Is a lecture by Bill Gates (or anyone else) good television?


I don't often repeat blogs verbatim, but watching Bill Gates giving this year's Richard Dimbleby Lecture (HERE) reminded me of a question I asked two years ago that still baffles me and is still awaiting an answer, namely: 

Why does the BBC commemorate Richard Dimbleby with a televised lecture?

My thoughts from two years ago remain pretty much unchanged:

'Last night's Richard Dimbleby Lecture on BBC 1 was delivered by Michael Morpurgo, the latest in a long and distinguished line of famous people to have done so every year (except four) since 1972 (full list HERE).

'But what baffles me about this annual event is how and why the BBC ever decided that the most suitable memorial to a celebrated broadcaster would be something as ill-suited to television as a lecture.

'Wouldn't an annual Dimbleby Documentary, Dimbleby Debate or Dimbleby Interview have been a more fitting way to remember a current affairs journalist? After all, these were not only the kinds of things he was best known for, but would have come across better on television than celebrities, many of whom have little or no experience of lecturing, standing behind a lectern and talking for rather a long time.

'Given the BBC's increasing reluctance to show even very short extracts from political speeches in their news programmes (on which there's more discussion and links HERE and HERE), it strikes me as rather odd that the Dimbleby lecture has been allowed to carry on in its original format.

'So far, I've been unable to find out anything about why the BBC (or who) decided in the first place that a lecture would be the best way to commemorate his life - and would be interested to hear from anyone who knows something about its history.'

Cameron on Europe: a press release thinly disguised as a speech

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Finding out when and where David Cameron's much-trailed speech on Europe was taking place today posed at least as much of a challenge as working out what the point of it all was.

What I eventually discovered was that that both the when and the where of the speech were quite unusual - unless it's suddenly become fashionable for our politicians to deliver major speeches at 8.00 a.m. in the morning on the off chance that the American news agency in central London (where the speech was being given) would be able to drum up an audience at a moment's notice to listen to it - or, to be more precise, to prepare reports on what he said for the rest of the day's news programmes.

Who was there?
From the above, there's very little evidence that anyone was there at all: no coughing or sneezing and not so much as a hint of applause at the end of the speech.

Yet there were, of course plenty of people there, not supporters who might have cheered or clapped, but representatives of the media busily writing notes on what he was saying - while he was saying it (which keen 'listeners' could follow live, as the words came out of his mouth, on the BBC website HERE).

Speech or press release?
So does this really count as a political 'speech' delivered by a leading politician, or was it merely a case of a leading politician taking the trouble to read out a press release - on the grounds that no one would  take any notice of it unless it were disguised, however thinly, as 'a speech'?

And are we going to have to put up with more and more such non-speeches as the stock-in-trade of contemporary political communication?


Should we have the right to bear arms during a speech?


Yesterday's news that someone had interrupted a Bulgarian politician's speech by mounting the stage and pointing a gun at him made me realise how little I know about Bulgarian politics - as well as how unusual (thankfully) it is for audiences to respond to speeches in this particular way.

I also realised that I have no idea as to whether or not the Bulgarian constitution enshrines the right of its citizens "to bear arms", or indeed to beat up anyone whose gun fails to go off at point blank range.

Needless to say, I hope that neither of these rights is enjoyed by Bulgarians, and, more importantly, that such trends do not catch on in the USA...

Lance Armstrong's 'straight' answers to Oprah's Yes/No questions



Having never previously seen any Oprah Winfrey interviews, I've no idea whether her interviewees have to agree beforehand to answer any "Yes/No" questions she might ask with a straight "Yes" or "No".

But that's what disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong did in this sequence from his interview with her.

Whether or not it was not the way she had expected him to confess, as she'd said in her trailers for the show, I do not know. I do know, however, that to my English ears, such apparently straight answers to a series of "Yes/No" questions definitely qualifies it for a place my collection of unusual TV interviews.

Examples of Other Unusual Interviews

  • Politician answers a question: an exception that proves the rule
  • A Labour leader with no interest in spin!
  • A Tory leader's three evasive answers to the same question
  • The day Mrs Thatcher apologised (twice) for what she'd said in an interview
  • A prime minister who openly refused to answer Robin Day's questions
  • 'Here today, gone tomorrow' politician walks out of interview with Robin Day
  • The day Mandelson walked out of an interview rather than answer a question about Gordon Brown
  • Mandelson gives two straight answers to two of Paxman's questions
  • Two more straight answers from Mandelson - about failed coups and the PM's rages
  • Rare video clip of a politician giving 5 straight answers to 5 consecutive questions
  • One = Three religious questions in Obama's Connecticut speech

    For students of rhetoric and oratory, there's always a silver lining to the horrific mass shootings that have become such a regular feature of American life - because one thing that's certain is that we'll get to hear yet another example of President Obama making a masterful speech that catches the mood of the nation.

