What are THEY doing here?
I must admit to finding myself slightly bemused, bothered and bewildered at the appearance of the two Tory party leadership contenders at the National Television Awards earlier this week. Coming on stage to present the Most Popular Drama Award to a solo Billie Piper for Doctor Who (Eccleston was off with flu), The Two Davids were resoundingly booed.
I can't say I'm surprised ? what on Gallifrey were they doing there, and particularly presenting this particular award? I suppose I can vaguely imagine that David Cameron might just have watched the series at some point ? perhaps at University, along with the other perfectly normal and acceptable things that people do at that age ? but I don't really think that qualifies one to present the Most Popular Drama Award, any more than said 'other things' should disqualify one from the leadership of a formerly significant political party.
If you can successfully disentangle the previous sentence, try this one: in fact, they were probably not booed for being the wrong people to present the Award, but for one of them potentially becoming head of a party that, if the present "New Labour" (aka "Christian Democrat") Prime Minister is to the right of the late Edward Heath, can only be doomed to find itself echoing the criminals across the Atlantic even more strongly than the current government.
Talking of which, Tony Blair also spun his way into the proceedings, of course, in a video message praising Jamie [Oliver]'s School Dinners, which received Best Factual Programme ? but at least he had a kind of excuse, what with Mr Oliver's series essentially making school dinners into an election issue.
Can I imagine the quality of school dinners being an election issue when I was at school? Er, no. I have no doubt the evilly-stewed cabbage and noxious fuming glops of different colours, with the presumed combined nutritional value of the Formica table-top on which they were eaten, that I endured in the 1960s were far worse for me than the modern school-goer's diet of Big Macs that Mr Oliver seeks to supplant, so I suppose this all represents a change for the better.
I further suppose that the National TV Awards pinching a significant, if one-off, audience share from Part Two of Oliver's new Italy series on Channel 4 is some kind of irony. But now I'd better toddle off to enjoy my Spam fritters before they lithify.
