2008 Send to a friend
For Gordon Brown, this piece in today's Guardian by one of his few remaining supporters in the press, Jackie Ashley, is the one that should worry him most...
Posted by James Silver - On Monday, August 04, 2008
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City of doll-houses
Monday, July 21, 2008 Send to a friend
One of those great cultural weekends, pretty much unique to London...
A strange mix of Japanese folklore, Noh theatre and a modern whodunnit served up in The Diver at the Soho Theatre, starring Kathryn Hunter... One too many swirling dream sequences for my tastes, but arresting and original nonetheless...
Then, to the Hayward Gallery on the south bank for Psycho Buildings, a fascinating exploration of spacial surroundings and our reaction to them - part of the iconic gallery's 40th birthday celebrations. Rachel Whiteread's doll-house town at night and the exploding building by Los Carpinteros particularly stick in the mind...
And then finally to the Curzon Soho to see the deeply disturbing Savage Grace starring Julianne Moore... Incest, identity and social climbing spun over four locations and 26 years... Perfect Sunday night fare.
Posted by James Silver - On Monday, July 21, 2008
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BBC Bonuses Again
Wednesday, July 09, 2008 Send to a friend
"BBC Bosses in Bonuses Storm" has become an annual media ritual/blood sport. This year there's an added piquancy given the dismal year the corporation has had with its phone-in scandals, fakery rows and redundancies. DG Mark Thompson was right to waive his bonus. And, I believe, this year, the rest of the board should have waived theirs too. The successes of the BBC iPlayer and Freeview are noteworthy, but in the end two factors should have weighed heavily on their decision. First, you don't slash the workforce and demand austerity from programme-makers and then fill your boots at the top; it sends out all the wrong signals. And second, I don't believe the BBC has had a great year creatively. The standard defence - when it comes to BBC executive bonuses - is that the private sector offers far richer rewards. But working for the public service BBC - while being very well paid by any reasonable standard (Jana Bennett, BBC Vision director earns two-and-a-half times as much as the PM) - should be reward enough for these guys. If they want more, then they know what they can do...
Posted by James Silver - On Wednesday, July 09, 2008
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Last one out
Monday, July 07, 2008 Send to a friend
Don't forget to turn out the lights...
Posted by James Silver - On Monday, July 07, 2008
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Blog Hall of Mirrors
Monday, July 07, 2008 Send to a friend
Former Gawker hackette and veteran blogger (at 26) Emily Gould described (in eye-watering detail) the risks inherent in blogging about your personal life in a fascinating recent cover story for the New York Times magazine. Gould’s piece predictably prompted a wave of keyboard-clattering from the Manhattan media bubble's finest, but also won her an impressive – and, I think, well-deserved - book deal. This week she hit back at her haters in a piece on her blog entitled ‘How the Emily Gould Gossip Sausage Gets Made’. I have never come across a better illustration of the hall-of-mirrors nature of the blogosphere... Mad dogs barking at each other in a paddling pool. Or as EG puts it people "who have been in the machine too long".
Posted by James Silver - On Monday, July 07, 2008
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British Library Blues
Saturday, July 05, 2008 Send to a friend
I yield to no one in my affection for the British Library, where I spend many hours working and in our (justifiably) twitchy age I fully understand the need to search bags on entry. (Although, let’s face it, the BL strikes me as quite a strange choice for a would-be suicide bomber... “I know, let’s murder the bookish!”) But the officiousness of some of the security-guards occasionally strays into farce, as they fumble self-importantly through obscure pockets and long-forgotten corners of rucksacks, yet don’t bother checking laptops and wave through people, wearing heavy winter-coats, as I have seen them do on many occasions. Give a man a walkie-talkie and he goes a little bit crazy. I’m waiting for the day a Jack-Bauer-with-a-library-staff-pass greets me at the door with the question: “Did you pack that pencil case yourself, sir?”
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, July 05, 2008
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Greer on Dylan
Saturday, July 05, 2008 Send to a friend
I doubt I’m alone in my outrage at that hectoring-frump-turned-reality-TV star Germaine Greer’s bizarre assertion in The Guardian arts section that Bob Dylan is an over-praised and untalented lyricist. "It's not verse, not even doggerel," she declares. To bolster her (paper thin) case, Greer picks a couple of lines from "Visions of Johanna", a song which I would agree does not contain his finest work.
But take this extract from one of his most beautiful and haunting songs, Blind Willie McTell...
See them big plantations burning
Hear the cracking of the whips
Smell that sweet magnolia blooming
(And) see the ghosts of slavery ships
I can hear them tribes a-moaning
(I can) hear the undertaker's bell
(Yeah), nobody can sing the blues
Like Blind Willie McTell
Or these verses from the unbearably moving Who Killed Davey Moore?
Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?
"Not me," says the boxing writer,
Pounding print on his old typewriter,
Sayin', "Boxing ain't to blame,
There's just as much danger in a football game."
Sayin', "Fist fighting is here to stay,
It's just the old American way.
It wasn't me that made him fall.
No, you can't blame me at all."
Who killed Davey Moore,
Why an' what's the reason for?
