I can’t help thinking that the BBC is trying to ensure they keep someone they regard as a star performer rather than appoint the best candidate. To me Fiona Bruce is a bit of a lightweight.
This is nothing against female presenters; any of Martha Kearney, Kirsty Wark, Sarah Montague or Emily Maitlis, among prominent BBC female staff could do a great job.
Emily Maitlis especially seems to have the steel and nerve for the job, given her no punches pulled interview with David Cameron’s former advisor Steve Hilton on last Wednesday’s Newsnight.
The only male I could think of as a suitable candidate was Jim Naughtie, who has demonstrated over the years that he has all the credentials.
But that’s all academic. We’ll see how FB does in the QT bear pit.
I wish her well, nonetheless.
Question Time chair – Fiona Bruce
by 86 Comments
Let’s see if she’s allowed to continue in such a prominent role until she’s pushing eighty.
For the record, I absolutely detest QT – I’m well aware that there are plenty of vile, ignorant, vicious people in this country but that doesn’t nesn I have to invite them into my home.
Mean, not nesn.
Nesn???
Inadvertent antler tangles can affect ones diction, I imagine.
I’m with you all the way regarding keeping the vile, ignorant and vicious out of the homestead.
It annoys me that their peculiar take on “political balance” seems to mean that when a panellist is talking obvious shite, they are not pulled up on it. Accuracy and truth are much more important than “balance”.
I agree with your view of QT. TBH I doubt it’ll make much difference who they have fronting the show – and it IS a show: to mistake QT for a serious political discussion programme would be like mistaking Clarkson-era Top Gear for a serious motoring magazine programme. Whoever fronts QT, I won’t be watching it.
Maitlis is sublime – her affable disembowelments of chancers and wafflers remain a wonder to behold – but Bruce is no slouch, either.
She did it to Marine Le Pen in fluent French too.
@Twang: fiercely impressive person.
I have always said to me wife that because she is rather sweet an unassuming that I could imagine her in S+M gear doing naughty things. Maybe there will be a new line of questioning?
Victoria Coren would have been a much better choice.
Ohhh.
Stop it.
I’m talking to myself there.
I share your mind on this one
Poor man.
I think all you need is Google Images to get a pretty good idea.
I remember her legs being the object of considerable national interest once when she did some hoofing for Children in Need or some such. You can’t say that about any Dimblebeys.
Just to clarify upon reading this back that I was referring to Fiona Bruce not my wife.
It wasn’t exactly clear.
I refer the right honourable gentleman to the response I gave some moments ago.
I did wonder why you hadn’t just asked her….
Yes I like her a lot but she wouldn’t be an obvious choice. QT entirely depends on the panel, and there’s too much reliance on what I call the idiot seat – where they put the situational poet, the rock star, the comedian. And the shock opinion seat – usually occupied by Isobel Oakeshott for some reason. If the planned occupants look OK I watch, otherwise I dodge it. It’s a weekly proof of Churchill’s famous comment that the best argument against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter, though perhaps the very act of wanting to be on Question Time means you’re not average – the average bod in the street generally doesn’t have a clue about things beyond their immediate circle.
Ah, Isobel Oakeshott – she knows people, y’know. (see Private Eye) That’s why she has to be on the telly all the time.
Her main claim to fame is that pig’s head thing – which even if it’s true is of no consequence.
Still, if Kim K can build a billion dollar industry on the fact that she once got bummed by some long-forgotten rapper, why should anybody be surprised.
Oakeshott is the idiot who got one of her sources jailed.
Do tell. She is absolutely ghastly and it’s a complete red line to watch her. I’m not sure who is worse, her or Katie Hopkins. She might well edge it.
Remember when Chris Huhn and Vicky Price got sent down over the perjury thing? Guess which journo was responsible for that?
Sure. She’s not a journo though.
That’s what she calls herself, because “talking shit on Andrew Neil programmes” doesn’t quite count as a profession… yet.
Moose, I’m given to believe that no poop chutes shenanigans were involved.
Curse! That’s the last time my trusted source of information is the periodical Bumming and Bum-men.
Supplementary Question: Who gets the Antiques Roadshow gig?
Bring back Huge Scullery!
Huge Scullery? You sound like you’re turning into Count Arthur, I really do!
Nobody. Apparently the QT gig is an additional job. She’ll be keeping all the rest she already has.
