There is a dismal lack of basic journalism at the heart of this story. What happened to the idea of corroborating facts with more than one source? Claims such as those made by the boss of the helpline, Christine Pratt, are unproveable hearsay, while the dubious state of the NBH’s finances, connections to a human resources consultancy business and links to David Cameron and Ann Widdecombe – none of which was mentioned in the BBC’s story – take us into obviously dodgy territory with a possible political smear campaign at its centre. Various bloggers managed to pinpoint these basic problems – why not the BBC?

Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, attempts to justify the BBC’s approach on his blog:

We can’t, of course, verify the truth of her allegations – merely report them and Downing Street’s response to them.

Which may come as a surprise to those old-fashioned folks who believe journalism involves making sure something is true before reporting it. The logical approach would have been to ignore the batty Mrs Pratt on the basis that there is no way of proving whether or not what she is saying is truthful. A proper news story of the sort pedalled by the Sunday newspapers would involve speaking to a whistleblower before going public with this sort of claim. But there isn’t a whistleblower and the motivations of the charity are clearly suspect. Which maybe suggests the story isn’t true.

I’m generally not inclined to attack the BBC. But it should never have treated this story in the way it did. The fact that it has then filled the airwaves today with the sort of basic facts that should have informed its original story – but didn’t – just adds insult to injury.

Taylor was talking about Roy Keane, who grew a chinful of obscenely Santa-ish facial hair immediately before quitting as manager of Sunderland at the end of 2008. But it might be worth pondering his analysis in relation to poor Adrian Chiles (42), who looks more and more fed up by the day on BBC1’s The One Show. Nobody exactly knows what’s going on but he appears to have become moderately repulsed by co-host Christine Bleakley (30), who is said to be engaged in some kind of personal bedroom arrangement with pie-eating Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard (32). (The ages in brackets signify my pathetic nod towards celebrity journalism.)

As Marple Leaf summed up on Twitter last night:

That scruffy yam on #motd can’t mention Lampard. Just knicked his bird.

Meanwhile Robin Brown has meticulously compiled an entertaining list of descriptions of Chiles’ beard, including my own observation that it makes him look like

the violent alcoholic captain of a Victorian steamship.

I strongly advise you to go and look at it right now.

Enjoy.

Hat tip: Nigel Barlow on Twitter

I haven’t, of course. But helpfully the BBC has devoted a healthy chunk of its TV and radio schedules over the past couple of weeks to discussing the programme, interviewing Northern Moor residents and describing at length how they are really pissed off about it all.

The BBC’s coverage started on North West Tonight a fortnight ago. This must have caused considerable glee at ITV, which, I suspect, gave North West Tonight permission to broadcast clips because it correctly predicted the several minutes of free publicity that ensued. The BBC regional bulletins have subsequently followed it up with a new angle, focusing on BBC Radio Manchester’s backing for an alternative film made by Northern Moor residents. And tonight it’s been featured on The One Show, with yet more clips of local residents explaining that ITV sold them down the river, etc, etc.

Presumably the reason this is big news on the BBC is because the programme that has caused such irritation was screened by ITV. Can you imagine The One Show doing a segment about misrepresention of the working classes on television if the programme had been on BBC1?

The One Show’s editor had the sense to wait until the second of the two ITV programmes had been screened before buying into the controversy, thus avoiding the PR circus that has surely boosted ITV’s viewing figures. North West Tonight and BBC Radio Manchester didn’t. Their fixation with ITV’s output must have resulted in a couple of hundred thousand viewers checking the EPG to see when the ITV programme was on – and then tuning in to marinate in their own outrage.

I feel sorry for the people featured in this programme if they’ve been misled by some smooth-talking TV researchers and an even smoother-talking red head who used to be married to Prince Andrew. But really, hasn’t everyone had enough of this now?

• The last known “art gallery” closed in 1987
• The crime rate rose by 900% last year, driven by a shocking trade in aggravated pigeon theft
• Jack Duckworth reads the ITV regional news every night in a stupid northern voice, accompanied by a dancing ferret
• It rains 434 days of the year
• Going to the theatre essentially consists of a night at the bingo
• They eat KFC for breakfast. In a bowl. With milk and sugar on top
• Nobody watches the BBC

It begs the obvious question of what right anyone has to bleat about dodgy MPs’ expenses when they are paid almost £30,000 a year more for doing what is essentially a completely inconsequential job.

I (maybe) wouldn’t begrudge Paxman his pay packet – and I dare say he earns a lot more than this – thanks to his knack of holding the establishment to account with consistent brilliance. Ditto the top war reporters or in fact anyone who helps to illuminate otherwise darkened corners of public life.

But £92,000 for what is essentially a glorified daytime TV autocue reader? You must be having a laugh.

According to Fry, MPs doing things like claiming £2,000 of public money to have the moats of their manor houses cleaned (Douglas Hogg), or £35,000 for a “second home” in London that’s five minutes’ walk from the first, or £1,700 in a year on televisions and video recorders (Hazel Blears) is OK.

I’ve cheated expenses, you have.

he tells Michael Crick. Erm, actually Stephen, I haven’t. And most people I know haven’t either because in many cases they don’t have an expense account (let alone one running to thousands of pounds) and, unlike MPs, they know that if they get caught they’ll get fired.

He attacks journalists, claiming they are

a venal and disgusting crowd of people when it comes to expenses and allowances.

Well, perhaps twenty years ago that rather lame cliché might have rung true but in fact being a journalist these days often doesn’t entail many perks. (I recently had a claim for a £2.50 train ticket turned down because I forgot to staple the receipt to the form.) Even if we accept the argument that unscrupulous journalists are an evil bunch of expense account abusers, the crucial difference is that unless they work for the BBC, the money they are wasting doesn’t come from the public purse.