"Not me," says the man whose fists
Laid him low in a cloud of mist,
Who came here from Cuba's door
Where boxing ain't allowed no more.
"I hit him, yes, it's true,
But that's what I am paid to do.
Don't say 'murder,' don't say 'kill.'
It was destiny, it was God's will.
... and tell me again that Dylan’s best work can't be described as poetry, Germaine.
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, July 05, 2008
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Tusa on Wheeler
Saturday, July 05, 2008 Send to a friend
One of the finest reporters the BBC ever produced, Charles Wheeler died on Friday. The greatest exponent of the reporter-is-not-the-story school of journalism, his cool and authoritative voice will be badly missed. I wonder who John Tusa had in mind in his Guardian tribute, when he wrote: "Charles was the obverse of a puffed-up "personality journalist" - the kind of person who thinks his personal presence is our message."?
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, July 05, 2008
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Jay-Z, finally
Saturday, June 28, 2008 Send to a friend
You've got to hand it to Jay-Z. After weeks of moaning from indie-fans and Glastonbury 'purists' (including Noel Gallagher) that the festival doesn't "do" hip hop, this year's headliner turned up on stage (very late) and stuck it to the Oasis star with a parody of Wonderwall... before erupting into his brilliant set with 99 Problems. He told his audience, (quite possibly the whitest he has ever performed in front of): "For those who didn't get the memo, my name is Jay-Z, and I'm pretty f***ing awesome!" Damian Hurst's diamond-studded skull glittered on a screen behind him...
Update: The critics are pretty much united over Jay-Z's set. He has officially been designated A Triumph. Case closed.
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, June 28, 2008
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Hersh on Iran
Friday, June 27, 2008 Send to a friend
The great investigative reporter Seymour Hersh reveals in the latest issue of The New Yorker that the US government has launched a dramatic escalation in covert operations in Iran, intended to destabilize the Iranian government. It's the latest in a series of articles by Hersh investigating the Bush administration's plans for a possible attack on Iran. It's becoming increasingly plain to those who follow these things, that the Iranian nuclear issue has shot to the top of the president's foreign policy priorities.
2nd July update: During my interview for next month's Total Politics magazine with former Bush press secretary Scott McClellan and ex Clinton and Carter foreign affairs advisor Ambassador Marc Ginsberg, the latter revealed that "Israeli diplomats have been running around Europe and the US warning that if something is not done to stop the Iranian nuclear programme soon, the Israelis will act militarily." Sobering.
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, June 27, 2008
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Dumb or what?
Friday, June 27, 2008 Send to a friend
With Zimbabwe on 'election day' simmering like a cauldron, Britain's PM marking a year in office with another by-election fiasco/debacle and stock markets falling across the world, which story is - at the time of writing - the 'Most Read' on the BBC News website? Naturally it's some preening noise-in-a-hat called Dennis getting slung off Big Brother . And yes, it's the 'Most Emailed' too...
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, June 27, 2008
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Whopper with fries
Friday, June 13, 2008 Send to a friend
Irresistible, from Holy Moly:
This is the single greatest sentence I have ever put in the mailout.
A mole writes:
"I once saw Dean Gaffney crying in Burger King with his mum."
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, June 13, 2008
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Ole Poison Fingers
Wednesday, June 11, 2008 Send to a friend
It's hard not to feel sorry for our hapless PM. Impressive wheeler-dealing and nose-tweaking behind the scenes to squeak a victory over 42 days detention, following a confident performance at PMQs, and finally he gets to glimpse a chink of daylight.. Then some doofus klutz intelligence official goes and leaves some top-secret documents on a commuter train... And suddenly, Brown's rare-as-hens'-teeth good news story (Brown Stands his Ground etc) is bumped off the front pages/evening news. Some leaders are born lucky. Poor Poison Fingers Gordon simply isn't one of them.
Update: And then along comes rogue elephant David Davis...
Posted by James Silver - On Wednesday, June 11, 2008
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Lady Fenella and the Duke
Saturday, June 07, 2008 Send to a friend
With its tales of minor European aristocrats with unpronounceable names, feuds at Annabel's nightclub and endless features on Sloaney ponies-turned-models, the Evening Standard's glossy ES magazine is a true oddity. Perhaps its editor, Catherine Ostler, is confused and thinks she's editing Tatler. She clearly thinks her mag is read exclusively in the hair salons of Kensington and Chelsea. The truth is the typical Evening Standard reader is an accountant sitting in a smelly train back to Penge of an evening. What they make of Lady Fenella de Horseface and Duke Heinrich von Footstump's messy divorce heaven only knows. No doubt the Standard would say the mag is "aspirational". The truth is, if you check out the display advertising it carries - Calvin Klein, Porsche, Cartier, etc - it clearly brings in wheelbarrows of cash...
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, June 07, 2008
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Make it go away...
