Occasionally us dead tree hacks have to admit that newspapers aren’t always the best medium for exposing the truth about a person.
Sometimes a simple radio interview nails it.
This morning Sir Philip Green made an appearance on the Today programme, and in a two minute interview revealed himself in all his (erm) glory to the Beeb’s Simon Jack.
For years, Sir Philip came over well enough in the press, because his excesses weren’t reported, he kept those who mattered in stories and he could decide what was off-the-record, and what was not.
You can’t go off the record on the radio.
Green keeps it together for most of the interview, but the listener can tell the fuse is going to blow.
Sure enough, under perfectly polite probing, Green decides it’s the media’s fault that the public no longer trust him. It is “because you lot make them all f******* jealous, that’s why – it’s quite basic. These people writing all this s*** couldn’t spell fifty quid.”
Ah, there he is. The bleeps on the radio are far more satisfying than my asterisks.
Perhaps flaks keep a list in their heads of clients for whom the first bit of advice is: don’t do live radio or TV. Ever.
