Here is the news

Have you seen the news recently? I mean have you seen the news recently? What's happened to it? It's turned into The Day Today. I say this because I watched last night's 10 O'Clock news on BBC1 with my jaw on the floor. This style of news presenting must have slowly crept up on me and last night tapped me on the shoulder, or I've been watching the news like a cabbage for the past few years (I'd go for the latter if I were you).
For a start, I said a few months ago that Robert Peston looked like David Tennant. Well it would seem that he wants some acting work too. He was on last night banging on about the government giving banks loads more of our cash, and he was completely over the top all the way through, like someone desperately trying to impress a casting director. He loves dishing out not very good news, in fact, I reckon it gives him an erection.
Then we moved onto the not very exciting news that Ken Clarke's moving to the Tory front bench (well, not very exciting when you consider that it's been on the cards for weeks. But very exciting if, like me, you're a Ken Clarke fan, email me for details). This warranted that slaphead Nick Robinson to talk to the studio live from Millbank Tower? Why? a)I thought Millbank was Labour's head office b) why did he need to go there to do his bit to studio and c)was there any need for a chat to studio?
So I propose some changes to TV news:

• Stop all rolling 24 hour news channels. They're not needed and they're all about padding. Who watches them anyway? If people need to see the news headlines then use Ceefax.


• Go back to one newsreader to sit behind a desk reading the news with a few filmed reports where necessary.


• Stop Robert Peston.


• Put Susanna Reid on the 10 O'Clock news because she makes me go all funny. And she has a twinkle in her eye that lets us know that she's thinking what we're thinking.


• Stop over complicating it. I once heard a journalist talking, can't remember who it was, but he said that when at journalism training school they teach you how to do a 'breaking' news report in six words. eg "Goole: Train crash. Many feared dead." That'll do. Why worry us with the details?

Those bastards should put me in charge.

Oh, and while on the subject of last night's news, they showed Springsteen and a gospel choir playing at some party at the Washington monument. It was supposed to be a celebration. Not with that worthy bastard there it wasn't. If I was Obama I'd be asking where The Temptations were with their matching suits, co-ordinated dance routines and cracking Motown numbers. And to top it all I'd have had a huge party cake wheeled on with Tina Turner jumping out in a tiny frock singing Proud Mary or Nutbush City Limits with an all-star band, including the now obigatory Jimmy Page and Ringo Starr, backing her. Now that's a party. Not "Mary got pregnant and I couldn't find a job so we lived in a trailer yada yada yada".

By the way, I was in The National Gallery yesterday. Yeah, get me. If you've never been before, pop along, it's ace. It's like a Greatest Hits of painting. It's free to get in and you could quite easily spend a day in there if you wanted. It's got all the hits: The Sunflowers! Water Lilies! The Fighting Temeraire! The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist! Anyway, I don't pretend to be any kind of great art expert - although I love galleries - but there does come a time in every trip to a gallery where I start stroking my chin. I love the way you can get right up to paintings and look at the brushstrokes and know that Da Vinci or Van Gogh had been standing in front of that canvas too. I was just about to enter chin-stroking mode while looking at the detail on a boy's hat in Seurat's Bathers at Asnières, when I became aware of a woman's presence at the side of me. I was just lost in the detail when she shouted "Will you please stop picking your nose!" I thought she was talking to me and immediately put my hands in my pockets. Turns out she had a small child on the other side. Took me right out of chin-stroking mode, that did. Thank God.

The good thing about London is that it's good for celebrity-spotting. I'm thinking of ringing the 3 AM girls Spotted! section in the Mirror. But I'll share it with you: Spotted! Buzzcocks' host Simon Amstell walking in the front door of the National Theatre. Spotted! Bradley Walsh in the audience for Oliver! Okay, neither are that impressive but when I told my mother about Amstell she said "You should have told him to stop being so bloody cheeky."

A chap called Dennis

I wrote last week about my affection for Brady Haran, the Australian 'video journalist' off of my local news programme. After doing a bit of digging, I can show you my favourite film of his, shown earlier this year and made in a village close to Newark. It's about a chap called Dennis and his History of Farming display in his back garden. It breaks my heart to watch it. Yes, this thing he's done isn't the best exhibit in the world, but who cares? It's his handiwork, which he's put years into and nobody, he thinks, wants to go and see it. Although to be fair, listening to him speak, his family have hardly encouraged him. What I love is the way he's used any old models he can get his hands on. He Man is seen messing around in some straw, one of his Masters of the Universe chums sits astride a tractor while a Pippa doll is completely out of scale on a giant horse riding through a farmyard. What I also love is the way he blows his nose whilst speaking to camera. And he pronounces the word 'make' quite correctly as 'meck'.
I feel like crying at the end when we see Dennis walking off into the distance. You see, underneath this cold, hard exterior beats a heart of marshmallow.
I really hope we don't see this on Russell Brand's Ponderland.