A slight tangent… I find it disturbing that so-called ‘big beasts’ like Dimbleby and the loathsome Humphreys get to hang around for decades, long past pension age – in jobs where clearly there are others who could do them just as well and with fresh energy and a different perspective. Humphreys bumptiousness and constant interrupting are a pain in the arse. It’s long past time he went.
On the other hand, there are cases where special knowledge and singular talent should be taken into consideration. RTE last year obliged an incredibly good late-night radio presenter, Carl Corcoran, to retire on reaching 65 despite his nightly show ‘The Blue of the Night’ on its Lyric FM station being a magnificently crafted assemblage of music across genres, all brilliantly made to work in terms of its sequencing and mood and with Carl’s voice perfect for the late-night vibe, and his knowledge of music incredibly wide and up to date. He was a singular asset to RTE. And they said, ‘No, you’ve got to you’ – not even allowing him to keep contributing on a freelance basis, which they do with other presenters and producers. Seemingly it’s who you know, or some other unwritten claptrap.
Why does their age matter?
Up to a point, it shouldn’t. But there’s a point where, unless they’re offering something unique/difficult to replace – and I don’t believe Dimbleby or Humphreys are – they become ‘bed blockers’ or personality cults. I feel the same way, incidentally, about some of the non-news presenters getting colossal salaries from licence fee monies. Plenty of people could do their jobs and would love to do so at a fraction of their fees.
It wouldn’t if most female presenters/actors etc weren’t told to get their unacceptable fizzogs off the box the moment they hit 50.
Maleness: license to be ugly.
Speaking of which, hello ladies!
Sounds like there was a knife especially sharpened for his back.
Who did he piss off?
@Colin: that’s precisely why I despise so much of RTE’s output. The quality – Mark Cagney always my go-to as an example – are hounded out the door on spurious grounds while the well-connected dreck are free to batten on the licence payers’ largesse for ever.
Is Gay Byrne still kicking around? The John Humphrys of RTE. Without the charm.
A Gay Byrne is what you get when……
She’s very tall. Not sure why but I took an instant dislike to her many years ago. Just the sort of public school educated patronising presenter that the BBC seem to love and give way too many opportunities to.
I believe she went to a comprehensive school.
Haberdasher Askes is not your typical Comp.
Haberdasher Asks
Is that a new BBC4 Game Show like The Pianist Presents or How Many Pickled Eggs Can you Get Up Your Nostrils (I think that last one might be a Channel 5 show)
I thought he made the name up. Anyway she attended fee paying schools, I could also have said “a typical Oxbridge BBC presenter”
Um, I don’t think it was fee paying when she was there. It went Comp in ’76.
There is a Haberdashers’ Aske’s School which is fee paying. It has a boys and girls school and is in Elstree, Herts. It’s not the one Fiona Bruce went to which was in New Cross and was a state school. I knew a couple of kids that went to Elstree while I did go to the local comp.
Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham College.
“A state secondary school with academy status located in New Cross. The school was formerly a grammar school, then a comprehensive City Technology College and is now an Academy, operating between two sites near New Cross Gate in South-East London.”
Other previous pupils include Steve Harley, Peter Perrett and the weirdy-haired lead singer bloke of Doctor & The Medics
Oh brilliant. That’s me saying the word “haberdashers” repeatedly all day, much to the annoyance of everyone, especially me.
MY WIFE’S GONNA KILL ME.
@Sithere: you’re right about that. Haberdasher’s Aske is a school that parents are happy to send their kids to.
Eddie!
*shouts louder*
EDDIE!
*clears throat*
EDDIE, THIS IS YOUR FUCKING GIG, WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?
If you mean Eddie Mair, you’re right – he’d have been brilliant. But as others have said it is invariably a horrible watch these days – whenever I tune in I end up feeling utterly grubby and soiled…
Wrong sex and age for the Beeb.
Fiona Bruce is actually older than him. But yes I think there was huge pressure to appoint a woman. I don’t disagree with that, but Wark would have been my call.
I’d agree there. What but Dimbleby got right which Paxo got wrong is the balance of control and keeping it light and good natured. It’ll be interesting to see how FB does.
Wark is actually interested in what people say. Can’t have that.
Our current crop of politicos will soon knock that out of her, I imagine.
@Vulpes: Eddie was my main man on the Beeb and I’ve yet to listen to him on LBC (in fact, I don’t even know if his new show has started). I hold out the faintest hope that he will return in glory and majesty. The Jesus of Dundee!
