Opinion Four phonetaps and a hearing

Equally riveting was Prime Minister’s Questions — like televised committee hearings,that’s not something we get to see in India. Ed Miliband of Labour bounced up and down,doggedly trying to link PM David Cameron to Murdoch’s empire; Cameron tap-danced his way around the barbs,at one point saying that he’d made the same explanation so often that he’d be happy to set it to music if that would make it more acceptable to the opposition. Few things,surely,are more delightful than watching an adversarial form of government play out on TV. There may be something to this Westminster thing,we should see it we could get it to work here.

But,as our TV stars would say,why do you need questions in Parliament,when you have questions on news TV? Watching UK TV debates,however,was a profoundly depressing experience,forcing those of us in denial to acknowledge what what TV debates actually could be like. The participants were witty,well-informed,and,in Hugh Grant’s case,at least,awfully good-looking. The discussions stayed on point,didn’t devolve into shouting matches even when someone was unforgivably rude,and left you far better informed about what the issues were. And they did all this while being far more entertaining than anything we get served up on our own primetime.

The ubiquity of Hugh Grant on news TV this past fortnight,with infuriatingly messy hair and beautifully-starched pastel shirts,somehow manages to make the whole exercise simultaneously a serious investigation into press ethics and political connections and a quaintly hilarious celebration of Englishness,possibly scripted by Richard Curtis. Grant appears to be revelling in the rather odd position in which he now finds himself,in which he’s the moral conscience of a nation that’s feeling slightly soiled. He turned up to discussions having prepared exhaustively in advance,something I would recommend to the harried,forgetful,under-informed guests on our own TV shows; on the BBC’s ‘Question Time’,for example,he could tell us the UK’s attorney general’s thoughts on how to investigate Murdoch,having called him up the previous day — and,at one point,he flummoxed a ranting Labour politician by gently reminding him that he had been at a big party thrown by Murdoch barely a few weeks earlier.

The best bit of TV,though,was early on,when Grant was interviewed standing in front of the Houses of Parliament — shirt with perfectly ironed collar,check; hair rippling gently in the breeze,check — about how he met and secretly recorded the tabloid journalist who had boasted of tapping his voicemail. The studio camera panned out,and we saw that the scruffy,sensationalist journo in question,Paul McMullen,had come up from the pub in Dover he now owns to talk to Grant. McMullen scoffed at Grant,saying he earned too much money to complain,and Grant told McMullen he was evil and had no morals. Yet somehow it managed to stay on-topic,and even be rather charming,with Grant ending the discussion by saying: “You should try real journalism,because you’re not an idiot,Paul,you could probably do it.”

Words for so many to live by,Guru Grant.

mihir.sharma@expressindia.com