Is it just me, or does the much repeated advert

(on the supposedly ad-free BBC) for Andrew Marr’s new Sunday morning programme have him saying what sounds like “What we’re trying to achieve is the television equivalent of a crappy little newspaper”? I presume he’s trying to say ‘cracking’, but if he does mean crappy then he need look no further than the BBC’s Six O’Clock news crew for inspiration – telly-taxpayers haven’t forgotten the depths of dumbing-down exposed a year or two ago when one of the BBC’s supposed ‘talent’ responded on air to the presenter with something like “yes… and on the show tonight… we have”. Bring back Richard Baker, Kenneth Kendall, Robert Dougal et al! Please!

Meanwhile, elsewhere at the BBC, we have Torin Douglas, ITV cheerful as it hits its 50th, bemoaning the passing of the much missed ITN News at Ten. What Torin doesn’t remind us about though is how, once it became painfully obvious to all, incuding the short-sighted executives at ITV, that ITN News at Ten would have to come back, the tellytax-funded opportunists (bloody Greg Dyke, again) at the BBC made sure it could never work again by cynically moving the BBC Nine O’Clock News to 10pm. Good old BBC – public service at its best!

As an aside, a (Don’t) Have Your Say contributor at the time asked “What next? An advert break for News at Six?”. Why yes indeed, the supposedly ad-free BBC now has an ad-break in the Six O’Clock News, stuffed in to the gap between the national and regional news parts of the programme!