    The  full video and transcript of what he said at the interfaith Prayer Vigil in Newtown, Connecticuton on Sunday can be seen below. But one line that particularly intrigued me was this one, in which he set up  "a simple question" that turned out to be three questions:

    "All the world's religions — so many of them represented here today — start with a simple question: Why are we here? What gives our life meaning? What gives our acts purpose? "

    Nor has the fact that no one seems to have noticed or raised any queries about this apparent inconsistency surprised me. As I noted four years ago, his speech in Chicago on winning the presidency for the first time contained 29 three-part lists in just over ten minutes. Nobody noticed that either, nor did it stop people from being impressed by the 'quality' of the speech.

    Much the same, it seems, applies to this speech, even to the extent that some commentators have been hailing it as his 'Gettysburg Address'.

    The full transcript of President Obama's speech at the Sandy Hook Interfaith Prayer Vigil in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 16, 2012:

    Thank you. Thank you, Governor. To all the families, first responders, to the community of Newtown, clergy, guests — Scripture tells us: "…do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away…inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands."

    Here in Newtown, I come to offer the love and prayers of a nation. I am very mindful that mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts. I can only hope it helps for you to know that you're not alone in your grief; that our world too has been torn apart; that all across this land of ours, we have wept with you, we've pulled our children tight. And you must know that whatever measure of comfort we can provide, we will provide; whatever portion of sadness that we can share with you to ease this heavy load, we will gladly bear it. Newtown — you are not alone.

    As these difficult days have unfolded, you've also inspired us with stories of strength and resolve and sacrifice. We know that when danger arrived in the halls of Sandy Hook Elementary, the school's staff did not flinch, they did not hesitate. Dawn Hochsprung and Mary Sherlach, Vicki Soto, Lauren Rousseau, Rachel Davino and Anne Marie Murphy — they responded as we all hope we might respond in such terrifying circumstances — with courage and with love, giving their lives to protect the children in their care.

    We know that there were other teachers who barricaded themselves inside classrooms, and kept steady through it all, and reassured their students by saying "wait for the good guys, they're coming"; "show me your smile."
    And we know that good guys came. The first responders who raced to the scene, helping to guide those in harm's way to safety, and comfort those in need, holding at bay their own shock and trauma because they had a job to do, and others needed them more. 

    And then there were the scenes of the schoolchildren, helping one another, holding each other, dutifully following instructions in the way that young children sometimes do; one child even trying to encourage a grown-up by saying, "I know karate. So it's okay. I'll lead the way out." (Laughter.)

    As a community, you've inspired us, Newtown. In the face of indescribable violence, in the face of unconscionable evil, you've looked out for each other, and you've cared for one another, and you've loved one another. This is how Newtown will be remembered. And with time, and God's grace, that love will see you through.

    But we, as a nation, we are left with some hard questions. Someone once described the joy and anxiety of parenthood as the equivalent of having your heart outside of your body all the time, walking around. With their very first cry, this most precious, vital part of ourselves — our child — is suddenly exposed to the world, to possible mishap or malice. And every parent knows there is nothing we will not do to shield our children from harm. And yet, we also know that with that child's very first step, and each step after that, they are separating from us; that we won't — that we can't always be there for them. They'll suffer sickness and setbacks and broken hearts and disappointments. And we learn that our most important job is to give them what they need to become self-reliant and capable and resilient, ready to face the world without fear.


    And we know we can't do this by ourselves. It comes as a shock at a certain point where you realize, no matter how much you love these kids, you can't do it by yourself. That this job of keeping our children safe, and teaching them well, is something we can only do together, with the help of friends and neighbors, the help of a community, and the help of a nation. And in that way, we come to realize that we bear a responsibility for every child because we're counting on everybody else to help look after ours; that we're all parents; that they're all our children.

    This is our first task — caring for our children. It's our first job. If we don't get that right, we don't get anything right. That's how, as a society, we will be judged.

    And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we are meeting our obligations? Can we honestly say that we're doing enough to keep our children — all of them — safe from harm? Can we claim, as a nation, that we're all together there, letting them know that they are loved, and teaching them to love in return? Can we say that we're truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?

    I've been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we're honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We're not doing enough. And we will have to change.
    Since I've been President, this is the fourth time we have come together to comfort a grieving community torn apart by a mass shooting. The fourth time we've hugged survivors. The fourth time we've consoled the families of victims. And in between, there have been an endless series of deadly shootings across the country, almost daily reports of victims, many of them children, in small towns and big cities all across America — victims whose — much of the time, their only fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    We can't tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law — no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society.

