Day of judgement

Press, 24 September 1980, Page 18

Day of judgement

From KEN COATES, in London New Zealand may still not have a steely-eyed, persistent interviewer of politicians such as Robin Day. but even in Britain there was a time when such questioning on television was regarded as not quite cricket. That was 25 years ago, and Day, who spent a year practising as a barrister before joining Independent Television, has been celebrating a quarter of a century on the small screen.

When Day, still going strong, first began his political interviews, criticism was loud and long. In 1958, for example, there was a “Tell the People” meeting between Robin Day and the then Prime Minister, Mr Harold Macmillan. Never before had a prime minister taken part in such an event, says Brian Walden, an M.P. turned television presenter.

For reasons which were then crucial, but are now unimportant. Day chose to ask the Prime Minister what he thought of Con* servative criticisms of Selwyn Lloyd as Foreign Secretary.

Macmillan replied that Selwyn Lloyd was not going to be replaced, because he was very good, and anyway "sacking people was disloyal. “By the standards of 1980,” says Mr Walden, “this was very tame stuff, but at the time was sensational.

“A jumped-up nobody, a mere TV hack, had dared to question the Prime Minister about the composition of his Cabinet. “Was this constitutional? Should not such questions be passed over the interviewing

table in a plain envelope, bearing the signatirres of at least a dozen Privy Councillors? Was it not a violation of the statutes which had established commercial television? Could the House of Commons survive such an affront to its authority? Walden recalls that Cassandra (Bill Connor), of the “Daily Mirror,” wrote at the time that Robin Day, by his skill as an examiner, had ' been responsible for prolonging in office a man who probably did not want the job, and was demonstrably incapable of doing it. The idiot’s lantern -was getting too bi? for its ugly gleam. “What appalling twaddle,” Walden comments today, “not forgetting to note the defensive whine about the ‘ugly gleam.’ “It took print journalists a generation to grow up and realise that television was their best friend.”

What about complaints against Day — “the prosecuting counsel stuff, the badgering of helpless politicians, the flash of what Frankie Howerd called ‘them cruel glasses’?” Day had made some short and wholly convincing answers: the politician appears by his own choice: he is not subpoenaed.

There is no judge, and the witness has not sworn to tell the truth. There is a limited amount of time, and a television interviewer cannot repeat questions as a real prosecutor would.

Recently Day has gone back to radio as the presenter of “World at One.”

The public continues to love him, says Walden. The volume and content of the stack of letters received after his recent interview by Bernard Levin prove he is a national institution.