IDS And Ego

‘NEVER kick a man when he’s down, that’s our motto.

‘Is there anybody out there?’

So we won’t be kicking Iain Duncan Smith, the former leader of the opposition, who has just had his portrait turned down by the House of Commons and then embarked on a very poorly attended speaking tour.

Instead, we simply draw readers’ attention to today’s Times, which reports that the first episode of BBC3’s Live at Johnny’s (which pairs The Quiet Man with Johnny Vaughan) drew “just 30,000 viewers”.

Of course, these things are relative. Both men have reason to be optimistic. Johnny can take heart from the fact that other BBC3 shows have at times registered no viewers at all.

IDS can reflect that he recently addressed a crowd of 67, an experience he would have had to repeat 447 times to reach the audience provided him by the miracle of digital television.

The sound that you can hear is Benjamin Disraeli, Robert Peel, Neville Chamberlain and friends spinning violently in their as yet undigitalised graves.’

Posted: 19th, February 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink