Stephen Fry once defined the word "countryside" as "killing Piers Morgan". I'm with Fry on that one, so I didn't watch Morgan's recent interview with Gordon Brown. Lots of people did, though, and the interview is being credited with giving Labour a lift in the opinion polls.
Which is pretty amazing. Morgan confessed to Rod Liddle over the weekend that they taped over two and a half hours of material. Then for broadcast purposes they cut out all the political stuff, leaving only the scenes of the PM tearing up over the death of his daughter, and cutaways of Mrs Brown looking on sympathetically.
Now there's word that David Cameron wants the chance to show his human side to the public. His chosen interviewer is....Alan Titchmarsh. Since the Camerons also lost a young child to illness, the cynics in Smith Square are no doubt assuming that Cameron will be able to achieve a poll boost of his own, and maybe pick up a few tips on rose pruning along the way. No word yet from LibDem leader Nick Clegg; maybe he's trying to decide between an interview by that bloke off Antiques Roadshow, or a fangs-bared confrontation with Michael Parkinson.
Sadly, the election campaign is likely to bring more of this pap, since about two-thirds of voters seem to approve of politicians baring their souls in a carefully-controlled environment. Me, I want to see Brown getting eviscerated by Jeremy Paxman, Cameron mullered by John Humphrys and Clegg hectored by Jeremy Vine. But it looks as if policies may turn out to be the last thing this year's election is about.
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