It sounded as if a World Heavyweight Championship was just about to begin. The roaring mob. The pent-up energy. The buzzing excitement at the prospect of an upset, a defeat, a knockout blow. The tension was palpable, seeping through my study, as the contenders squared up to each other for Round Two.
I don’t have Sky and wanted to experience The Prime Ministerial Debate live, as it was happening, rather than wait up until 11.30 last Thursday night to watch it on BBC2, so I had no alternative but to listen to Gordon, Dave and Nick thrashing it out on Radio 4 instead of watching them on screen. I must admit I wasn’t looking forward to it. How to endure 90 minutes of political knockabout without the necessary diversion of being able to scrutinise every hand movement and facial expression for clues as to what really lies behind those carefully manicured hairdos? But from the first 15 minutes of build-up, as Robin Lustig and The World Tonight team set the scene in Bristol and prepared us for combat, I was hooked. Not because we heard anything different from the first debate the previous week. On the contrary, the three contenders were incredibly careful not to veer away from the issues they felt, and had been advised, they could score points on — Trident, immigration and, if you must, the economy.
On radio, though, I should have realised how much fascination there would be in guessing what was going on from their tone of voice, those upswings and downturns of timbre. It was also so much easier to focus on what was being said, without the distraction of Alastair Stewart’s arm-waving (last Thursday it would have been Adam Boulton of Sky News) or the constant switching from face to face, mugshot to mugshot.
At first you could hear, as if made physical, Gordon’s unwillingness to respond to Nick and Dave’s challenge. He began his introductory spiel with a very audible growl, a Gordonian contraction meaning ‘Why are you making me go through all this?’ Perhaps he was unsure whether to soften his voice and mask his real intent or to show his mettle from the off? In the end, he obviously realised the seriousness of the challenge and that he’d better intimidate not just his adversaries but also his audience. ‘This is a fight for Britain’s future,’ he blurted out, as if punching the air. ‘Like me or not, I can deliver that plan.’
Dave’s ultra-polite opening ‘Thank you’ told us all we needed to know about his impeccable turnout, his upright but not pushing-forward stance, his expression serious but not forbidding. I was so bowled over by the manners that I forgot to listen to what Dave was actually saying, catching only the repetition of ‘secure’, ‘safe’, ‘responsibilities’. Dave knows that what counts is to sound like a good man. We don’t like to be lectured at or made to feel foolish.
Nick’s voice, in contrast, is really difficult to place, classless and characterless, so that you are forced to listen to what he is saying if you want to form an opinion of what he might be like. That’s dangerous. I never noticed in the first debate (which I watched on TV) how many times he interrupted David Cameron, but on radio it was really obvious that it was always Nick trying to get the upper hand and direct the debate the way he wanted it to go. On radio, Gordon’s command of the facts, his assurance, was much more evident, whereas Dave and Nick never gave us any real info, only soundbites. On radio, it stuck out a mile when Dave alluded first to Obama and then to Tony Blair. And when he got cross with Gordon for implying that the Conservatives would cut free eye tests, I could almost see his cheeks reddening, his eyes contracting to a beady black, as Gordon’s teasing punches rattled his veneer.
Comments