In a column from last November titled “BBC must end its smug comedy consensus” the Guardian’s Martin Kelner said he was helping produce some pilots of a talkshow for Radio Five Live; he explained that he was keen to avoid the “cosy broadly leftwing” consensus found on shows such as Richard Bacon and Gabby Logan. I was reminded of this when, flicking through the stations this morning, I heard Mrs Logan chatting with her studio guests – Mark Steel, the old school leftie comedian, and Mark Thomas, the old school leftie comedian.
I can only assume that Kelner’s proposals were rejected as I’ve heard nothing from Radio Five Live to suggest anything has changed, consensus-wise, since he wrote that column. Perhaps the controller thought that a Guardian columnist would be too tentative in addressing the obvious problem of bias and has asked Richard Littlejohn to make a programme instead. Or maybe the BBC is simply happy with things as they are, thank you very much.
(Gabby Logan on this morning’s show: “What did you make of Obama holding hands with Sarah Brown then? There’s a lot of women in the world would’ve liked to be in THAT position!”)