Bbc

In a double blow for the beleaguered BBC, the corporation has lost three of its most compelling attractions in little more than a month: the Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman, and Susanna Reid’s legs. Paxman has said he has had enough and announced his retirement from the thinly viewed current affairs programme. Susanna Reid’s legs have made their way over to ITV for its even more thinly viewed breakfast show called ‘Phwoar, Wake Up and Have a Look At This’ or whatever. The legs have attracted criticism for spending a substantial proportion of the show hidden from view under a desk while the rest of Susanna Reid jabbered about something with

Russell Brand won’t let go of his row with the BBC. He popped up as the mystery guest at Letters Live (a spin off from the wonderful Twitter account @LettersOfNote, where assorted luvvies read great letters from the past). Inevitably, Brand screwed up his reading. He tried to rescue the situation by quipping: ‘Is this like when I broke the BBC?’ This was met by assorted groans and the odd clap. Brand’s references to his suspension and departure from the BBC over the ‘Sachs-gate’ affair in 2008 are getting very tiresome indeed. Mr S was under the impression that Brand was busy plotting a revolution.

We live in a recriminatory age, one in which we are only ever a step away from the cringing, self-abnegating apology. Take the case of BBC Newsnight’s latest appointee, as economics editor, a chap called Duncan Weldon. Duncan is doing the tail between the legs thing right now, desperately attempting to excise part of his past in case it puts paid to his promising career in a fusillade of political accusations and an appalled reaction from the general public. The problem is, in his younger days, it seems Duncan worked as an adviser for the deputy leader of the Labour party, Harriet Harperson. ‘It is embarrassing. I was young and

A number of interesting things have happened recently: The Law Society has provided legal guidance to ensure that Muslims in Britain can have their wills judged according to Sharia. BBC Newsnight hosted an in-studio row between three Muslims over whether one Muslim should be allowed to say or do anything that is deemed religiously insensitive by any other Muslim. Majority opinion seemed to be ‘no’. Then there has been huge excitement that, after decades during which tens of thousands of girls in Britain were genitally mutilated, charges have for the first time been brought against some suspected perpetrators of this horrific crime. Just in case anyone is lost in all this

The controversy over the appointment of TUC economist Duncan Weldon as Newsnight’s economics correspondent has taken a surreal twist. The former Labour Party adviser appears to have used his blog to deaden the impact of a Sunday paper exposé about his connections with the extreme right. Weldon admits to a ‘brief and misguided flirtation with the ideas of the far right,’ yet denied that he had joined any organisation. However, when he was a student he wrote an anonymous piece about this ‘flirtation’ for a student newspaper, under the headline ‘I was a fascist’. All water under the bridge, he now says: ‘None of this should be read as a plea for sympathy. This chapter of my teenage life was witless and intensely embarrassing and