Thursday, June 05, 2008 Send to a friend
Oh. God. Please. No. Make. It. Stop. Big Brother is back. Like a bad drunk with onion breath and close talking issues. I've burned godknowshowmany hours of my life watching it in the past while pretending to work. This year I swore I'd rather remove my spleen with a potato peeler than watch a single second of it. But guess what? Failed. Already. I have to admit to a sneaking, horrified fascination with BB. The braying, semi-medieval mob. Thunderbird Davina. And of course the obligatory bubbling vat of borderline personalities. The showboat. The WAG. The lapsed Muslim. The chatterbox. The Dork. Etc. Etc. A toxic freak show. The Breakfast Club on Benylin. A world cultural trough. Yes. I'm loving it. But I wish it would go away.
Posted by James Silver - On Thursday, June 05, 2008
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The Viper Room
Wednesday, June 04, 2008 Send to a friend
So that fat lady finally took to the stage and sung... In a mesmerizing speech, Obama has claimed the nomination, while HRC has all but conceded... I say 'all but' because she couldn't quite bring herself to do it... Now, Obama enters the Viper Room of a general election campaign. This is where it starts to hurt. Where the fight turns ugly as the Republican spin machine whirs into action. Don't expect McCain to do the dirty work himself. That's not really his style. But watch out for the rightwing bloggers; the pasty-faced nasties pecking away at worn-down keyboards... Watch out for the attack ads, the coded racist references, the character smears and yet more glimpses of Obama's rolling-eyed preachers-from-hell... Some have said Hillary fought dirty. Unfortunately, I think the Obama camp ain't seen nothing yet...
Posted by James Silver - On Wednesday, June 04, 2008
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Planet Clinton
Sunday, May 25, 2008 Send to a friend
It is surely, as serial Clinton-basher Andrew Sullivan points out, an extraordinary irony that while Hillary Clinton was awaiting a cataclysmic gaffe from Barack Obama to aid her cause, it is she who has fatally slipped. Even if her comments have been misinterpreted, simply raising the sceptre of Bobby Kennedy's June assassination while running against an African American candidate (as justification for staying in the race), could only backfire. The 'Clinton machine' has malfunctioned. The tyres are spinning in the mud. The media have been looking for a chance to kill off her campaign. Now they have it. Condemnation has been swift and fulsome.
Update: There's fascinating analysis here on the New York Times politics blog of what HRC actually said and how the media ran with it...
Posted by James Silver - On Sunday, May 25, 2008
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Brown's Rictus Grin
Friday, May 23, 2008 Send to a friend
Is it just me or has Gordon Brown's smile become even creepier recently? It's become a sort of death-bed twitch; part-grimace, part-flinch... It was particularly chilling on PMQs this week... The closest I can find online is this strange effort. One leading political journalist told me that when GB was chancellor an image consultant was shipped in to work on his 'smile'. But he kept smiling in the wrong places and, eventually, she just gave up... Perhaps she should be given another shot?
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, May 23, 2008
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A dish best served cold
Sunday, May 11, 2008 Send to a friend
John Prescott's remarkable vomit-spattered memoirs in the Sunday Times today reveal how Gordon Brown sulked and raged over what he saw as Tony Blair's mendacity about when the former PM would stand aside. When viewed alongside another shattering poll in the Mail On Sunday over the forthcoming Crewe by-election, Mr. Brown's fledgling premiership is starting to look unsalvageable. Blair endured swaths of bad press, often sustained for months at a time. But he had an ability to ride out the media storms; even the most damaging stories - 'cash for honours', the dodgy dossier etc eventually disappeared over the horizon. Setting aside a backdrop of economic woes, a string of mishaps and the undeniable sense of an administration gone stale, Brown simply lacks Blair's unique ability to project confidence. For years Brown brooded from the sidelines, briefing against the boss and stirring the pot. We even learn from Prescott that his jealousy led to him holding cash back from pet Blair projects. The top job was his by right and he wanted everyone to know it...
The result? Well, in 11 days time, the PM's reputation will take a further pummeling in Crewe. The fallout will be highly toxic. A defeat also looms in the Commons over increasing the length a terror suspect can be held without charge to 42 days. Talk of leadership challenges will dog him for the rest of his time at No 10, the sense of lurching - Mr. Bean-like - from crisis to crisis ever-deepening. Meanwhile, whatever he and his friends say in public - or indeed behind the scenes - when he draws the curtains at night, Mr. Blair probably allows the occasional wry smile to creep across his face. Not his trademark Cheshire cat grin, of course. Just a smirk which says 'I told you so'.
Posted by James Silver - On Sunday, May 11, 2008
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Downcast of Downing St
Friday, May 09, 2008 Send to a friend
A daily drubbing in the press, a mop of blond hair at City Hall, now a slating in The Economist and a doomsday poll in The Sun...there is nowhere to hide for the PM at the moment. And to cap it all, Brown looks so downcast... As if he's carrying a terrible secret he can never share with the rest of us. Good leaders in the media age provide the public with a narrative. The Blair/Campbell axis and the first Clinton administration wrote the book on this. Unfortunately for Brown, he - and the people around him - failed to read it. So as the car-crash of the-election-that-never-was unfolded, the narrative began to be written for him.. The ditherer. Mr. Bean. Now a dour man entirely out of his depth. And, tragically for the Labour party, with a by-election disaster looming in Crewe and Nantwich - which will spawn further torrid press amid more nightmare polls - there's not a thing he can do about it right now.