    But that can't be an excuse for inaction. Surely, we can do better than this. If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and Newtown, and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that — then surely we have an obligation to try.
    In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens — from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators — in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this. Because what choice do we have? We can't accept events like this as routine. Are we really prepared to say that we're powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?

    All the world's religions — so many of them represented here today — start with a simple question: Why are we here? What gives our life meaning? What gives our acts purpose? We know our time on this Earth is fleeting. We know that we will each have our share of pleasure and pain; that even after we chase after some earthly goal, whether it's wealth or power or fame, or just simple comfort, we will, in some fashion, fall short of what we had hoped. We know that no matter how good our intentions, we will all stumble sometimes, in some way. We will make mistakes, we will experience hardships. And even when we're trying to do the right thing, we know that much of our time will be spent groping through the darkness, so often unable to discern God's heavenly plans.

    There's only one thing we can be sure of, and that is the love that we have — for our children, for our families, for each other. The warmth of a small child's embrace — that is true. The memories we have of them, the joy that they bring, the wonder we see through their eyes, that fierce and boundless love we feel for them, a love that takes us out of ourselves, and binds us to something larger — we know that's what matters. We know we're always doing right when we're taking care of them, when we're teaching them well, when we're showing acts of kindness. We don't go wrong when we do that.
    That's what we can be sure of. And that's what you, the people of Newtown, have reminded us. That's how you've inspired us. You remind us what matters. And that's what should drive us forward in everything we do, for as long as God sees fit to keep us on this Earth.

    "Let the little children come to me," Jesus said, "and do not hinder them — for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven."
    Charlotte. Daniel. Olivia. Josephine. Ana. Dylan. Madeleine. Catherine. Chase. Jesse. James. Grace. Emilie. Jack. Noah. Caroline. Jessica. Benjamin. Avielle. Allison.

    God has called them all home. For those of us who remain, let us find the strength to carry on, and make our country worthy of their memory.

    May God bless and keep those we've lost in His heavenly place. May He grace those we still have with His holy comfort. And may He bless and watch over this community, and the United States of America.

    Parliament Week trailer: Ashdown & Atkinson in conversation

    Tomorrow evening, Paddy Ashdown and I have been invited to an event organised by the UK Speecbwriters' Guild as part of Parliament Week 2012 (details HERE).

    It's given me an excuse to rummage through some ancient video clips, and it occurred to me that those who won't be there tomorrow might like to see them.

    A promising newcomer?
    The first one dates from 1981, when he was still the prospective parliamentary candidate for Yeovil, and John Heritage and I were in the process of recording all the televised output from that year's three main political party conferences.


    At this stage, Paddy wasn't really aware of how rhetoric works and has to break off when his three-part list prompts a burst of applause - looking vaguely surprised that it had brought so positive a response from the audience.


    Nor, it appears had he given much thought to wearing a jacket and tie - and maybe he'll be able to tell us tomorrow night whether the lectern was hiding sandals.


    1987 General Election
    After becoming an MP in 1983, Paddy was transport spokesman for the Liberals and had been lent a copy of my book Our Masters' Voices (1984) by a mutual friend (now Lord Bradshaw) who introduced us with a view to my helping the new MP with his speeches.

    By the time of the 1987 General Election, Paddy had become the education spokesman for the SDP Liberal Alliance, which meant that he would have to speak when they launched their campaign at the Barbican.

    So this was the first speech that we worked on together to be televised. A puzzle with an alliterative three-parted solution was among the lines that got the desired response. And one of these 'Rs' came from a Scrabble dictionary, which can be a useful resource for searching lists of words quickly and without being deflected by definitions.


    Although Our Masters' Voices had quite a lot to say about rhetorical devices like contrasts and three-part lists, it said little about the importance of imagery and story telling as ways of getting your message across. However, having by this stage become more involved in coaching people to make speeches and presentations, I'd become much more aware of how effective metaphors, similes, analogies and anecdotes could be.

    And it was a contrastive simile that won both laughter and applause in this sequence:


    Liberal Party merger debate, 1988
    Having fought the 1987 general election as two parties in an alliance, the Liberals and SDP turned to the question of whether they should become a single party.

    Paddy was keen that they should, and planned to speak in support of merger at the special assembly early in 1988. I wrote a speech but did not go to the conference. On the train to the venue, one of his other advisors persuaded him to leave out every sentence I'd written - except for one.

    To my great delight, it was the Tower of Babel/tower of strength contrast that  only line that was selected as a sound bite on prime-time news programmes. One of the commentators even claimed it was a 'clear statement' of Ashdown's intention to run for the leadership if a new party were formed (which it wasn't).


