If I Were Jeremy Hunt

A few weeks ago I was invited to speak at a conference in Salford where our esteemed Secretary of State for Culture and Media gave the opening keynote address. I was booked to reply the following day in a panel session called “If I Were Jeremy Hunt…”

You have to hand it to Hunt: he’s is a tough act to follow. The packed audience of hardened television and radio professionals rather warmed to his wit and assured confidence. Standing centre stage and tieless in a dark suit (it was a media conference, after all), he spoke without notes or autocue, demonstrating the superior, charming, permasmiled demeanour that can only have derived from a proper boarding school education.  Head boy at Charterhouse School (fees £30,534 per annum), first class degree in PPE at Magdalen College, Oxford, president of the university’s Conservative Association, he's the perfect Tory politician. Before last week’s revelations many spoke of him as Cameron’s natural successor.

The audience in Salford were left in no doubt about Hunt’s unerring conviction that, like the rest of Cameron’s cabinet, he is absolutely right about everything he says. He and his colleagues clearly believe that government policy shouldn't be influenced by people who know what they are talking about: industry experts or doctors or the armed forces, or, God forbid, the lifetime's experience of a cabinet minister’s own civil servants.

Being something of an expert myself – if working within the television industry for 40 years counts as accreditation – I felt justified in disagreeing with some of Hunt's policies, particularly his crazy initiative for local television. This was a man whose first task in Government was to tear up Trinity Mirror's fairly won pilot contract to supply a groundbreaking multi-media news service here in the north east of England and replace it with his own barmy plan to hand out television channels to a load of community groups who are bound to go bust in the process.  Trinity Mirror is, of course, the newspaper group that is Murdoch's biggest competitor in the UK.  A coincidence, I'm sure.

Of course the views of people who could be expected to know what they are talking about have never really been taken into consideration when formulating any of this government's policies, which is why most of them are lying in tatters: instead, the cabinet have relied on “special advisers”, and the tittle-tattle of their exclusive clubs and cocktail parties. This is a government that listens to no one but themselves.

The head of a very large media organisation, who is not called Murdoch, recently told me that their senior editorial team was invited to tea at Downing Street for an informal “consultation”, but ended up listening, sandwich-less, to Dave hectoring them for an hour about his plans. Not one of them was asked a single question.

Back in Salford, I’d written myself quite a formal speech in response to Hunt's comments but, having seen the master in action, I stood in the centre of the stage, took it out of my jacket pocket and quietly ripped it to shreds.  This, I think, got me brownie points and quite a few laughs, after which I attempted to restore some balance to the debate about the future of media in our country. I knew exactly what I’d do if I were Jeremy Hunt, and I told them.  Wasting time on hyperlocal television stations wasn't part of my proposed agenda as the next Secretary of State;  listening to the industry and the viewers most definitely was.

But I confess I was utterly upstaged by the wonderful veteran journalist Gillian Reynolds, who rose to her feet and performed a glorious parody of Hunt himself: she portrayed a man who loves himself more than he’ll ever love the electorate, preening, smiling, perfect, who neither cares nor understands the common man, a professional politician who, like all his cronies in this Coalition, is utterly out of touch with reality. She brought the house down.

What a contrast to see him in the House of Commons last Wednesday: embarrassed, halting, his head buried nervously in a carefully constructed statement, Cameron and Osborne squirming uncomfortably behind him. Here was their own firewall self-combusting in front of them, caught out by his deviously fawning “special adviser” and his own closeness to the Murdoch dynasty, any pretence of “quasi-judicial” impartiality utterly busted.

I guess he’ll try to wriggle out of it to the very end, but I know what I would do right now if I were Jeremy Hunt: I'd resign.

Dawn of The Sun

[Rupert Murdoch launched a Sunday edition of The Sun this morning, following the demise of his News of the World title]

The newspaper delivery man was insistent. “The paper quality’s good – heavy as The News Of The World”. Now there’s a man who knows class journalism when he feels it.

I’d gone to the village store early in case there was a run on the Sun on Sunday. I needn’t have worried: piles of them sat unloved, despite their 50p price tag.

I guess he was surprised to see me loading up with tabloids; I’ve always been a strict broadsheet buyer. They’re so much more substantial, especially good for lighting fires through the rest of the week. This time of year it’s so cold I can normally reach the Appointments section by Saturday, but with Newcastle forecast to be as warm as St Tropez this week, my new collection of tabloids will probably suffice.

I confess I’ve not been a fan of Sunday tabloids since I was 19 and the Mirror ran the headline “Students In Sex Film Shocker” about my university film. Mum was mortified – we got hate mail and everything.

It was all a bit of a misunderstanding. I’d made a little film called Corridor with some money from the local arts association, about life in a university hall of residence. It was supposed to be a comedy.

The camera travelled along a corridor (hence the title), peeking into each room in turn: the usual naïve stuff, certainly nothing to win an Oscar. It was a silent movie though, so perhaps I was 40 years ahead of The Artist.

The camera reached the bathroom, wherein a voluptuous blonde called Mary Jane lay up to her neck in Matey bubbles, attempting to seduce a thin bespectacled geek called Dan. She failed, and the camera moved on. We all thought it hugely funny, but shortly afterwards I got a call from a freelance journalist who wanted to ask about my “sex film, made with an Arts Council grant”.