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, May 09, 2008
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It's all over now. Or is it?
Wednesday, May 07, 2008 Send to a friend
The media pundits are saying it's all over. The fat lady is clearing her throat. From the expression on Bill Clinton's face to Matt Drudge's simple caption under a picture of Obama - "The nominee", the conclusion is that the smooth-talking junior Senator from Illinois has prevailed. Take a look at this from Tim Russert, NBC's Washington Bureau Chief. So that's it then... We in the media hoped against hope for a few more months of nail-biting entertainment. But, as they say in the US: 'You do the math!' Obama has an overwhelming lead in terms of delegates and the popular vote. He will likely swing the super-delegates this week. And of course he's clinched the moral argument too. It's been a fantastic run that has gripped readers and viewers the world over and hopefully restored faith in America's democratic system after the debacle in Florida eight years ago. But it's all over now. Or is it? At the time of writing, Senator Clinton is vowing to fight on. Behind the scenes super-delegates' noses are being tweaked. And who knows what else Obama's Pandora's-box-of-a-pastor will say in the meantime... I have a sneaking feeling that this story has a twist or two in it yet... After all, two rules apply here. One: never bet against a Clinton. And two: it ain't over till it's actually over. Whatever the fat lady may be doing.
Posted by James Silver - On Wednesday, May 07, 2008
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Heather Gets Even
Monday, March 17, 2008 Send to a friend
Heather Mills' mad-as-a-box-of-tree-frogs performance on the steps of the High Court today was a master-class in how not to behave in front of a thicket of camera lenses. One yearned - for the sake of her child - for her to stick a sock in it. Yet for all its rolling-eyed self-justification and hysterical mentions of her charity work, it was an oddly compelling performance. Macca probably cringed so hard he gave himself a hernia. As Sky's Kay Burley put it, "Sir Paul doesn't perhaps enjoy the limelight quite as much as his ex-wife". Indeed. What price a reconciliation?
Posted by James Silver - On Monday, March 17, 2008
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David Simon & The Wire
Saturday, February 09, 2008 Send to a friend
Fantastic piece by Mark Bowden in Atlantic Monthly about The Wire - the greatest TV drama ever made - and the brooding personality of its creator David Simon. A former reporter on the Baltimore Sun, Simon (and his "chief collaborator", former cop and school teacher Ed Burns), cover a different aspect of their home city in each season of the show.
In the first, it was the drug trade - the futile cat and mouse game between the police and the dealers; the second homed in on the port, painting as powerful a portrait of the decline of industrial, blue collar America as has ever been shot; in the third, we see the city bureaucracy - and the politicians - in their full cynical glory; in the fourth (and the best, I think), it's the school system and the lure of easy money and respect to be found on the streets for African American kids; and in the final season, which I've yet to see, it's reportedly the spiritual bankruptcy of his former employer, the city's newspaper.
With its sprawling Dickensian narrative, searing language, beautifully-drawn (and largely African American) characters and extraordinary depth, The Wire is simply the greatest TV fiction I've ever seen. It's tough to watch, the plot meanders and you certainly don't watch it for the twists and turns - you watch it because it feels like you've strayed into a world that is as far away from TV Drama-land as it's possible to get. It's life lived hard; as it is lived by millions. And the truths it tells are universal.
Among its many great tributes was this from trade journal Variety: "When television history is written, little else will rival "The Wire," a series of such extraordinary depth and ambition that it is, perhaps inevitably, savored only by an appreciative few."
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, February 09, 2008
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Slightly less Angry of Ohio
Tuesday, January 15, 2008 Send to a friend
I'm really not feeling the love from Mansfield, Ohio right now... In his email below, Mr. **** - I assume it's a 'Mr.', it certainly sounds like a 'Mr.' - points out that the Wright brothers were also from smalltown Ohio. But I fail to see what that's got to do with my description of Mansfield as "drab and depressing". In any event, I refer Mr. **** to my last post. And I'd also like to point out that my reference to the armed guard reading the bible, was (wholly accurate) 'colour'/
description. I was certainly not mocking her faith.
Dear Mr. Silver: What does the "appearance" of Mansfield, Ohio, "drab and depressing", have to do with a legal case? I found your description of the town, the number of churches and the reference to the Bible as nothing more than a humorous caricature. We are a little more sophisticated here in the "Buckeye" state than you describe. Please remember that two Ohio boys, Orville and Wilbur, invent flight after all. They were from another
"drab and depressing" Ohio town. Best Regards
Posted by James Silver - On Tuesday, January 15, 2008
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Angry of Ohio
Saturday, December 22, 2007 Send to a friend
It seems my description of Mansfield, Ohio as "a drab and depressing little town" has infuriated at least one reader, after it was reprinted in local newspaper The Blade. I can only apologize to Mr. *****, whose letter is below, and any others I have offended.
All I can say is I didn't set out to cause offence. From Ohio to Texas, New York to California I have found most Americans to be far more welcoming - and more open to answering questions from journalists - than many Europeans.