You just know that Andrew Neill is weeping bitter tears. He wants to be there, jacket off – journalisty braces on, asking the tough questions of rugged warhorse silverback alpha males like Iain Duncan-Smith and Jacob Rees-Mogg. He’ll want to look into the camera and have a Jerry Springer-like one minute summary at the end.
He’d be excellent. Had to be a woman though.
But he has to do This Week straight after. No human liver could withstand that much Blue Nun every Thursday.
Or spend that long out of Lulu’s.
I get BritBox via Amazon Prime, and QT is one of the programmes available. I sometimes briefly toy with the idea of watching it, but then I think about them constantly having cunts like Farage, Tim Martin (who looks like he keeps his daughter-wife chained to a post in the barn), Oakeshott, Hartley-Brewer et al as guests, plus the endless stream of gammons planted in the audience, and I think “FUCK NO”
Stream of Gammons – three more questions from them later.
Any Questions is much better – better Dimblebum, no fatuous ‘ask the audience’ bits (the audience at home can’t hear you, so shut up) and the inestimable Anita Anand to deal patiently with the phone-in gammons on Any Answers).
@salwarpe: given that the overwhelming majority of posters here are probably middle-aged men with blood pressure issues, I suspect Nous Sommes Tous Jambons.
We are the pigs.
We are the swine.
We are the stars of the firing line.
Cheers, Mooche – that’s an earworm I can heartily endorse.
I challenge anyone to listen to the end of that in the dark.
It’s not so much the flames, it’s the giggling.
@Mooche: it’s a great slice of British Gothic for sure.
Fair play to the BBC on shaking things up in the diversity stakes: they’ve replaced a white, privately-educated, middle-class Oxford graduate with a white, privately-educated, middle-class Oxford graduate.
But she’s a trained haberdasher!
Haberdasher…. haberdasher… haberdasher… oh bloody hell, here we go again…
The Haberdasher’s Company has a Livery Hall in the City of London
http://www.haberdashers.co.uk/home.php
It’s a modern hall, unlike many of the other ancient guilds and is near Smithfield and St Barts Hospital. There’s no picture of Fiona Bruce there.
OK. Again for the folks who don’t read the whole thread.
Yes, she went to Oxford.
No, she wasn’t privately educated. There is more than one Haberdashers, and she went to the Compy one.
Also, she only went to Oxford to do the drains.
And she may not have been the first choice. Just the first to say yes.
It’s not a glamorous job, for sure.
A rainy Thursday evening in a sports hall in Kettering sitting between Chris Grayling and some squit from the New Statesman? Not exactly a thrillride.
Got to be honest, it would be a thrill ride for Grayling and Squit TBA to be sat beside Fiona.
I read somewhere (but can’t recall where) that the Big D is standing down partly for these reasons – lots of travel along with a format that increasingly puts equal airtime ahead of critical / journalistic interrogation given that any attempt to exercise the latter just yields mountainous accusations of BBC bias for daring to call out some of our less gifted politicians.It’s not exactly a prime gig – less worthwhile than Newsnight or C4 News.
No-one has mentioned Kay Burley yet, the choice of Golden Retrievers across the UK.
Kay Burley – woof! 😈
Am I missing something? According to that there internet, Fiona Bruce attended the International School of Milan. Hardly St. Joe’s Comp, is it?
Nothing against private education, by the way.
International School of Milan for a few years after primary on The Wirral, before Comprehensive (a good one) from 14 to 18. Then Oxford and University Of London Institute in Paris.
I dunno about you lot, but I’d rather have someone with a really good education in charge of these programmes than some dimwit. While we may not like it very much, being really well-educated is still pretty much synonymous with having gone to a good university and that is still pretty much synonymous with being at least comfortably off.
That ideal world we’d like is still somewhere over the horizon.
Without wanting to start off a new Me Too thread, Fiona Bruce has an appeal to gentlemen of a certain age (such as myself). If she ever fancied a bit of rough (comprehensive secondary, vocational first degree, no masters or doctorate) I would be tempted.
Is she the Susanna Hoffs of public broadcasting? Ding-dong!
If she’d wear a bit more eye make up and back comb her hair…….
Bring back Brian Hayes.
Remember him?
Hard as nails.
I gave up on QT a long time back. I think the presence of the studio audience and the fact that they’re allowed to applaud encourages too many of the participants to play to the gallery and come out with a lot of dishonest sloganeering.
Ms Bruce, unlike Dimbleby, was never a member of the Bullingdon Club.