Laughs from Liberal Lords

Regular readers will know that I take a very dim view of the way successive governments have avoided doing anything about how seats in the House of Lords are allocated (e.g. HERE).

So, although I find myself much closer to Lord Ashdown's position on House of Lords reform than that of Lord Phillips of Sudbury, I spent quite a lot of time yesterday trying to find a clip of the above that could be embedded here - for purely entertainment purposes, you understand.

It's a reminder to those of us who bemoan the passing of the Jimmy Young Show on BBC Radio 2 of one of the regular features that made it so worth listening to. In his former life, Lord Phillips was better known as the solicitor Andrew Phillips, who appeared with Jimmy Young as the 'legal eagle' giving legal advice to listeners from 1976-2002.

Loss of the good natured banter between him and Jimmy Young is but one of the many reasons why I've hardly ever listened to the programme since it became the Jeremy Vine Show.

Another is that I thought that David Aaronovich, one of the occasional stand-ins for Sir Jimmy, made a far better job of it than Mr Vine has ever done - but, for reasons best known to the BBC, didn't get the job when they decreed that the time had come for Jimmy Young to retire.