However, I'm afraid I really didn't care for Mansfield - though I'm fully prepared to accept that the town has "fine commercial architecture, homes, scenery, and thriving businesses" and I would add that there are hundreds of English and other European towns of a similar size which are equally "drab and depressing".
Regarding Mr. Richey, if Mr. ***** cares to read my original article on his case in The Observer, he will see that I never claimed that Richey was "a model citizen". Justice in Ohio failed Kenny Richey - and Cynthia Collins' family, to whom my heartfelt sympathy goes out - horribly. But the truth is he should never have been convicted in the first place... (again, read my original 2002 article).
We live in northwestern Ohio (that's in the USA) and the Kenny Richey case has recently made the news as he seems to escaping his previous death row fate. James Silver's account of his visit with Mr. Richey in Mansfield was reprinted in The Blade (Toledo, Ohio) and drew my attention. I am no advocate of the death penalty and I am glad he will not die at Ohio hands. However, this poor soul portrayed was hardly a model citizen. He was also convicted in a duly constituted court of law based on the evidence at hand then. The system, however slowly, has modified the outcome to refine justice. He has a chance at some kind of life, unlike the small child who died, Cynthia Collins. And did Mr. Silver do any research on the city of Mansfield, dismissed in the first sentence? At 51,000+ people, it is hardly small by Midwestern or even UK standards. It's "real significance" extends further than hosting a prison. A perfunctory visit to the Chamber of Commerce web site might have shown that. Yes (like the English and Belgian cities I have visited), it has its dreary parts as a recovering mill town. It also (like those) has some fine commercial architecture, homes, scenery, and thriving businesses. It is a place where people live, work, and yes, worship, and not to be dismissed so by one ungracious visitor. Finally, we here have all been been struck by the dearth of regret expressed by his family and his foreign fans on the death of this child, apparently due to neglect. A child died horribly because of boneheaded, self-involved carelessness (Richey and the mother both). Sure we Americans just breed more, but this child, like all the rest, was precious. Take your darling Kenny and your yellow press journalists both and have a nice Christmas. Sincerely, **** *****
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, December 22, 2007
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The driving-instructor's carrot
Saturday, November 10, 2007 Send to a friend
Love this story in The Sun about the creepy driving-instructor who stuffed a 12 inch carrot down his trousers to impress his female students. The print edition helpfully printed a picture of a 12 inch carrot next to a ruler in case there was any confusion...
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, November 10, 2007
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Mailer remembered
Saturday, November 10, 2007 Send to a friend
Not long after 9/11 I had the pleasure of interviewing Norman Mailer who has just died. He was 78 at the time and when we met he hobbled across his hotel suite at the Savoy in London with two canes, hearing-aids in both ears. Nudging eighty and infirm he may have been, but his cool analysis of 9/11, Bush, boxing, literature and the nature of 'celebrity' revealed a whip-sharp mind. He was a slight man with a huge presence. He lived the fullest of lives and will be missed.
Posted by James Silver - On Saturday, November 10, 2007
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NI goes cold on Brown
Wednesday, October 17, 2007 Send to a friend
As Roy Greenslade argues in today's Evening Standard, the real significance of what Irwin Stelzer said on Monday is that we can now expect a seismic shift in News International's press support for New Labour. Not only is Brown's honeymoon over in the wake of the election fiasco, but he has to brace himself for a drip drip of negative stories from here on in. Trevor Kavanagh, keeper of the Sun's political flame, is no fan of the PM's tax and spend instincts. And Kavanagh's politics are close to those of his ultimate boss. All this has proved what many Murdoch-watchers suspected all along; namely, that the News Corp chief's ardour for New Labour was conditional on Blair being PM. Whatever Murdoch's personal feelings for Brown (he admires his work ethic and puritanical streak), now Blair's gone, Labour can expect a rough ride.
Posted by James Silver - On Wednesday, October 17, 2007
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Ambushing Doris
Friday, October 12, 2007 Send to a friend
What a delightful old curmudgeon the novelist Dorris Lessing is. Just take a look at her reaction when a Reuters reporter informs her that she has won the Nobel Prize for literature (you have to put up with an annoying ad first). Her disdain for the media - and the prize committee - is undisguised. And check out the dude with the broken arm clutching root vegetables...
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, October 12, 2007
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Travelodge Nights
Tuesday, September 11, 2007 Send to a friend
What a gem of a story this is. I'd be intrigued to find out if they have their Christmas dinner in a Travelodge "bar cafe" where - according to the website - you can "unwind at the end of the day in comfort", or were they stuck with the vending machine at the end of their corridor?
Posted by James Silver - On Tuesday, September 11, 2007
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The end of the BBC 'lifer'?
Friday, September 07, 2007 Send to a friend
During my interview with BBC Vision chief Jana Bennett, we touched on the vexed issue of BBC 'lifers' - those programme-makers who spend their entire careers in the corporation's cosy cocoon. Bennett thinks they may be a dying breed as the coming years will see a greater flow of traffic to and from the independent sector which - thanks to the introduction of the Window of Creative Competition (WOCC) - will now have access to half of the BBC's qualifying commissioning hours.
