Can Clive 'sex up' politics?
BBC television executives have been wringing their hands for years about how to make a TV version of Sunday Service, the now defunct Radio 5 Live programme that made a star of Fi Glover and fools of many of her guests.
Now they have come up with the startlingly original idea of giving the task to the people who actually made the show, which - before its post-Glover decline - won acclaim for bringing an irreverence to political coverage that did not seem to trivialise the subject.
Clive Anderson is to front the new series on BBC2, called The Sharp End, which is being billed as a "witty and sophisticated" take on the political scene. Presumably it will be more witty and sophisticated than his less-than-successful after-dinner speech to a most unforgiving audience at the Royal Television Society's Cambridge convention 10 days ago: "I've had better nights," Anderson says. It will, one hopes, be more sophisticated than the previous attempt at a "youth" political show, when a year-long review of political programmes and a tortuous bidding process resulted in Rod Liddle's patchy Weekend programme and a monumentally cheesed-off Bob Geldof, whose production company lost out to the BBC's in-house team.
Being on the books of Know Comment, a part of Sir Bob's media empire that farms out people like me to programmes rather like The Sharp End, I'm told that his rage was something to behold. Sam Cash, the executive producer of the new programme, acknowledges - diplomatically - that the process was "problematic".
So, in the spirit of fair play, or perhaps in the spirit of being a bit desperate, the BBC has decided to let Sir Bob have a go after all: the corporation has handed the contract for a series of six 45-minute shows to his Ten Alps outfit, which made Sunday Service and now co-produces its replacement, the Julian Worricker programme.
Anderson says the format will be - wait for it - "topical, witty and amusing". It will tackle four issues a week, three of which will be broadly political and the fourth more general, and dissect them with guests that could include politicians, commentators and comedians. There will be off-beat "inserts"that might, for example, splice together a series of clips from different interviews given by a government minister on the same day about the same topic, to demonstrate how key phrases in the "message" were relentlessly shovelled into the public consciousness. Such an exercise might, one hopes, expose how the more ineffectual New Labourites fall apart under cross-examination from Paxo or Humphrys.
There will also be a slot, probably called That's Just Not News, which will examine the top stories in the previous week's television news bulletins to see whether they really deserved to be on air. "Forty percent of stories aren't really stories at all," says Cash, deriding the prominence given on the Six O'Clock News to the story about Camelot's new daily lottery game.
In an effort to boost the humour factor, the production team includes an experienced gag writer, Dan Gaster, whose track record includes a period on Have I Got News For You. The official line is that these innovations - or gimmicks, depending on your perspective - will help draw in viewers who might not otherwise have watched a political programme. Given the state of relationships between the BBC and both main Westminster parties at the moment, the corporation could be forgiven for giving up on politics for good, let alone chasing after elusive youth. But Lucy Hetherington, the commissioning executive at the BBC who is overseeing The Sharp End, says: "It's all part of our attempt to find ways of appealing to new audiences who might not have found some of the stuff we have done particularly appealing. It's about opening a new dialogue with the audience."
Unofficially, of course, almost everyone else - including, it seems, the production team - recognises this is an impossible task. Cash is candid about the dilemma: "It's very difficult to set out to do a show for a politically disenchanted audience - that's an almost impossible task. We have abandoned that idea." Instead, Cash says The Sharp End is aimed at people "in their 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s" who are interested in politics, but are under-served by the current crop of political programmes.
Aside from the apparent differences in the interpretation of the brief, Hetherington says that much store has been set by the choice of production team and presenter. "I think the combination of the production team, which has people with a light touch but political nous, and Clive who has that combination as well, is very strong."
Anderson says a new kind of programme is required to combat a new style of politician. "I think they are all getting a bit too clever, too good at the game. They trot a line that has been expertly worked out. It gets them through an interview with John Humphrys or Jeremy Paxman, but it's a bit of a turn-off for everyone else. The trick, if you can pull it off, is to push them into different areas."
Again, this is a trick learned from Sunday Service. In 2001, the programme interviewed the new sports minister, Richard Caborn; as well as being posed the usual questions about government sports policy, he was put under the spotlight with a quiz on the sports stories of the week. Embarrassingly, he did not get a single answer right.
Anderson promises that he will not let off politicians lightly: "Personally, I enjoy a good confrontational interview, but I acknowledge that it's sometimes a turnoff to see a battle of egos. I'm not aiming at confrontational interviews really."
Rival broadcasters, as might be expected, are scornful about the BBC's contortions over its political output. Executives in the commercial sector questioned why the corporation went to the time and effort to conduct a year-long review that resulted in a conclusion of the blindingly obvious: that young people are not much interested in politics. Why not, they say, just spend the time thinking of some decent programme ideas and get them on the air?
The political review was certainly tortuous, and typically "BBC", but it does now appear to be bearing fruit. The political pundit Amanda Platell described The Week with Andrew Neil - the weekly BBC1 show fronted by the former Sunday Times editor with Michael Portillo and Diane Abbott, as "terrific" in her New Statesman column last week. She said of the MPs: "Portillo brings grace and wisdom, coupled with Abbott's big-bosomed, big-hearted, broad of-the-people style. They are fast becoming the Cary Grant and Mae West of late-night TV." But she lamented the graveyard slot: "Their hands-on appreciation of each other is something to be seen, and it should be seen earlier in the evening."
Which brings us, finally, to the slot allocated for The Sharp End: 9.15 on a Saturday morning does not seem at first glance to be a prime position. But Hetherington points out that it inherits about a million viewers from the hour-long News 24 simulcast that precedes it, and says it offers a genuine choice.
That is certainly true; but whether Clive Anderson can beat Dick and Dom in da Bungalow off their perch remains to be seen.
· The Sharp End With Clive Anderson begins on October 4, BBC2, 9.15am