Good morning. I am conscious of something rather problematic.

And it is, and this is absolutely not a criticism of you, not in a million years.

Well, I'm never going to criticize you first thing on a Monday morning.

Give me until at least 11 o'clock.

But it occurs to me that you pay a little bit less attention.

Well, you possibly pay a little bit less attention, well, you possibly pay a little bit less attention

to this program than I do. Some people pay more attention to this program than I do, which is

slightly worrying, but also strangely flattering. When I say you might pay less attention to this

program than I do, it may mean that some of my toto the dog moments

when I like to pull back the curtain and show you the increasingly bewildered old man pulling

buttons and pushing levers. You may not have the first idea what I'm talking about. But I'm

going to press on regardless. So there was a

story last week and it inspired a slightly surreal hour of radio if you missed it. It might be

worth listening back to actually. There was a story last week which I think has forged a lens

through which I am going to look at almost everything for the foreseeable future

for the next few months. You know that I sometimes sit here and say to you, I do not understand

what all the fuss is about, don't you? Or I sometimes sit here and say to you, listen, don't

pay any attention to what I'm saying? Because when I was a newspaper journalist, my ability to miss a story, even when it was sitting on my own lap, was legendary. I remember

countless were the times. I opened a rival newspaper to see a story that I knew about on

on page three, which is where the big showbiz story used to go. And I turned to my colleague,

and I'd say, oh, I knew about that.

And he would look at me with a sort of slightly winning combination of bewilderment and fatigue. I said, I knew about that. I was at that party. I saw that. Oh, okay. Yeah, missed it again. Did you? Yes, I did. I was his boss, poor bloke. Goodness knows how we cope with that indignity.

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