Welcome to Plank of the Week. It's the first one of the year. It's Talk Radio TV.

Welcome to the first plank of the week of the year. It's 2022. And what better way to start it off

by getting two great panelists in for the first show. And it is, of course, Russell Quirk,

a man who knows a thing or two about plankery. An Esther Cracu, or is it Craiku?

I've now just learned that your name, I've been mispronouncing for the best part of the last 18 months. That's fine. Esther Crakew is here, and she's not going to be very nice about some people. So just beware. Be careful. Russell, why don't you kick us off? Shall I? With your first Blake in the year. Happy New Year to both. You're sorry.

Yes. My apologies. My first one, I'm afraid it's a bit of an old favourite, really, but I? With your first plank of the year. Happy New Year to both you, sorry. Yes, my apologies.

My first one, I'm afraid it's a bit of an old favourite, really,

but I couldn't help myself because it's very apt, which is Sadiq Khan. Yes. Now, you will be aware, I'm sure. It's amazing, isn't it, how oftentimes we've just finished plank of the year, not that long ago. He could be park of the year for this year.

He figured very high in the plaintiff.

Unsurprisingly.

And he didn't quite win it, because of course we know who did.

We'll come to that later.

Yeah. He could be part of the year for this year. He figured very high in the plate of the year. Unsurprisingly.

He didn't quite win it because, of course, we know who did. We'll come to that later. Yeah, yeah. So, look, he's a worthy winner. Some would argue he should be on it every week. But, of course, in the run-up to Christmas and New Year, and what would normally be fireworks celebrations for London, as we've been used to, First of all, Sadiq Khan decided to cancel them,

much to the disdain of the media and basically every Londoner, on the basis of Omicron, even though fireworks the last time I looked were an outside thing. But did you not cancel it way before Omicron? He cancelled it before anybody but he knew anything about Omicron. It was October, so maybe he knew something we didn't. Anyway, so cancelled them.

And then lo and behold, on New Year's Eve itself, there's an announcement by him, by the mayoral office, that they are on after all. So you think, oh, okay, fine. At least they're on, you know, kind of begrudgingly. But then the next statement that comes out of City Hall is they're on, but you can't watch them live.

You're not allowed to come back.

You're banned.

But they did last year.

You watched it on TV.

That's what he said. Yeah. But they did the same thing last year because except this year they did actually say they were on before Christmas Eve. They admitted that. They kind of were very vague about what they were going to be like. And what they did the previous year was they just said, there aren't any fireworks, right? So nobody was allowed out.

They had police, I think, monitoring the riverbank to make sure nobody was kind of, you know, hanging around there. And I remember watching, you know, whatever it was, Jules Holland or something, you know, slipping off into the night, waking up the next morning going, hang on, there was a firework display because they did have one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they didn't suddenly want.

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