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I attended Keele University from 1990-1993, loved my time there and learned recently that Radio 4 were due to host their long-running panel discussion show, Any Questions, from the Westminister Hall on Friday 10th May.
At first, I didn’t realise you had to apply for tickets and when I did, it was too late as they’d already allocated them in full, but stated they would let me know if one became available. And the day before transmission, one came free.
For those who haven’t listened to the show before, it’s basically the radio equivalent of Question time, even though Any Questions came first, as QT started life in 1979, while AQ began in 1948, principally as a short-lived six-week run when another show fell through at the last minute and the idea came about to throw a panel of politicians together and ask them any questions to which the audience wanted to know the answers.
For this particular show, the guests were Christine Hamilton, a self-proclaimed Great British Battleaxe who, as Jonathan Dimbleby confirmed on her Twitter page, classifies herself as “Faintly bonkers, but friendly.”
Then there was Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a newspaper columnist who could start an argument in an empty room but who is entertaining with it. It’s a shame that the medium of radio couldn’t get across the moments when she actively despaired of the viewpoints being expressed by Christine Hamilton, and reacted by sitting back and shaking her head. It was hilarious!
In addition was Shadow Education Secretary Stephen Twigg, the Labour MP who clearly dyes his hair like there’s no tomorrow, and Transport Secretary Patrick McLaughlin who, as a former miner, is one of the few MPs to have been a manual worker before entering Parliament and, as such, made a lot more sense than Twigg.
Picture: (C) BBC.
The topics ranged from immigration to HS2, given how wherever it goes, it won’t be benefitting North Staffordshire one iota. McLaughlin’s best topic was, obviously transport, while Yasmin had a lot to say about immigration, given how she came to live in the UK from Uganda in 1972. That said, Yasmin had a lot to say about everything as did Christine, and the two were at loggerheads on many occasions including when Christine tripped over her words and appeared to say that 40% of all 50,000 immigrants, over a particular period, had been arrested for one crime or another.
The programme goes out live and once it came to the end at approximately 8.50pm, Dimbleby Jr said there was still time for one more question, even though it wouldn’t go out on air. This was about Sir Alex Ferguson retiring from Manchester United. First up to answer was Yasmin, who declared zero interest in football. I can’t remember what the others said on this topic, however. In fact, I can’t remember a lot of the answers to the questions which were posed as so much was said, but the whole show is available on the BBC iPlayer for one year.
I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to have any pictures taken with the panel afterwards, but this wasn’t offered and so I assumed wasn’t possible. I tweeted later how much I enjoyed the show and wish I could’ve had a picture taken with Christine and Yasmin. Only the former is on Twitter, so I included her in the tweet and she replied the next morning, saying that I only had to ask. Ah well, hopefully some other time.
Note that I didn’t ask a question myself as I couldn’t think of one relating to what had been in the news during the previous week, but I’ll definitely try to think of one next time I attend.
Once the show finished, I went to join two friends, who are doing a PGCE teaching course this year at Keele, first having some drinks in a nearby pub, and then in the Union from midnight, getting very drunk on lager and Jagerbombs, and dancing like a prat until 3am like everyone else to music which was mostly from the mid-90s, after I’d finished at Keele previously, so it felt like time hadn’t moved on at all, and while the Union obviously had a different decor than it did when I was there, the feel of a Friday night was as enigmatic as it ever was in those heady days of the early 90s.
It was the first time I’d been back for a big night out in the Union, not since when I graduated in 1993, but since 1994, as I went back to visit some friends who graduated after myself. The intention to ‘get back to the Union’ had been there all throughout this academic year, but the first time I went up there this year was a Friday last September and… as bad luck would have it… my friend Dom (another one), who I stayed with, didn’t realise the students weren’t arriving until the following day. So the Union was closed. For the rest of that term, there were no mutual Fridays that were convenient, then the next term brought mostly snow every time we tried to arrange something – including one night that had to be abandoned because the snow couldn’t have got any worse.
Two weeks later, towards the end of January, we tried again. The weather looked slightly dodgy, but in the light of previous attempts I was determined to make it to Keele. The snow got even worse! And, on Keele Road, heading towards Keele Hill, I had to abandon my car outside a convenience store – which wasn’t very convenient! As things turned out, despite Dom setting out to pick me up, as he knew the back roads to his house better than I did, we still didn’t make it to the Union because… after all that… the night coincided with a Black Tie Ball with an ex-contestant from the X-Factor. Gah!
To be fair, however, Dom did make me aware of that before I went down, but I was just determined for a night out in Keele, even if we only made it to his local pub again. Or as Dom put it, he was “round the corner from his house in a bush”, well, The Bush 😉
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.