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From the Editor: Kevin Marsh
Operation "Shifting the Deckchairs" is halfway through.
This is an operation that has nothing to do with what goes out on air. Well, not in a direct way.
It's all about moving Today producers' desks from one side of the office to the other. From a dingy, shadowy netherland far from the windows to a bright sunlit lowland, bathed in natural light. Obviously, the next time I run out of ideas, I will order them all to be moved back.
It's also about losing some of the phones, wiring some of the computers to the air conditioning and re-plumbing the waste bins.
In the end, it will make people happier. And happier people make happier programmes. Though John Humphrys was not happy on the first day when he couldn't find the stash of cut vellum his clerk writes his scripts on. He fidgeted briefly with his knuckle duster and eyed the overnight team but saw no obviously worthwhile victim.
Happier people - demob happier people - say some strange things on air. One of them was Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, who assured us Iraq really did have "weapons of mass distraction." Another was Michael Ancram who was livid at Alastair Campbell's "dossy dodgier."
But the interviewee on hermaphroditic oysters will never again know the happiness that peace of mind can bring after this exchange:
A They usually take a winter break and then decide - 'well, I'll be male now or I'll be female now.'
Q And is that bad? I can see the advantages and disadvantages of both
A Speak for yourself.
John laughed, of course. But we all knew it was a laughing shark moment and... well, that particular boffin of the bi-valve will be well advised to sleep with the lights on from now.
More complex animals - than oysters, not than John - have also featured this week, most particularly on Thursday when we interviewed Mr Ben Bradshaw about the "Tracking Mammals Partnership" - a collection of organisations that will, presumably, do for voles what the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is doing for sparrows. The saintly Ed Stourton was asking the questions and what troubled him - in a latter-day Franciscan moment - was why birds had had more attention to date than polecats: "Is it because we don't love them as much as birds." Without breaking stride, Mr Bradshaw proved he was a modern politician in touch with his feminine side and took the question on on its own terms "No..." he began and explained why the neglect of mamalians was nothing to do with ornithophilia. Fair question, fair answer. I briefly tried to imagine an exchange along these lines with Mr John Prescott but it just wouldn't come.
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