For the record: 17/11/2008

“What next? Polly puts the jackboots on?” the Daily Mail’s Richard Littlejohn baits the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee for sympathising with Max Mosley over media intrusion.

Coconut shy

Few newspapers have emerged with much credit from reporting the story of Jersey children’s home, Haut de la Garenne, which police said last week was not a murder scene after all. “At last…a proper copper we can trust,” trilled ‘The Daily Telegraph’ in March, describing the former head of the investigation Deputy Chief Officer Lenny Harper. This was the same officer who commented “We don’t yet know how this child came to meet his or her death”, in reference to a piece of coconut shell.

Taking the rise

Dreadful news from Teletubby land. That wicked warlock of broadcasting Michael Grade seems to have put something nasty in the tubby tustard of series creator Anne Wood, who has just denounced him as a “bad wizard”. Speaking in a new book, ‘The Rise and Rise of The Independents’ by Ian Potter, Wood exclaims that “Michael Grade killed off children’s programmes on Channel 4! He’s the bad wizard in my life, because he kills off my market wherever I go. He’s stopped them at ITV now, he’s got a long history of not having any time for children’s programmes at all.” No big hug for Grade then.

Woss goin’ Dan?

There’s irony in the BBC’s choice of Danny Baker as a stand-in for Jonathan Ross on Radio 2. The very funny Baker is one of Ross’s oldest friends and has, over years, been one of Wossy’s best scriptwriters.

Panoramic view

So sad to hear Steve Coogan using his live show as an opportunity to relentlessly ridicule the investigative journalist Ross Kemp. Behind the guise of various characters, Coogan scoffs at the “bullet-headed hardman” in his military “SAS” fatigues. In the words of Paul Calf: “If Ross Kemp likes camouflage so much, then how come I keep seeing him on my fucking telly.” Harsh, especially when Ross’s documentary making credentials extend to having a brother as an executive producer on ‘Panorama’. Darren Kemp that is, not Phil Mitchell.