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Wholly bizarre performance from Peston on BBC news yesterday, forecasting recession, depression, total banking collapse and any flavour of econo-geddon you care to mention.
Of course when his panic-mongering propagated the run on Northern Rock a couple of years ago, he suddenly became a star. Missing the limelight as it’s all gone a bit quiet for him since, he clearly wants to be seen breathlessly charging around the City with his harbinger-of-doom ‘exclusives’ just like the good ole’ days.
The BBC news should be for his reporting of the facts, not his left-field opinions which could cause tremendous damage again as economies are generally built on confidence.
Perhaps I wouldn’t be so annoyed if he didn’t seem to be enjoying it all so much.
Mike
The BBC news should be for his reporting of the facts, not his left-field opinions…
Totally agree Betlarge, but then this is the BBC.
Moreover, Peston – whilst presumably no dummy when it comes to economics – isn’t a natural in front of camera. He can hardly get a sentence out without painful pauses and a smattering of erms…ers and ums etc. He seems as though he’s fighting back the urge to stutter.The man is suffering from what a union official recently accused the "Coalition" of. Namely "Recession Fetishism", which sums it up completely.
It’s a long way from LA to Denver, it’s a long way to hang in the sky" J Denver (Prophetic)
Enjoy Pesto’s blog which always makes entertaining reading. Find him irritating on broadcasts for the reasons others mention above.
Do tend to agree with his general stance though. The Govts actions (both Gordies and Cambo’s) to me have been rather like the little dutch boy with his fingers in the dyke. Trying to hold back the inevitable.
People in this country have maxed out on debt; be it in the form of overpriced mortgages or credit cards. People also have no idea how to do ‘without’ in the way that our parents and grandparents did. Govt has responded with a policy of low base rates that is designed to (a) maintain the housing market at artificially high levels and (b) enable banks to rebuild their balance sheets whilst (c) screwing savers and the otherwise prudent and (d) ignoring incipient inflation.
The likely outcome appears to be stagflation.
Grey Dolphin, agree with your analysis. You’ve analysed the situation in about one-tenth of the words Peston would need. You should get his job at the BBC (but you must first prove you’re PC and left-leaning).
Perhaps I wouldn’t be so annoyed if he didn’t seem to be
enjoying
it all so much.
Mike
Too many of them seem to be enjoying it immensely.
The worst are those Labour voters that appear to have been asleep for thirteen years, have awoken as if we went straight from Thatcher to now & have set about protesting against the Government over the things their party had been doing for over a decade.
Mark Simpson of BBC Northern Ireland is another plank.
Reported live for BBC News the Irish Bail-Out announcement outside Leinster House wearing the loudest orange tie you’re ever likely to see.
When they cut back to the studio after his crowing and triumphant "The Republic of Ireland is "******" pronouncements, amazingly, the anchor in the studio, I think it was Clive Myrie or George Aligayah, was sporting the same incredibly loud orange tie!
I don’t think before or since I’ve seen a BBC news presenter sport an orange tie!
Anyone who can’t stand Robert Peston, as I can’t, will enjoy reading this article by Andrew Pierce in the Daily Mail recently.
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He may sound like a Dalek doing a bad impression of Kenneth Williams, but why DO so many BBC stars want to exterminate Pesto?
By Andrew PierceWhen Huw Edwards, the presenter of the BBC flagship Six O’Clock News, wants a studio interviewee or specialist correspondent to stop talking because of a shortage of time, he gives them what is known in the broadcasting trade as the ‘evil eye’.
With one swift arch of his eyebrow, his guests (warned of this ruse in advance), know they have to wind up their remarks immediately.
The trick always works — with one notable exception: Robert Peston, the BBC’s Business Editor, whose verbose and irritatingly sing-song delivery leads to TV viewers and radio listeners in their thousands reaching for the off-switch.
Robert Peston, BBC Business Editor, has become a figure of caricature for comedians. Peston is so wrapped up in his own self- perceived eloquence that he ignores the signal and carries blithely on . . . and on.
As a result, when Peston is in full flow, Edwards no longer bothers with the ‘evil eye’ technique. ‘Instead, he pulls a face that makes him look clinically insane so that Peston gets the message to shut up,’ says one BBC colleague.
However, even then Peston doesn’t take the hint. For example, on one occasion earlier this year, an exasperated Edwards snapped on air at the prolix Peston: ‘Get a move on!’
This was just one of many on-air spats between Peston and colleagues who despair at his high-handed manner, his bizarre, tortured diction and the preponderance of the words ‘um’ and ‘err’ in his delivery.
This week, a simmering feud between 51-year-old Peston (who joined the BBC five years ago after two decades as a print journalist), and Eddie Mair, 46, the presenter of Radio 4’s PM programme, flared up again.
They were discussing comments by Bank of England Governor Sir Mervyn King when Mair, a broadcaster for more than 20 years, said at the end of the conversation — in a voice heavily laced with irony: ‘It was lovely to see you.’
Peston tartly replied: ‘Well, it’s lovely to be back. Why did you cast me out into the wilderness again? I thought we had the rapprochement.’
Mair snapped back: ‘Well, anyway, we have to press on. Thank you.’
Listeners must have been bemused by such hostility. But the enmity dates back to a more extraordinary exchange in January when Peston (described, even by his admirers, as having an ‘ego bigger than Madonna’s’) took umbrage when Mair appeared to ignore his role in breaking a story about how the Government had retreated yet again on its pledge to curb bankers’ bonuses.
Mair read out a newspaper report on the subject and asked for Peston’s opinion. The response staggered even those used to the intense rivalry between many of the BBC’s big names.
Radio presenter Eddie Mair’s feud with Pesto started when Mair appeared to ignore his role in breaking a story about how the Government had retreated yet again on its pledge to curb bankers’ bonuses
Peston replied: ‘I should point out I did disclose last Thursday that the Government had chucked in the towel on trying to restrict bonuses. But clearly PM takes the view that if it’s in the newspapers, it must be true. Erm.’
The waspish Mair retorted: ‘Oh Robert, I’ve let you down. I feel bad. I’d like to apologise.’ Then, in a swipe at Peston’s relative lack of broadcast experience, he added: ‘I won’t mention the fact you just turned your mobile phone off after it rang.’
Exterminate! BBC man Robert Peston has been described as sounding like a Dalek crossed with Kenneth Williams
Peston had broken the golden rule: Phones have to be switched off before entering the studio.
To the dismay of BBC bosses, Peston didn’t let matters rest. After the broadcast, he Tweeted: ‘My feud with Eddie Mair escalates. Have just been accused by PM editor, in front of Cabinet minister, of being prog’s ‘‘nemesis’’. Too right.’
Mair, who in fairness also has a big ego, had tired of Peston’s preening on-air monologues, which are regularly peppered with the phrase: ‘As I exclusively revealed.’
One veteran BBC hack said: ‘When you’re a young, thrusting reporter, you want to label all your stories “exclusive”. I’m afraid Robert has never grown out of it.’
Increasingly, his cheesed-off colleagues have, like Mair, taken to slapping him down on air.
This week, Radio 4’s Today presenter Jim Naughtie took the mickey. After a sports reporter joked that the draw for the Euro 2012 football tournament could mean Greece, Ireland, Italy and Spain might be in the same group — ‘the group of debt’ — Naughtie interjected. ‘So we can see if we can get Robert Peston in to join us for the commentary on that group. That would last two-and-a-half-hours,’ he said.
Earlier this year, Peston appeared on BBC1’s Ten O’Clock News, boasting (again) that he had a big announcement to make.
‘The latest extraordinary twist is that I’ve learnt . . .’ he began before announcing that News International had passed evidence to police that Andy Coulson — who had recently resigned as David Cameron’s head of communications — had allegedly authorised payments to police officers while editor of The News of the World.
Nick Robinson, the respected BBC Political Editor who was also appearing on the bulletin, interrupted to point out — rather disloyally — that the magazine Vanity Fair had broken the story, not Peston.
There is history between this pair of BBC titans, too. When Robinson trumpeted on Today that Chancellor George Osborne planned to increase the levy on banks’ profits sooner than expected, Peston came on to sniffily say: ‘No one would argue this is a major tax change.’
It’s this tendency of Peston to talk up his own stories and talk down those of his colleagues that has made him so unpopular.
‘Arrogant, smug and self-satisfied,’ said one senior BBC figure.
There has been suspicion that Peston was fed stories by Treasury friends such as Ed Balls, who was right-hand man to Prime Minister Gordon Brown
‘Broadcasting is a team effort. We can’t do it without the cameraman, the lighting guy and picture editor. Robert, though, doesn’t get that.’
