Partygate: The Inside Story (ITV News) | itv.com
Mike Graham (TalkRadio) | talk.tv
James O’Brien (LBC) | globalplayer.com
Nicky Campbell (BBC Radio 5 Live) | BBC Sounds
In Dark Corners (BBC Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
I’m Not a Monster: The Shamima Begum Story BBC Sounds
The Goop Pursuit (Audible) | audible.co.uk
Remember our dear departed ex-prime minister, Boris Johnson? Perhaps you’re trying to forget. Lest you have, on Wednesday, ITV News brought out a seven-part podcast centred on him; though, weirdly, he felt like a shadowy figure throughout. Lurking in case of cake ambush? Hiding in a wine fridge? Definitely not in plain sight.
Johnson’s premiership, said ITV News’s UK editor Paul Brand, had been defined by three Ps: “the pandemic, Putin and Partygate”. Partygate: The Inside Story concerned the last of these and was an excruciating listen. Remembering the litany of evidence, the sheer number of parties held during Covid, brought back the bile.
Occasionally, the episodes felt a little laboured (the second was just about how ITV stood up the Allegra Stratton video story: interesting for journalists, not so much for non-hacks). But amid the yes-we-know-that recall, the podcast gave us several new zingers from sources who were employed at No 10 at the time. The shredding of evidence once Sue Gray became involved. The revelation that only 50% of the parties have been investigated. Johnson joking about “the most unsocially distanced party in the UK right now”. How a veteran No 10 custodian (doorkeeper) had to come into a party because an alarm had inadvertently been set off, and was “swimming through the crowd”, shaking his head. A detailed description of the drunken do held the night before Prince Philip’s funeral, involving wine getting into the photocopier and people “touching each other up”, uuugggghh. One episode is called Getting Away With It?, which gives you a flavour of how many people have been held to account.
It’s fairly easy to work out your stance on such rotten behaviour, and there aren’t many people out there sympathetic to Johnson and the partygoers. Loyalties are divided though, when it comes to Prince Harry’s decision to stand in his own truth/blow up the royal family/milk us mugs for millions (delete as appropriate). The on-air reaction to Spare last week reminded me of something ex-Capital Radio breakfast show host Chris Tarrant once told me. There are three instantly divisive phone-in topics guaranteed to make listeners call in: football, religion and nasty neighbours. To which we could add Brexit; and now, Harry and Meghan.
Harry chose the quietest news week of the year to drop his bouncing autobiographical bomb, and the phone-in shows were grateful. On Monday, on Mike Graham’s TalkRadio morning show, every single caller thought Harry was a berk. “Harry Potty,” one called him, which Graham quite liked. In contrast, on James O’Brien’s LBC programme, most listeners were supportive of the prince’s therapy-enabled revelations. Naturally, with speech radio, it’s all in the host and the setup. Graham is staunchly Meghan and thus Harry averse, whereas O’Brien explained that, although he would have sneered at Harry just a few years ago, his opinion had been reversed by his own transformational experience with therapy. Over on even-handed 5 Live, Nicky Campbell welcomed callers from both sides, which made for more nuanced discussion. One expert pointed out that the fury was really about who got to tell the story, rather than what the story actually was.
Less of an easy listen was the call-in topic that followed on Campbell’s show: historical sexual abuse at posh Scottish schools. This was hooked to a new episode last week of Radio 4’s In Dark Corners, in which the journalist Alex Renton investigates abuse by teachers at his old school, Ashdown House, as well as Fettes and Edinburgh Academy. This was a difficult to hear but unmissable series that traced two of the alleged abusers, retired teachers David Price and “Edgar” (a pseudonym), to South Africa.
After the first episodes were broadcast, Renton was contacted by many men who also alleged they had been abused, or witnessed abuse, by teachers. (Campbell, who appears on the programme, was one.) Some of the victims were from South African schools. One of these alleged victims, “John”, met another, Charles, and they talked about what happened. God, it’s the details: both said that Price used to play a song to them. He played a Bee Gees song to John; to Charles, Without You by Harry Nilsson.
Anyway, due to incompetence and delay, it looks like Price and Edgar, who are fighting extradition, may not be prosecuted in the Scottish courts. But victims from Cape Town schools have come forward, and Price has been arrested and is due in court in South Africa next month.
Speaking of running away, and of facing up to your actions, BBC Sounds has a new series of I’m Not a Monster. This one concerns Shamima Begum, the young British woman who ran off with her teenage friends to Syria and into the clutches of Islamic State. In the opening episode, Josh Baker asked Begum about how she felt when she left the UK. “It felt like I was not in my body, like I was in a dream,” she says. “My mind was completely blank.” Baker’s investigation took us from the moment that the girls left their homes, right into the Syrian detention camp where Begum now lives. I have only heard the first episode, but Baker put difficult questions to her – “You did join a terrorist group” – and seems to be allowing us to make up our own minds. Another gripping yet tragic tale that divides us all. (Don’t call in, please.)
If you’re after something lighter, and who wouldn’t be, Gwyneth Paltrow’s company Goop has a new four-part podcast out, The Goop Pursuit. It “explores some of life’s most significant pillars”, says Paltrow in the introduction. That’s pleasure (meaning sex), healing, beauty and transition, if you didn’t know. Each episode is hosted by a different expert, and Paltrow is interviewed in the first, talking smoothly and sort-of honestly. The whole series, though billed as revelatory and challenging, is surprisingly soothing, for which we should, perhaps, offer thanks.
