But this Beeb prog has egg on its face

Huddersfield Daily Examiner (Huddersfield, England), April 30, 2008

Byline: Barry Gibson

HAVING worked the weekend I had Monday off, which gave me the chance to enjoy daytime television.

I took the opportunity to sample BBC2's lunchtime offering The Daily Politics, recently voted the second-worst daytime TV show ever, losing out only to the charming Jeremy Kyle.

Now, far be it from me to quibble with a poll conducted by the social networking site alljoinin.com, but that verdict seems a little harsh.

The edition I caught this week was fairly interesting, with reports on electoral fraud and the oil crisis.

The UK Independence Party leader was in the studio and was given a fairly good grilling by the host; I forget her name, she's the one who isn't Andrew Neil.

OK, it wasn't exactly Question Time, but by the standards of daytime TV it was positively intellectual.

But there was one part of the programme which annoyed me.

Itwas a report on the Prime Minister's many and varied woes, which was illustrated by an animation showing David Cameron throwing pies into the face of Gordon Brown.

Geddit? The PM's got a pie in his face.

Some creative genius must have taken literally seconds to come up with this clever visual aid to drum home to the idiotic viewers that Gordon Brown is having a tough time.

Why does the BBC insist on "decorating" its news and current affairs programmes with these cutesy graphics?

Did it ever occur to the BBC that people who watch The Daily Politics might be interested in, er, politics?

Do the producers not realise that we're able to grasp the idea that the Prime Minister is in trouble without needing an animation of him with pie on his face?

CAPTION(S):

SECOND-WORST: Andrew Neil