Rewind radio: Nick Ferrari (Call Clegg); Mark Forrest; The Life Scientific – review

Nick Clegg's communication skills deserted him on his first weekly phone-in showNick Ferrari (Call Clegg) | (LBC)Mark Forrest (BBC London) | iPlayerThe Life Scientific (R4) | iPlayerRemember the halcyon days before the last general election? When Gordon Brown was a man who mattered, when "double dip" was what you did with a liquorice stick into sherbet, when owning property meant you were rich? Nick Clegg does. Back in those strange times, the Cleggmeister was considered a great communicator, winning live TV debates hands-down, disarming the viewers so thoroughly that both Brown and Cameron merely parroted what he said, but not as plausibly. Clever Cleggo won the media war, and his reward was coalition government. Hope he's happy.Oh, but things are different now. Cute Cleggles is the most loathed of mainstream political leaders, his party the least liked. So he's decided to take his charm to the people once more, by appearing on a weekly phone-in radio show, Call Clegg, on LBC 97.3. Some people wondered why he chose a London local station rather than one in his Sheffield constituency, but that's fairly obvious, given that most of his everyday work is in Westminster and he hates Sheffield (a joke). Still, LBC diligently sent up a reporter to Sheff to talk to a selected group of voters after Clegg's chat, to see what they thought.The Sheffield post-show complaints were that Clegg didn't really listen to the questions, that he trotted out prepared answers. But that was partly th...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Nick Clegg Culture Television & radio Reviews Talk radio Politics The Observer Science amp; radio Source Type: news