Stephen is a man with a wonderful vocabulary. But he also strikes me as someone who loves the sound of his own plummy voice. Thus he goes on:

Let’s not confuse what politicians get really wrong like wars, things where people die, with the rather tedious bourgeois obsession with whether or not they’ve charged for their wisteria. It’s not that important, it really isn’t… it’s a journalistic made-up frenzy.

He really does say this. Honestly, he does. So perhaps it’s worth reminding ourselves about the MPs who claimed for a £2,000 repair to his tennis court (Oliver Letwin) and £510 to stay in a hotel for one night (Michael Gove). Presumably Fry thinks none of this matters – and anyone who does is simply being “bourgeois”.

The argument that MPs’ expenses are irrelevant in the context of wars and other more serious stuff makes as much sense as saying we shouldn’t care if someone dumps an empty fridge and a dustbin full of raw sewage (or “poo and widdle”, in Fryspeak) on our front lawn because, hey, global warming is much more of a concern.

As part of the experience they sleep in capivity with the animals. According to the voiceover, a passing thunderstorm is adding to the realism.

It might work if it was a kids’ programme and, indeed, the daft script (at the end, the participants are “released” as “humans”) and the presence of the patronising Terry Nutkins creates the impression that it is. But, ludicrously, the human guinea pigs in tonight’s programme seem to be in their late twenties or possibly early thirties. One of them is called Johnno and says things like “I don’t like the rejection the penguins have given me”. He describes the creatures as “scruffy, small, waterproof chickens”. The programme is screened at 9pm.

BBC Three is aimed at 16-34 year olds. I fall comfortably within this age bracket, so why do I think My Life As An Animal is crap? Am I betraying my demographic? People performing animal squawks. Repeated excursions that do nothing except reveal that most captive animals act indifferently towards humans when they enter zoo enclosures. I haved one word: Why?

ITV’s timely attempt to tackle to hard-hitting subject, part of the Tonight strand, was on earlier and was called Is TV Too Rude? This hard-hitting and timely investigation exposed a brave “viewers’ jury” to a series of shocking TV and radio clips containing Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay and Jordan, each of whom vocalised a smorgasbord of popular expletives.

The jurors were made to hold up cheap cardboard signs with red crosses on them if they thought the programme in question shouldn’t have been broadcast. In some cases the clips were so rude that we – the viewers at home – weren’t actually allowed to watch them, while all were bleeped to the point of incomprehensibility. As you can probably imagine, it was deeply hard-hitting, not to mention spectacularly timely.

Predictably, the tie-wearing middle-aged bloke in the grey suit and neatly-combed hair thought virtually all television should be banned and that people who swear have got under-developed language skills (y’know, like monkeys). Whereas the slurry-voiced student with the lop-sided fringe and half-opened brown cardigan was more inclined towards the view that Fern and Phil should be permitted to clog ITV’s morning airwaves with loudly articulated swear-talk, so long as “freedom of speech” is maintained. (I exaggerate, natch.)

They also had some celebrity talking heads on, in order to tackle the hard-hitting issue. Jon “Gaunty” Gaunt (Sun columnist and former TalkSport presenter who was fired in November for calling a local councillor a “Nazi” and an “ignorant pig” live on air) represented the side of the right wing reactionary gobshite fat-heads, while Janet “Street” Porter mouthed off in favour of the greasy-faced sandal-wearing Hampstead-dwelling media village liberal elite who wouldn’t understand the normal, hard-working, family values-loving “British Public” if it phoned them up and boasted about fucking their grand-daughter.

And so half an hour of my life was wasted, reducing my use of the adjectives “timely” and “hard-hitting” to the level of pure sarcasm. Unluckily, Panorama’s no doubt timely and hard-hitting investigation into the issue, fronted by Frank Skinner and subtitled Have I Got Bad Language For You?, screens on Monday night. I’ve got my cheap cardboard sign with a red cross on it at the ready. The c**ts.

Twitter, in particular, has been held up as an innovator, thanks to its Election 2008 page. At about 12.45am it was being updated at a rate of more than a tweet a second. Unfortunately, the majority of tweets came from Americans who were simply watching the TV news and typing out what they saw. I was watching the TV at the same time as surfing the web, so it was kind of pointless.

The most entertaining thing about Twitter was the level of ignorance it revealed about the US electoral system. Bearing in mind only a couple of states had been called at this point, there were loads of tweets from people despairing that McCain was up by 21 college votes to 3 over Obama – like it was a basketball game or something.

In the end I gave up on the web and gave my full attention to the telly, where the BBC’s captioning department seemed to be under the misapprehension that the big place in the middle of Midtown Manhattan is called Time Square (they later corrected it). At just after 1am, Pennsylvania went to Obama, at which point it was becoming rapidly obvious he was going to win. The advantage of TV over the web then became clear: as a passive medium, I was able to listen to it while dozing off.

I inexplicably woke up at 4.20am and saw John McCain conceding defeat. This felt slightly surreal, as most events do at that time of day. I thought McCain’s speech was incredibly generous (David Dimbleby possibly called it “handsome”, although I could have dreamt that). Shame the Republican thickos started booing when McCain said he had congratulated Obama on his victory and then booed again when he mentioned his “old friend” Joe Biden.

While Obama’s election as president is exciting, the pessimist in me can’t help but wonder when it’s all going to go wrong. I remember a similar feeling of optimism when Tony Blair got elected in 1997, which dissipated quickly as soon as everyone realised he was just Maggie Thatcher in a purple tie. Just as long as Obama doesn’t start driving round in a golf buggy (see below), addressing the British Prime Minister with the phrase “Yo Brown” or squeezing Angela Merkel, the world should be safe.