Watchification » portillo http://watchification.com Sun, 31 May 2009 21:50:27 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 This Week http://watchification.com/2008/03/08/this-week/ http://watchification.com/2008/03/08/this-week/#comments Sat, 08 Mar 2008 10:47:43 +0000 jemstone http://watchification.com/2008/03/08/this-week/ Only mentioned because in some crazed tribute to Modern Review; the guest list for this weeks show is Jade Goody, Martin Amis and Simon Mayo. Goody, who does a fair stab at holding her own with Andrew Neil, is trying to convince us that binge drinking is very very bad. Amis, for some reason is an Obama fan boy and thinks he can save the planet. Simon Mayo has the John Sargeant irony slot reviewing the westminster week and he makes some jokes about Nick Clegg that aren’t as good as William Hagues.

Watch out for Diane Abbott, not entirely sure if she’s going to wave the Union Jack when in a Margaret Hodge dig, they play Land of Hope and Glory over the credits at the end.

]]> http://watchification.com/2008/03/08/this-week/feed/ 0 Portillo on Thatcher: The Lady’s Not for Spurning http://watchification.com/2008/02/26/portillo-on-thatcher-the-ladys-not-for-spurning/ http://watchification.com/2008/02/26/portillo-on-thatcher-the-ladys-not-for-spurning/#comments Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:55:11 +0000 jemstone http://watchification.com/2008/02/26/portillo-on-thatcher-the-ladys-not-for-spurning/ Or how we all learned to love Portillo. Gradually he’s become the Brian Walden of his day. Shining on the Moral Maze, on the underrated This Week and making documentaries on seemingly anything he fancies. He was also the best thing in last years celebrity trial drama-doc; The Verdict keeping Archer in check.

And finally he gets a 90 minutes thesis on what might have been. If only, as he reveals, he’d held his nerve when Major resigned in 1995 or if he’d not lost by one vote in 2001. (Was Duncan Smith really Thatcher’s fault?) then he would have had his stab at being Cameron, who he clearly admires. He gets the best out of a fantastic cast; Hague, Lamont, Clarke, and an incredibly uncomfortable Michael Howard who refreshingly reveals that perhaps he didn’t have it in him to slay Thatcher’s ghost. And David Mellor is spectacularly rude. To everyone.

Worth it just for the anecdote about a cheap scottish hotel, the home secretary and the bastards.

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