Peston, Business Editor since 2006, was political and financial editor of the Financial Times before this.
Nicknamed ‘Pesto’ — a pun on the word for the green pasta ‘sauce’ because of his constant use of unattributed ‘sources’ — he studied politics, philosophy and economics at Balliol College, Oxford.
An unashamed Leftie, Labour politics are in his blood. He’s the son of Lord Peston, a respected economist, who was a frontbench spokesman under Neil Kinnock. His closest friends include Tom Baldwin, press secretary to Labour leader Ed Miliband, and Roland Rudd, a PR with high-profile City clients, who is said to give Peston many of his stories.
An indicator of Peston’s self-regard is the fact that his Who’s Who entry is almost twice the length of his father’s, who held a string of senior political positions including economic adviser to the Treasury.
Robert Peston, seen here with his book, Brown’s Britain, has been described as ‘arrogant, smug and self-satisfied’
When Peston arrived at the BBC, long-suffering Huw Edwards was asked to try to correct his weird speech patterns — fast one moment, painfully slow the next, with vowels strangely accentuated. Sadly, his efforts were to little avail.
After two years in the job, questions were being asked over how much more time the BBC was willing to give Peston to raise his game. Many colleagues, who had spent whole careers in broadcasting, were surprised he had been given such a plum post with no experience in front of the camera or microphone.
Regardless, Peston has friends in high places, including Anthony Saltz, a leading solicitor who stood in as acting chairman of the BBC, and Jeremy Peat, a BBC governor who became a member of the BBC Trust, the Corporation’s governing body.
It was the international banking collapse in the autumn of 2008 — coinciding with Economics Editor Stephanie Flanders going on maternity leave — which put Pesto’s star in the ascendancy, making endless, round-the-clock appearances on TV and radio.
He had a string of scoops and was described by his enemies in the City as ‘the man who caused the credit crisis’ after breaking the story about Northern Rock’s collapse — which triggered extraordinary scenes as the bank’s customers panicked and rushed to withdraw their savings.
The suspicion among his jealous rivals was that he was being fed stories by Treasury friends such as Ed Balls, who was right-hand man to Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
‘The scoops transformed his standing at the BBC. Even though he put a positive Treasury spin on them, you can’t deny he was setting the agenda,’ said one colleague.
Peston won several awards and, in the words of one senior manager:
‘His success turned his head completely — he started behaving as if he was a rock star!’
BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson is one of many who have shot Peston down on air
Such was his self-confidence he applied for the vacant role of controller of Radio 4. One colleague says: ‘He genuinely thought he was a serious contender. But he’s never even commissioned a radio programme, so you can imagine what the likes of Eddie Mair thought about his application to become controller.
‘Peston made himself a laughing stock. What’s even more ridiculous is we were told that his long-term plan is to become director-general of the entire corporation!’
While Peston’s reputation soared after the banking collapse, he infuriated colleagues when he muscled out fellow correspondents by dominating the BBC’s reporting of the News International phone-hacking scandal.
Labour MPs such as Tom Watson (who has exposed details of the News of the World’s criminal misbehaviour) accused Peston of running stories favourable to the Murdoch empire in order to distract viewers from all the damaging allegations that were being made about James Murdoch, the firm’s chief executive, with whom he had a good relationship.
Peston is particularly close to News International executive Will Lewis, who is in charge of the internal inquiry into phone hacking. The two men, who live in North London and were colleagues on the Financial Times, have been good friends for many years.
Peston was also a guest at a lavish party in July thrown by PR man Matthew Freud and his wife Elisabeth Murdoch, daughter of Rupert. Resplendent in a peach cotton scarf, he was huddled with Rebekah Brooks, News International’s then chief executive, Lewis and James Murdoch for most of the evening.
Peston vigorously denies the charge of bias in his reporting.
Whatever his detractors say, he has indubitably beefed up the BBC’s coverage of the business world — and has become a figure of caricature for comedians.
Impressionist Jon Culshaw regularly parodies Peston’s run-ins with Nick Robinson on his BBC1 programme The Impressions Show and the comedy writer Andy Hamilton said he’s ‘like a Dalek doing an impression of Kenneth Williams’.
The BBC man has also become a big hit in the blogosphere — but he may not like what some people say about him.
The sixth most popular search on the internet for him is: ‘Robert Peston annoying.’ The next most popular: ‘I hate Robert Peston.’
Eddie Mair and Jim Naughtie will probably agree with both.
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