Archgrove

I had the opportunity to attend the BBC’s live radio broadcast of “Any Questions” last night, which turned out to be an interesting experience (For those not in the know, Any Questions is a weekly political discussion show where the BBC round up politicians and other prominent public and business figures to have questions on recent news flung at them by the mob). On the practical side, it’s all very straightforward ; you’d never know the entire thing was being beamed live to millions of people. You arrive about an hour early and submit the questions you’d like to ask (if you don’t have any, that’s fine), sit and chat with your neighbours for 20 minutes then someone (in our case, a R4 continuity announcer) comes out to give pithy anecdotes and put everyone at ease.

After everyone’s actually listening, the producer comes out to explain how everything works and declares who’s questions were chosen – these people are then shuffled to the front row. Then the panel arrives, a test question is asked to make sure all the microphones work, and the show begins – they broadcast the news live into the room, and as soon as it ends, the panel and ambient microphones become live and the broadcast begins – all very simple really, and discreetly low tech.

It’s worth noting that if you don’t ask a question the most you can contribute is heckles or applause – the ambient mikes can’t pickup audience responses. Because my views on this week’s news are fairly commonplace, I didn’t bother to submit a question but rather strategically positioned myself at the back so I could observe the slice of the population that attended, and their reactions to the questions and answers. Alas, the demographic was exactly as I’d feared – the mean age must have been well over 60, and 95% conservative.

The height of the evening came when the woman who’d asked a reasonable question about increasing local resources before building new houses to solve the current house price crisis (whereby anyone who doesn’t already own a house can’t possibly afford one) got her right of reply. Her comments ran to the tone that “anyone without a house should just move north where the houses are cheaper” are so infuriatingly elitist and selfish that I almost ran down the aisle to cease the mike. Playing in local politics around here is such an exercise in frustration, it’s little wonder no few under 40 actually bother.

Regardless, it was a worthwhile slice of local political opinion, and my thanks go to the BBC for continuing to run this sort of program (in the face of “Celebrity Brothers Love XFactor live”).