"I do think the BBC needs to be a more porous organisation rather than seeing itself as some sort of citadel," she said tellingly. "That really isn't the shape of the industry these days at all. We should have fewer walls and accept that people will be moving in and out of different types of employment over their career."
Bennett herself - who was born in New York and grew up in New Hampshire before moving to Bognor Regis, of all places, as a teen - left the BBC after twenty years of rising through the ranks to work for Discovery in the USA where she stayed for three years.
It was probably there - or on one of those obligatory US business courses to which all BBC top execs get sent - where she started using the most extraordinary buzzwords and phrases when talking about TV and its various platforms. Phrases such as "three dimensional scheduling", "For Me content", "evergreen value" programming and "Big TV" are some of the ones she used during our encounter.
Jana Bennett is talked of, very sensibly I think, as a future BBC director general. But if she is to get the top job, then she'll have to ditch the buzzwords and management speak. As a former BBC staffer, I know that no one likes being addressed by a boss who refers to "evergreen value" when what they actually mean is good programmes that will last.
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, September 07, 2007
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Hacks, Booze and 'live' broadcasting
Sunday, September 02, 2007 Send to a friend
Lack of space (as ever) in last week's chat with Panorama's John Sweeney prevented me from exploring what he had to say about how years on the road as a war reporter drove him to drink. While reporting on the Soviet Union's war with Afghanistan, he says the only way he could get to sleep at night after interviewing Afghan torture victims, was by drinking a bottle of vodka and reading a PG Wodehouse book.
Sweeney says his drinking is now in check, however, at its worst, it made booking him for late night TV and radio appearances a gamble for producers. One night he was on Andrew Neil's late night TV politics talk show "during the dying days of the Major government", when he fleetingly passed out during a live studio debate.
"It was during my bad drinking days on the Observer," he recalls, "I was pissed and Neil turned to me suddenly and said 'What do you think'? I said: 'The last days of John Major's government remind me of one of Shelley's great poems..' and just as I was about to quote from it, my mind went totally blank and my eyes glazed over. The camera crew laughed which is a very bad sign. There was a fantastic silence for about ten seconds, during which I died. Then, thank god, I suddenly came out of my stupour and reeled off the quote. Everyone roared with laughter."
All of which reminds me of a late night radio discussion show on Five Live I produced a decade ago which featured, among others, the writer Will Self. The subject was food and Self rolled into the studio just as we were going live at midnight and promptly passed out face-down on the table, to the bemusement of the other guests and the thinly-veiled horror of the production team (me).
Occasionally the presenter - the wonderful John Diamond - would lob a question his way. But Self slept, indeed snored, soundly through each one. Then, just when everyone had forgotten all about him, he suddenly sat bolt upright as if someone had stuck a pin in his leg and joined the conversation silencing the panel with an eloquent and graphic line, as I remember, about Victorian toilets…before slumping forward on the table for the rest of the show.
Posted by James Silver - On Sunday, September 02, 2007
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The PM & Wake Up To Money
Sunday, July 01, 2007 Send to a friend
Interesting to note that in focus pieces by Nick Watt in the Observer and Patrick Hennessy in the Sunday Telegraph about our new PM's frenzied first few days in office, Brown is 'outed' as someone who rises at 5:30 AM of a morning to Radio Five Live's Wake Up to Money.
But just look at how similar their opening paragraphs are:
"As an early riser who likes to flick on his radio every morning on the dot of 5.30 AM for Five Live's Wake Up To Money, Gordon Brown..." begins Watt.
Now this is Hennessy in the Sun Tel: "Gordon Brown is a famously early riser, preferring to stir on weekdays to the sound of Wake Up To Money on Radio Five Live, which goes out at what most of his fellow Britons would consider to be the ungodly hour of 5.30 am."
Clearly this is coincidence rather than consipiracy, but is it stretching things too much to suggest that Gordon "we don't do spin" Brown's erm... spinner Damien McBride picked up the phone to both hacks to present his boss as an action man who, Thatcher-style, thrives on very little sleep....?
Posted by James Silver - On Sunday, July 01, 2007
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Paris Burning
Friday, June 29, 2007 Send to a friend
Respect to Mika Brzezinski, co-presenter of MSNBC's breakfast show in the US, who was so sickened by her station leading news bulletins with yet another story about Paris Hilton, rather than news events in Iraq and Washington, that she refused to read the intro and even attempted to set fire to and shred her script live on air. Check out the YouTube clip HERE. As protests against the dumbing down of news in favour of Heat-style reality TV gloop go, it was one which will stick in the memory far more than a hundred wordy op-ed pieces...
However, a couple of questions remain unanswered. Given stringent health and safety regulations in the US, how likely is it that news anchors would just happen to have a dangerous shredder and indeed a fag-lighter near the main studio desk? I'm not suggesting this was a fix, but hey MSNBC has got a huge dollop of global publicity out of it, thanks in part to YouTube. I don't think I'm alone in never having heard of Mika Brzezinski. I won't forget her in a hurry now...
