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From the editor, Kevin Marsh
Not everyone realizes this – but all of us here on Today are public servants. And very serious minded public servants at that when it comes to spending your money.
Which is why a little thrill trills up and down what passes for our spines when we spend your money well. And the thing that your money was best spent on recently was the course of anger management sessions for John.
You'll have spotted the result this week when he interviewed David Milliband.
It could have been a bit fraught, as it happens, because the production team assumed Mr Milliband was in to talk about his next film, "The Prisoner of Azkaban" – which should be very good since the last two "The Philosopher's Stone" and "The Chamber of Secrets" were excellent. But it turns out he's also schools' Minister and wanted to talk about the 'A' levels. It was just as well John knew this.
Now the old John would have ripped the vitals out of an education minister on results day. But that was before the sessions with the shrink. This time the exchange went:
JH: So, minister; why have A level success rates risen every year for the past 21 ? Is it because the exams are becoming easier ?
DM: No, John.
(Pause. Silence. No sound but ticking of clock)
DM: Aren't you going to interrupt me ?
JH: No.
(Pause. Silence. Live audience DM has brought with him clears her throat)
JH: Is that true then. Exams haven't become easier ?
DM: Yes. Or rather, no. They haven't.
JH: Minister. Thank you.
It was quite splendid stuff. And real, hard evidence from a primary source - on the record - that Britain was not dumbing down.
There was more evidence, earlier in the week, that this had not happened. The improbably tall business reporter Hugh Pym presented an item that said next year, apparently, the amount of money spent on ringtones for mobile phones will exceed the amount of money spent on CD singles. This is good and not a sign of dumbing down at all because it means more people are exercising choice. Only a few years ago we did not have enough choices when it came to deciding what music we would spend our money on. A Mozart piano concerto on CD. A vintage Johnny Mathis vinyl. A live Spice Girls gig. Or even, at the cost of a bus ticket, a bit of Tudor polyphony in the local Cathedral. Now you do not have to go to any of this trouble because you have a new choice that by the end of the decade will suck in all the money spent by everyone in the world on music. A new ringtone. And the good thing is, it's a choice you can excercise without even taking your hands off the steering wheel of the 4x! 4. Soon, there will be no more need for musicians but that will be good because there will be choice. When John heard this item, he started chewing on the straps, mumbling "two million years of human evolution" and pacing around the fenced compound we've had built for him just to the side of the Blue Peter garden.
Sarah dried her hands, tossed the scouring pad to one side and said she'd deal with it and take him through the techniques we'd all been taught in order to deal with relapses.
I was just going into a meeting so wasn't really paying attention. But a little later I started to worry a bit at the baleful bellowing coming from the vicinity of Petra's grave. And in the background, almost inaudible, a tinny, constantly repeated electronic "diddle-ee-dah, diddle-ee-dah, diddle-ee-dah dah."
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