Talking Bull

How pretentious is this?
Deborah Bull, the artistic director of the Royal Opera House, was on Radio Four's Saturday Review  arts programme (I was trying to find Magic FM and got lost) when the guests were asked about the latest film version of Jane Eyre.
Some compared the screenplay to the book - for good or bad - but like many of us, Deborah hadn't read the book. Fair enough. She's a dancer not a raving intellectual after all. And have you ever tried to read Bronte (any of them?) They are soooo dull.
So, she could have said 'I haven't read the book.'
But no. What she actually said was that when she was 14 she read The Idiot and had become so obsessed with Russian literature she never read anything else, so had never visited Bronte.
She's 48. If she really wanted to have 'visited' Bronte, then she could have done. I don't blame her for not doing it. Life's too short.
However, to say that she never read it because she was up to her eyes in Dostoevsky - whichever way you want to spell it - really is trying too hard.
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Talking of radio - I know it makes for a bit of a laugh but I'm tiring of the confrontational approach to interviewing. Whether it's politicians or 'experts' or anyone else, radio and much of TV news programmes seem to be less about informing us and more about trying to get the people they are interviewing to make a mistake.
Sometimes they deserve it, I think we all agree. Michael Howard's refusal to answer a question from Jeremy Paxman eight or nine times was fair game.
But from Paxman to the Today programme, politics is now simply presented as black and white, one v one. Not just Humphrys versus Tony Blair, such as the interview I heard yesterday but in particular when there are two guests.
It seems that the only way a radio show like Today or a TV programme like Newsnight can have a discussion on a major issue is to have two people with completely opposing views slug it out.
I heard another example on Any Questions as well (I had a bit of a Radio Four day yesterday I'm afraid). It was over Israel. One man was defending the state's right to exist, a woman was opposing occupation. What gets me is that there is no middle ground. Two people, two sets of opinions, both well rehearsed and unbendable and for the average listener, it simply explains that there are only two ways to do it - A or B. That's the trouble with news programmes these days, no one will tell you a route C.
We don't all fit in to neat little categories where all our views can be divided down the middle.
I may not agree with Tony Blair, for instance, particularly when he pronounces ideology as 'iddy ology' rather than 'eye dee ology'.
But putting that aside, he has spent a lot of time in the Middle East and I genuinely would like to hear what he thinks about the current situation - particularly as it was he who took us into war in the first place.
Instead, we had an interview with John Humphrys who, as usual, was more keen on the sound of his own voice than the guest. And he spent the whole interview trying to trip Tony Blair up. I realise it tries to make is entertaining, like an audio form of fox hunting is. But is that really the point of intelligent political programming?
I want to learn something occasionally. Not all the time, but sometimes. I don't want two politicians putting across two diametrically opposite points of view with nothing in between. I don't mind debate but if they're going to discuss problems then let them discuss solutions, not just shout at each other or see who is the first to blink.
Even those who don't want to play ball are given little option but to take sides by pushy interviewers (look up comedy scriptwriter Graham Linehan's thoughts on the subject).
If I want to see people make mistakes I'll watch You've Been Framed instead.
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As I'm in a Radio 4 sort of mind, Sandi Toksvig. I think she's brilliant on The News Quiz, and awful on travel programmes. But she popped up on TV the other day and it seems that as she realises she is more and more of a national treasure, is determined to dress more and more like she believes we expect lesbians to dress.
She used to be all frilly Princess Di collars and the occasional Giles Brandreth jumper. Now it's tweed suits and gentlemen's shirts. Pretty soon she'll be smoking a pipe on QI and complete the stereotype.
It's as if she's realised that most of us don't care about her sexuality and decided she can dress like a lesbian should dress.
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Norwich. For years it meant the home of the quiz of the week, Sale of the Century and the occasional visit to Carrow Road to see my side get three points on a regular basis but have you ever been to the city itself? It's beautiful, there's a lot of wonderful architecture, a massive shopping centre and quite a lot of culture.
However, it's possibly the whitest city I've ever been to, at least in England. It's a big, proper city with fat teenage girls sporting tattoos pushing babies who are born with earrings just like every other big city.
But you can count the dark faces on one hand. It's quite strange, it really is. You spend a while wandering round thinking 'why does this not feel quite right?' before it dawns on you that it's a kind of ethnically cleansed city. And no better for it, I may add.
Diversity? Norfolk Enchants. Cheers, Solly