Today’s BBC One O’Clock News bulletin

informed us that John Prescott said “sorry” for letting people down. They must have been watching a different John Prescott speech than the one he made at the Labour Party Conference in Manchester – because that John Prescott only apologised to the Labour Party, not the electorate at large.

Later in the bulletin, they reported on the move of Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond from a hospital in Leeds to a hospital in Bristol. The BBC’s reporter, “Going Live” from outside the hospital, waxed on about the superb facilities of the hospital, which we could see over her shoulder is a BUPA hospital. Usually the BBC house style demands that such establishments are prefixed with the pejorative term (to the BBC at least), ‘private’, but not on this occasion it seems. I wonder if the BBC are picking up the bill for Mr. Hammond’s stay.