    Leadership campaign, 1988
    Once Paddy had decided to run for the leadership of the new party, we spent weeks working with him on the speech in which he would announce his candidacy - not realising at the time that, for the next three weeks, he would need at least one new speech per day.

    Amidst the ongoing panic that followed, I remember getting a note from one of the other writers saying "My price is a peerage, what's yours?" - but, for some strange reason, neither of us has (yet) been elevated to the House of Lords.

    But I was quite pleased that a widely played sound bite from the speech was a simple three-part list in which yesterday, today and tomorrow were used as metaphors for past, present and future:


    The new leader
    A few days before the result was announced, it became clear that our candidate was going to win. By then, the gains of the two parties at the 1987 election had been largely whittled away, and Paddy was well aware of the need to remind the public that the Alliance was still going strong (?) in a different form.

    Reflecting on my brief to cook up some lines to get this across, I was stuck in one of those traffic jams on the M6 where there's so little movement that you have to turn the car engine off. 

    Reaching for my pen and pad I started trying different possibilities and came up with a contrast between being "not only back in business, but mean business", which BBC political editor John Cole seem to think good enough to headline his introduction to live footage - of yet another three-part list.



    Who's helping?
    I've often likened speechwriting as an occupation to being rather like robbing banks, in that you can't go around advertising your wares by boasting which speeches you wrote for whom. Nor, usually, can you expect a client to tell all his friends that he'd got someone else to help him.

    But on this, Paddy had a different and refreshingly open approach. During his leadership campaign, he asked me if I would mind if he told the media who'd been helping him with his speeches. 

    Initially, I wasn't convinced that this would be a good idea from his point of view, as my involvement in coaching someone to win a standing ovation at the 1984 SDP conference had earned me the name 'Dr Claptrap' in some quarters. But his line was that it was as rational to consult an 'expert' on speechmaking and rhetoric as it was to consult 'experts' on IT or any other field he felt he needed help with - 

    At around that time, the director of communications of a large multi-national company told me it wouldn't do my business any good if it became known that I was associated with such losers as the Liberal Democrats.

    Ten years later, I was still in business, Ashdown had more than doubled the number of Liberal Democrat MPs but the company of the director of communications had gone into liquidation a few years earlier.

    Why?
    As for why I got involved, I had been a keen supporter of the SDP and believed then (as I still believe now) that, if Ashdown didn't win the leadership of the new party, it would be the end of three party politics in the UK for at least a generation.

    How much?
    Party members who worry about how much I was paid by the Lib Dems during the twelve years I worked with Paddy will be relieved to know that it was a grand total of £0.00. In fact, given that I never charged for travel costs, it was actually a substantial minus figure - not least because, in those early years, all the Sainsbury cash had stayed with David Owen's rump SDP (before being diverted to 'New Labour').

    For those of us whose journey to the Liberal Democrats was via the SDP, the Blair years were arguably  pretty much what the gang of four had been hoping for all those years ago...

    If John Nott & Peter Mandelson can walk out of TV interviews, so can the BBC's acting Director General



    If his last interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme was what finally did for George Entwistle's stint as Director General, you'd think that his successor (albeit only 'acting' DG) might have had a little coaching on media interviews before venturing forth to speak to wider audiences.

    But if he did, he doesn't seem to have been given, or at least didn't take, any advice either on the wearing of ties or the negative impression likely to be given by walking out of an interview (especially with 24 hour news competitor Sky News).

    So here, on Tim Davie's second day in office, we have a welcome addition to my small collection of interviewees walking out of TV interviews.

    What's in a tie?
    Andy Turner has, perfectly reasonably, entered a comment asking what's the advice about ties (below)?

    While it may be the case that wearing a tie is becoming more optional in the world of business and management than in the past, my advice is that the safest option for someone in charge of such a huge public organisation as the BBC is to wear one - not least because a very high percentage of licence payers are quite old and expect 'top people' to be 'properly dressed'.

    This was brought home to me at a lunch today in our village hall at which the age range of those sitting at our table was between 65 and 80. Asked their impression of the BBC's acting Director General, all of them had noticed and disapproved of the fact that he wasn't wearing a tie. Some thought it too casual of him to be seen carrying a cup of coffee to the interview. And, those who saw the interview from which he walked out (above) were thoroughly appalled by his conduct.

    So, Mr Turner, my advice to the BBC would be to make sure that Mr Davie not only buys a tie, but is seen to be wearing it when he goes on television...

    And from Twitter:
    Since posting this, some of the comments on Twitter support my view, including these:

    @edstaite: "Also, in crises don't turn up for work brandishing coffee as if all OK. Not exactly 'getting a grip'"

    @nigelfletcher: "Needed to step out of a car. in suit and tie, carrying a BBC portfolio. First impressions count."

    OTHER WALKOUTS