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, June 29, 2007
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Carl Bernstein's Club Sandwich
Monday, June 25, 2007 Send to a friend
A sidebar to my encounter with Watergate legend Carl Bernstein. Interviewing a Titan of Journalism can be a nerve-wracking experience - particularly when it's someone with a reputation for being somewhat prickly, who has long campaigned against falling standards in this trade. With that in mind, I was wondering whether I should confess that I hadn't had the chance to take more than a quick peek at his 600-page biography of Hillary Clinton, as the interview was only set up at the very last minute and I'd had the book for little more than four hours...
In the end, I decided I knew just about enough about the Clintons to be able to busk it.. But as Bernstein - a man who is used to his audience hanging on his every word - chewed severely on his club sandwich in the reading room at Claridges, he kept referring to specific anecdotes or quotes in the book, saying things like: "As you'll know, on page 312, [some obscure US congressman] said..."
After twenty minutes or so, I decied it was safest to come clean. Setting down his club sandwich, he looked horrified. "You're kidding, right?" I told him, sadly, that I wasn't. He mumbled something about what it said about our industry and from then on had clearly decided I was some kind of imp, at one stage informing me with a wag of his finger that my time would be "best spent reading the book before I write the piece". I told him, gently, that I had 24 hours to write up the article and that provoked further dismayed head-shaking. "I'm not even going to ask why they won't let you write it a week from now.."
One of the best things about this job is getting to meet the occasional hero. One of the worst, is when the hero in question ends up thinking you are the journalistic equivalent of Homer Simpson...
Posted by James Silver - On Monday, June 25, 2007
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Hand-to-hand
Thursday, June 07, 2007 Send to a friend
Has there ever been a TV reporter who uses his hands quite as much - and quite so vigorously - as BBC political correspondent and former Times hack James Landale? Fine journalist though he no doubt is, he appears incapable of uttering so much as his name without an accompanying excitable hand gesture. And when he's explaining something complicated his hands look like they are auditioning for a slot on the Muppet show. Surely someone should have taken him aside and had a quiet word with him by now...
Posted by James Silver - On Thursday, June 07, 2007
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Sindy Redesign
Sunday, June 03, 2007 Send to a friend
After much hype about a radical revamp, the Independent on Sunday looks...well, pretty much the same to me. Yes, they've axed a magazine. And there's an ad on the back page. And the layout is a mite cleaner. Oh and there are now clickable words or phrases in the copy (I'm not sure what purpose that serves for buyers of the dead tree version?). Compared with the daily - and practically everything bar the Daily Star - it still feels incredibly thin, news-wise. News 'bites' are fine for a tube or bus ride. But at the weekend the evidence is that people want a Sunday Times-style doorstopper package. "Everything you need to know on a Sunday. Nothing you don't", declares the Sindy's new slogan. 'Less is more' is an attractive proposition (particularly for a loss-making title). But I'm certain it's not one which works when applied to the Sunday newspaper market.
Posted by James Silver - On Sunday, June 03, 2007
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Sudanese Goat note
Friday, May 04, 2007 Send to a friend
A sad postscript to A Goat's Tale. As readers of BBC News Online will know, the world's first superstar goat - named Rose - has come to a near-Shakespearean sticky ending. Rose, the Paris Hilton of the goat world, choked on a plastic bag.
Posted by James Silver - On Friday, May 04, 2007
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AA Gill's worst dining experience
Thursday, May 03, 2007 Send to a friend
There wasn't space in my AA Gill interview about restaurant criticism for this fantastic tale... Once when Gill was dining at a (now closed) Alistair Little restaurant in Notting Hill Gate, a drunk lurched in... Recalls Gill: “The layout of the place was like a train corridor with two sets of tables on each side. I was in there reviewing when this drunk reeled in through the door. Alistair went down to either eject him or give him ten quid and as he got there the man projectile vomited the entire length of the restaurant. But it was very neat, just down the central aisle. It just lay there like a foamy carpet. It was stuff that he’d eaten years ago. It was old Special Brew vomit. The smell was so terrible it's hard to know where to begin. Alistair just looked at me and went ‘Oh Fuck!’. It was such an unfair, awful mishap that I didn’t include it in my review...”
Posted by James Silver - On Thursday, May 03, 2007
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Blair's Legacy & The Observer
Tuesday, May 01, 2007 Send to a friend
Good to see Roger Alton, the editor of the Observer, stick to his guns on Tony Blair, with a full page leader in yesterday's paper which concluded that "after 10 years Blair has made Britain a better place". The lemming-like concessus on the prime minister around the kitchen tables of London's ciabatta-eating classes is that Blair is nothing more than a venal, peerage-flogging, Bee Gee-loving war-mongerer etc. But the Obs's leader argues that - the elephant in the room - Iraq, aside, the PM has much to be proud of...I won't list it all here, but it dovetails perfectly with what Alton said when I talked to him for the Indy in January '06, albeit in rather less ripe language. 'Blair is fucking good,' he declared then. 'I think the old chatterers will realise what a big loss he really is when he finally goes.' That, of course, is open to question. But it's hard not to admire Alton for having the cajones to stick his neck out once again... especially when you recall his decision to give the Observer's backing to the Iraq war and how it outraged the green tea-sipping firebrands of north and east London.
