James Naughtie kicked off the week in spectacular style by renaming the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt,
Jeremy Cunt. Or rather Jeremy Cun. His attempt to cover up his childish laughter by pretending it was a coughing fit was the cherry on the cake. Lucky (or unlucky) there was nothing too tragic in the headlines he had to talk about as he sniggered. Naughtie claimed it was a Spoonerism, although it seemed more Freudian in the first instance. Apparently he was trying to say Jeremy hunt culture secretary. Luck he didn't say Jeremy Cunt Cunture Suckterry. Or "Or Je-rim-me Cunt, cunt-urine suck-your-wee". We should be applauding his restraint. But Naughtie is a star. You can see why they named the decade after him. After today we should give him the whole century.
Andrew Marr tried to get in on the act straight away afterwards and at least managed to say the t at the end of the word, but he looked like a pale imitation of the master.
I also enjoyed
this correction in the Guardian regarding Mick Hucknall. They had said he had slept with a 1000 women in three years in the 80s (which I had thought was quite reserved of him - only one every three days), but in fact he had said he had slept with a thousand women each year, three a day, more impressive. This seemed a little suspicious. After all Hucknall had claimed to be apologising, not showing off, so numbers were not really important. He had after all apologised in a blanket fashion, thus including everyone. So who could have complained about the article's mistake and why? I can only think that it could have been Hucknall himself, ringing up, "You've put it was a thousand in three years, it was a thousand a year. You've made me look almost monogamous with your error. How will my apology work unless everyone knows it was three women a day? It's important people know the full extent of the numbers. Or the apology has no meaning. Yes. That's why I am complaining. I am ashamed of myself, not proud and bragging."
Where's AIOTM (AIOTM) when you need it?
I was doing further PR today. I did a few filmed interviews and thanks to the wonders of the internet some of them were instantaneously viewable and clips of some are already available. The first was with the Asylum website. The full interview will be up later, but they asked me about the Radio 4 controversy and
this clip was up before I had even got home, which gives away some of my trade secrets (though I forgot to mention the fact that I swore weekly on Sunday lunchtime on BBC2 whilst singing about crowning the king on TMWRNJ (TMWRNJ) ("Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa- King. Farking" Or "There's only one king. Wan-king"). Perhaps the mistake back then was not to tell anyone. Because swearing has proven to be brilliant publicity for the Today Show.
After another couple of interviews I went to the offices of Heat magazine for a live webchat, which someone remarked on Twitter has the look of a hostage video about it, but it's still amazing how simple it is becoming to broadcast these days. Having said that there were some technical difficulties and the feed broke down but I think most of it went out. You can see the clips that made it through
here and then click on the other clips which are on the right. I notice they have also put up the post interview stuff
where I am leaving and then you get to see what is going on in the Heat office afterwards. I imagine that was a mistake. But you might get to hear some Heat based secrets if you can sit out the 5 minutes of nothingness.
