Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Here’s to you, Mr Robinson

It's not just me that finds that image disturbing, is it? In fact I'd pretty much say that if you don't find that image disturbing, I find it disturbing that you don't find it disturbing. It's that look on his face as he's staring straight out at you. *shudders* But still, he's not talking, so that's something.

I don't know what it is about Nick Robinson that make me want to chuck a custard pie in his face live on TV so much. Is he a Tory? Does he drop clangers, like predicting that David Miliband had won the Labour leadership contest when in fact he hadn't? Does he look a bit like the Bo Selecta bear?

Is he, in Justin's immortal words, a 'state-funded gossip'? Is he a twerp? Is he a twerpy state-funded gossip clanger-dropping Tory who looks like the Bo Selecta bear? I don't know for sure. But there's something. Something that elevates him above the level of a merely annoying bloke off the telly into someone so truly demonic that as soon as he chirpily starts twatting on about whatever meandering toss he's serving up, the world slows down and I start diving for the remote control to make the madness stop.

Funny thing is, I listened to him on the radio last night, and didn't find myself instantly wanting to push him down a fire escape. He had a cold of sorts, so he was a bit croakier than usual, but I don't think it was that; he didn't sound like the kind of prattling ponce I've come to expect on the TV - no, this was a Nick Robinson who was reasonable, measured, not trying to reduce everything to a level that only a chimp would struggle to understand, not beaming away with that "Hello, it's me on the telly!" look on his face (or if he was, I mercifully couldn't see it), actually talking as if he had a fucking clue about what he was going on about. I mean the content wasn't tremendously different; he came out with some specious crap about fears of Ed Miliband turning New Labour into North Korea, or something, but it wasn't as loathsome somehow.

Now I have no idea why this might be - why this man might be insufferably awful on the television, yet quite tolerable on the radio, but there you are. Perhaps radio is a better medium; perhaps he doesn't feel he has to act up for the cameras or to put on a performance to keep people from turning over - maybe he's been told, unless he tries to make everything into a fucking pantomime on telly, that the thicky proles won't be able to understand, and will reach down their jogging bottoms to scratch their nuts while flicking over to Live Tractor Pulling on Eurosport +1. Maybe, or maybe he's just a hopeless cock whose awfulness is muted by being on the radio. It's hard to tell.

Whatever it is, that urge to pie him in public* just seems to get greater every day.

* Disclaimer: I will never put a custard pie in Nick Robinson's face, nor would I ever like to see anyone do it. (Or if they did, I'd hope that he took his glasses off afterwards leaving two naked eyes, as is the correct way for a spectacled man to receive a pie in the face. At least bloody well do it properly).

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