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Errr, not quite

Perhaps it was because I was unfamiliar with the format, but the first five minutes of Piers Morgan On Top of Gordon Brown (or whatever it was called) left me open mouthed. Not only was the host succeeding in converting an ice-breaker exercise into an interview, but the Prime Minister was both responding and relaxing. Imagining that this would then lead on to a series of harder questions as the programme progressed, the softening tactic seemed to be a master stroke. How wrong can one person be? What followed was a series of soft balls so evidently gifted that Morgan might as well have put a bow on each one.

Having said that, Gordon Brown performed well. He came across as sincere, rounded and – the greatest challenge of all – personable. Last night will undoubtedly have changed the way that many people think about and respond to the Prime Minister. It was a positive exercise for a man whose public performances have so often appeared staid or contrived. It will probably have done more to change popular perception of a political figure since we found out John Prescott enjoyed a bit of croquet.

But that does not mean it made good political television. The interviewer (and I use the term lightly) ensured the direction of the programme was firmly on the personal and not the political. To an extent I can accept that, because that was the type of show it was. But there were still points that made me feel nauseous. For example, the complete absence of questioning on foreign policy, Iraq and Afghanistan in particular, was clearly deliberate. There was no reason at all that in “human” broadcasting that a discussion on these huge issues, however soft it might have been, would not have worked in the programme.

Similarly, the discussion of the Blair-Brown relationship needed much, much deeper probing. Gordon (as he clearly prefers to be known) was prepared to admit there had been a deal with Tony (let’s adopt Blair Cabinet nomenclature) but that it hadn’t happened at the Granita restaurant. Surely the next question should have been when and where did it happen then? But, oh no, it was time to move on. And don’t get me started on the caption ‘Tony Blair, Former Prime Minister’.

Frost-Nixon this was clearly not, but a lot of the frost will have been taken out of the public persona of a man that, for once, came across as three dimensional. But those who prefer their politics served up without an overpowering measure of the personal lives of politicians will not have enjoyed it.

Spoilt for choice, though, Welsh political watchers were also treated to Carwyn Jones with Andrew Marr yesterday morning. At bleeding last, a face to face interview with Wales’s leader and the man who could, in three months time, be the most senior elected Labour politician in Britain. And he did well. To me, the high point was the clever analogy about getting more powers for the Assembly.

“Well, I could talk about the constitutional situation in Wales, but can I explain it in this way? You hire three workers. With two of them, you give them a full set of tools. Call them Scotland and Northern Ireland. The other worker, you give that person an empty box and you say, ‘Each time you need a new tool, come to me, explain why you want that tool and then I’ll decide whether I’ll give you that tool.’ That’s Wales. What we want is a full set of tools in the same way as Scotland and Northern Ireland, so we can do the job properly.”

Carwyn’s was a confident, articulate and engaging performance, and he evidently enjoyed it too. The only downside was that it seemed to last less time than the weather report. But we can’t have it all, can we?