“Was the girl naked?” he persisted after I tried to defend the raison d’etre of my oeuvre. “Well yes, but you couldn’t see through the bubbles”, I reasoned. Nevertheless, the following week, Fleet Street struck and I was instructed to organise a private viewing for the Vice-Chancellor. York City Council even called a special meeting so the councillors and their mates could see it. At the premiere there were queues round the block. The following morning the Yorkshire Post splashed the disappointed headline “Why All The Fuss Over This Film?”

Yesterday’s inaugural Murdoch paper failed to match even that level of journalism. There were five pages of a “World Exclusive” with Amanda Holden, a page of fashion tips from “style guru” Nancy Dell’Olio (seriously!), and a column from super-mammaried intellectual Katie Price. It was like an in-house magazine for celebrity has-beens.

There was also a column from the Archbishop of York entitled “Sentamu’s Sunday Service”, though I’m not sure it wasn’t ghosted, for I can’t imagine him actually writing “Today is a new dawn…When I think that we can now get the latest news, politics and sports stories seven days a week from our country’s favourite paper, all I can say is “WOW!”

I found the Sun a bland reflection of its predecessor. No sex and drugs exclusives, no investigative backbone, unless you count Katie Price’s admission that she can’t book tables at restaurants under her own name because they fear she’ll bring down the tone.

The People fought back, even hiring ex-NOTW columnist Carole Malone to spout her deranged nonsense. The three competing tabloids each had 40 pages of sport, only of which one was devoted to Newcastle United. The rest should light a lot of fires.

“Do you want something to actually read?” said the delivery man. “Yes please”, I said, and he handed me a copy of the Sunday Sun, the local paper produced here in Newcastle.

Its 4811th edition was witty, compelling, and an incomparably better read, with just as much sports coverage – almost entirely about our local teams. There was a whole page on yesterday's mock funeral for the "death" of the St James Park name.

If it hadn’t been for the launch of the other Sun I wouldn’t have bought it. So thanks, Mr Murdoch: for me a new Sun has indeed dawned.

Lunch With The Devil's Daughter

All right, I have a confession: like Dave Cameron, I too have schmoozed with Murdoch.

I just thought I should put this on public record in case The Guardian exposes me. I don’t want this blog’s reputation to be tarnished by revelations of my former misdoings, so I’m coming clean. Murdoch had lunch at my house and I once had two glasses of rather nice Chablis chez Murdoch. Both events happened in 2002, when Rebekah Brooks was Editor of the News of the World, though I don’t think she knew about them – unless one of her hacks had violated my Palm Pilot.

There, I feel better now it’s out in the open. I hope you’ll forgive me and continue reading my blog. Please don’t call for me to be arrested, or avert your gaze if you spot me at the fish counter in Morrisons. It was a long time ago, after all. And the Murdoch in question wasn’t Rupert, but Lis: Elisabeth to the rest of you.

She’s the dark horse (well, blond, actually), who may be the key to the survival of the Murdoch regime. Named after her matriarchal grandmother, she earned the respect of independent television producers by resigning from her Dad’s empire to make her own way, launching Shine from a gloomy converted church in Notting Hill Gate.

Like the rest of us, she struggled for years to persuade broadcasters to throw her the odd commissioning crust. She found out the hard way just how tough it is to break through the walls of arrogance and risk-avoidance at places like the BBC and Channel 4. She did manage to sell some shows to Sky, thanks largely to a generous output deal (BSkyB owned 5% of her business, so it was obliged to give her some crumbs) – but she was determined to make it on her own, and later raised squillions to buy some major production companies to add to the business. I was absolutely delighted when earlier this year she persuaded her Dad to cough up around £300million to buy Shine, and his daughter, back into the News Corporation fold.

Right now, with politicians calling for the head of his son, he needs Elisabeth to help avoid the death of the dynasty. She’s tough, outspoken, connected, honest and fiercely independent. And she said she liked my cooking, which gets a big tick from me. I suspect she’ll come riding in like a white maiden and save the day for the old Aussie codger.

Despite the terrible mistakes of his newspaper underlings, I’ve always had a certain respect for her Dad. Anyone who takes on the establishment and wins, defying the crusty bigots on the way, gets my vote.

A couple of years ago I heard him speak at one of those turgid broadcasting conferences. We’d been dozing all day while young besuited things droned on about the future of media, and then in bounced this 80-year-old with more foresight than the rest of them put together. He’s a man of huge energy, who almost single-handedly transformed the world’s media landscape, bringing more creative diversity into the entertainment industry than any government-led initiatives over the last 50 years. He created a new network in America when people said it was impossible, and wiped out the official BSB satellite station with his upstart Sky, giving us multi-channel broadcasting as his legacy.

Without Sky, life with Izzy would be one long CBeebie, so we thank God for Rupert every day. Above all, he vigorously supported the loss-making Sky News, which has won more awards for its excellent, unbiased reporting than the vastly better-resourced BBC.

Frankly, I wouldn’t have a huge problem with him owning Sky and taking ITV into the bargain, but then, I’m not a politician. And my vote can’t count anymore as I’ve already supped with the devil. Well, lunched with his daughter anyway.