In our household we have tried to stop watching the news. It was bad enough in 2019 when, live from Westminster, another Brexit crisis point came and went every night at 7pm, but at least that was vaguely exciting. The news in 2020 has been horrendous. Every day a wrist-slashing litany of disaster, loss of life, calumny, governmental ineptitude and international failure on a global scale – with only the promise of more the following evening. We are in a sort of perpetual edge of panic mode. Sometimes it feels very bleak with not even a glimmer of hope around the corner. Sometimes it feels like the end of life as we have known it: out of control pandemic, imminent environmental catastrophe, race riots, societal breakdown across the Atlantic, refugee crises and despotism threatening democratic institutions both on our doorstep and in the citadels of America.
Our world is in chaos. As I say, we have tried to stop watching the news, but it has us hooked. Nightly we turn it on to see if anything – anything – has got better. Instead, the familiar faces auto-cue crisis to every camera in the studio. The TV anchor men and women shake their heads at having to read out such depressing news. They think that serious stories need serious faces and sombre voices. That such times call for sobriety. They are wrong. What we need in such times is a latter day Reggie Bosanquet to make it all seem better. Reggie Bosanquet, the less than secure anchor on ITN News at Ten back in the day. We need on our air waves his charmingly lazy brand of insouciance brought on by a slight excess of insobriety. Something the poet prince of depressing times, Leonard Cohen, understood brilliantly: I – we – need someone to ‘dance me through the panic ’til I’m gathered safely in’. Gathered in one way or the other.
Reggie Bosanquet. Just the name makes me smile. Watching him present the ITN Ten o’clock news was entertaining – my parents would tune in just to see how far the wrong side of a bottle of red he was. His inebriation was an open secret and in those days, there was no shame in it. It just endeared him to the nation. He covered news just as depressing as any we get today. On ITN News at Ten from 1967 to 1979, his watch included some of history’s most tragic stories: the Prague Spring, the Vietnam War, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Bloody Sunday, IRA bombings, Apollo 13, Biafra, the Killing Fields, the Iranian revolution, the Beatles disbanding. He made the uncertainty of existence bearable in a way that looking through the bottom of a glass filled with wine usually does.
When Reggie was on air, he kept two goblets of wine on a shelf just beneath the news desk, which he guzzled during the pre-filmed reports. If the world was going to end, you wouldn’t mind hearing it slurred from the side of his mouth. I’d rather go in the company of a man who drank his way through the news. I would rather spend my last few moments on Earth with the man who entitled his autobiography “Let’s get through Wednesday” than with the prim Fiona Bruce – the icy, charmless Head girl – or Mogadon Man, Huw Edwards, which would be like living out your last moments with that rather tedious, dull colleague from accounts. I’d just prefer a party and to go out with a smile than a scold or a yawn. Purely a matter of style. News readers should be chosen by this criterion rather than journalistic integrity or gravitas. Preferably all three: old school style.
Let’s face it, nowadays the Reggie B method would be the only sensible defence mechanism given the unending list of dreadfulness today’s news anchors have to read out. I would have nothing but respect for them if they parked a heavy glass tumbler and a full decanter of Lagavulin on the desk, ready for action, as Big Ben chimed. At least it would be an honest reflection of the unpalatability of their job. Which, right now, is not much different from Tom Hagen’s role in The Godfather, having to go upstairs and tell Don Corleone, his mafia boss, bed ridden and recovering from being gunned down in the street in a failed assassination attempt, that the Don’s eldest son, Sonny, has just been riddled with hundreds of bullets and killed. Hagen has to have a stiff drink in order to face the Don and tell him the sad news. Imagine having to do that on a nightly basis. Hell, if I had to do their job, the studio would need to set up an intravenous drip filled with a litre of 80 per cent proof just to get me to face the camera.
In this news cycle, for the whole of 2020, you’d need a survival strategy just to go on air. The nearest to perfecting such a survival strategy – but clearly sober – is Tom Bradby. He has eschewed any pretence at impartiality or resisting the temptation to express a personal view on the headlines. Every item of news ends with a sardonic raised eyebrow and a fatalistic comment. A bit like the fabulous comedienne Caroline Aherne’s nosy supermarket cashier, who commented rudely on every item she rang up as they made their way down the conveyor belt – “Tampons? Thought you looked a bit grouchy this mornin'” – much to the embarrassment of her hapless customers.
Bradby and Peston. The Two Ronnies of news broadcasting. One, the straight faced deliverer of acid put downs and muttered asides; the other, the erratic cadence and windmilling actions of a Vaudeville performer. Together they just about add up to a single malt Reggie. Thank God you can still get bad news delivered with a decent bedside manner. It may not be what you want to hear but at least it’s palatable.