Posted by James Silver - On Tuesday, May 01, 2007
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Acting the goat
Tuesday, April 24, 2007 Send to a friend
Amazing how po-faced, killjoy-ish and downright dour some people can be... In a world of car-bombings, college shootings and tedious Labour leadership speculation, the story about the Sudanese man forced to 'marry' a goat is, I think, one that can be treated with a degree of light-heartedness. As I mention in today's 'short cut' in G2, it has remained one of the most popular stories on the BBC News Online website despite being written 14 months ago.
Nevertheless, some correspondents on the BBC News editors' blog deem the subject inappropriate. Writes Mark, apparently without irony: "So a story about a man committing bestial rape against a goat is one of the most popular on the BBC. I'm not sure that's anything to be proud of, but at least we can see for what purposes the license fee is being used." Not to be outdone in the humourlessness stakes, Toby opines: "It is a very sad state of affairs when the BBC as a supposedly reputable media organisation reduces such a story to be a laughing point and a source of humour. If the story is true, it is a sympton of the lack of education in some parts of the world and the fact that so many people find it so funny is a reflection of society today. Shame on us." Perhaps Mark and Toby are noted satirists, in which case I salute them. But somehow I think that's unlikely...
Posted by James Silver - On Tuesday, April 24, 2007
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NBC Cho VT & 'tragedy porn'
Thursday, April 19, 2007 Send to a friend
It's hard to disagree with the Virginia police department assessment that NBC News's decision to transmit Cho's hate-fuelled gun-toting multi-media video rants, which have aired all over the planet, "added little" to their investigation. Steve Capus, the network's news chief, said on the Today show "I'm not sure we'll ever fully understand why this happened, but I do think this is as close as we'll come to having a glimpse inside the mind of a killer." Hmm. The footage is of course 'good' TV, and amounts to little more 'tragedy porn' - the vile ravings of a deeply disturbed mind. However, although the editorial justification may be flimsy, one thing's certain. Few TV networks - or indeed newspapers - would have taken a different decision if the material had landed in their laps. Whatever we hacks might like to think, news is part of the entertainment biz and consequently a battle for numbers and eyeballs. By the end of today, virtually everyone with access to a TV or the Web will have watched the NBC-branded material...while complaining about 'the media' of course...
Posted by James Silver - On Thursday, April 19, 2007
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Anatomy of an American school shooting
Tuesday, April 17, 2007 Send to a friend
In 2000, I visited the quiet, conservative community of Moses Lake in Washington State (three hours drive across the stunning Cascade mountains from Seattle) for a radio documentary with my then BBC colleague Bill Law. The town became the backdrop for the first in the spate of school shootings which have blighted America over the past decade, when, in 1996, a troubled kid called Barry Loukaitis - wearing a black trenchcoat which concealed a hunting rifle and two handguns - walked into Frontier Junior High school and shot dead two 14-year old students and a teacher.
Loukaitis, who was also just 14 at the time, was disarmed by an astonishingly gutsy teacher, John Lane, and jailed for life without parole. We interviewed a brave and articulate girl called Natalie Heinz, who was 13 at the time of the shooting. Loukaitis shot her through the back. The bullet exited her right breast and then went through her arm. She only just survived.
What was so memorable and poignant about the encounter was that, despite her daughter's terrible ordeal, Natalie's mum, Shannon, refused to blame lax gun controls and the ready availability of weapons. "Do you blame [the availability of] guns ?" I asked her. "No, we don't blame guns whatsoever [sic]," she replied firmly. "We're gun-owners ourselves. The gun doesn't have a brain, it can't move itself anywhere. Someone has to use the gun for destruction. So it's the person who did this that we blame, not the gun." Natalie interjected at that point. "You can make gun-laws as strict as you want, but there are still ways. If you want to get hold of a gun [and kill], you can."
For me that exchange captured perfectly why America's estimated 200 million guns in private hands will never be surrendered. Guns, especially in vast swathes of rural America, are a fact - and a way - of life. Anyone who thinks the grotesque Virginia Tech massacre will act as a wake-up call and spark changes in the law is sorely mistaken. When the intelligent and reasonable mother of a school shooting victim defends the right to own guns, it tells you all you need to know...
Posted by James Silver - On Tuesday, April 17, 2007
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Simon Kelner and podcasts
Monday, March 26, 2007 Send to a friend
Last week's Guardian interview with Indy boss Simon Kelner seems to have stirred up a bit of a fuss - especially over his views on podcasts. The likeable Mr. Kelner apparently complained to the Guardian that the above headline differed from what he actually says in the interview itself ("I've never met anyone who ever listens to podcasts"). Whether he has a point or not I'll leave to others to judge, but I have since listened back to my recording of the interview... The quote is "I've never met anyone who ever bloody listens to them [podcasts]!" (Can't recall why I decided to drop the 'bloody'). However, he later appears to change his mind, conceding that "podcasts...do have their value..." He cites the Indy's own Angus Fraser's podcasts on the Ashes as offering "a service to the reader". So presumably he does occasionally listen to them after all...
Posted by James Silver - On Monday, March 26, 2007
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