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Why I Love...This Week

Michael Portillo, Andrew Neil and Diane Abbott
  • Posted at 5:16am
  • 15 March 2007
  • by DavidBrown-RT
  • 6 comments

Host Andrew Neil sits slumped in his chair with the collar of his shirt riding high enough to brush his earlobes.

Pundit Michael Portillo's eyes have narrowed to the size of staples, as though he's been peering through cigarette smoke for five hours, while sparring partner Diane Abbott looks set to fall off the sofa in gales of laughter at one of Neil's mugs to camera. Even guests wait in the wings with champagne flutes in hand.

Tucked away in the schedules, This Week gets away with being off-message and gossipy to the point of borderline slander, yet remains the most incisive political review on the box and full of "you-heard-it-here-first" scoops.

For instance, last December, Neil let slip that he'd heard from a well-placed source that Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy was to resign by the party's spring conference. Nonsense, harrumphed MPs, who demanded that the programme-makers apologise. Yet, sure enough, by January 2006, Kennedy was gone.

It can also be the scene of some bad-tempered scraps that make you wonder whether the protagonists realise their microphones are on. Tony Parsons's sub-sixth form rant about the 90-day detention plans earned such a rebuke from Clare Short that she looked close to strangling him with her pashmina.

But, despite the squabbling, it's the will-they-won't-they relationship of Portillo and Abbott that draws us back. Well, it does me. Touchy-feely doesn't do it justice - these two are the Maddie and David of late-night current-affairs programming. I'm sure the producers have made that sofa smaller over the years, so Diane can lay her hand on the sleeves of Michael's pastel-coloured shirts more easily. "You made a wonderful point last Thursday," he cooed to her recently. "I've been telling everyone how marvellous you've been all week."

It's eccentric to the point of existing in some parallel universe in which the pair go off hand in hand. And if you compare This Week with its rivals, there's no competition.

Sure, Question Time has its quirks, but they're more by accident than design. Usually they involve host David Dimbleby getting the website address wrong ("that's double-you dot BBC dot dah-de-dah-de-dah"), mispronouncing the name of a politician ("Robin Cock" being a memorable malapropism), or a retired buffer in the audience making a seemingly sage point about the economy - cue empathetic nods from panellists - only to then segue into a rant about how asylum seekers should be herded into an internment camp or shot.

More often than not, QT is an hour of party apparatchiks towing the party line while Janet Street-Porter or Piers Morgan tut away disapprovingly and Dimbleby casts imperious looks at all over his half-moon specs.

It lacks the bombast of Andrew Neil's questioning, Diane Abbott's ferocious frowning looks to guests, and the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach you get when you find yourself agreeing with Michael Portillo. Mind you, that's probably not a realisation you want to go to bed on.

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Comments

  • Posted on 22 October 2009
  • at 10:34pm
  • by alex

barry, as far as I know Diane Abbott does not work for the government, she's a backbencher.

  • Posted on 15 June 2009
  • at 11:54am
  • by barry

Diane Abbott,MP. has been on this prog for years, working for both govt. and BBC! So why the fuss about Sir Alan Sugar doing both?

  • Posted on 21 May 2009
  • at 6:22pm
  • by HelenHackworthy-RT

Hi, George,

You'll be pleased to know that This Week is on earlier tonight at 10:40pm, as Question Time has moved to 9:00pm:

See this evening's BBC1 listings

Thanks,

Helen

  • Posted on 21 May 2009
  • at 6:16pm
  • by George

This Week is the highlight of my week, and I hope the BBC continues to broadcast it. It mixes political scoops and gossip, informed opinion and insider knowledge, with skill and humour. The interpersonal chemistry between Abbott, Portillo, and Neil produces entertainment and stimulation. The problem for me is that because it's on so late, I retire to bed energised and wide-awake. Maybe I'll have to record it and watch it over the weekend in place of the usual rubbish.

  • Posted on 19 June 2008
  • at 10:25pm
  • by FÃx

This Week is THE best political show on television - and with it being broadcast at a random time I feel like it's just me, Diane, Michael and Andrew having a good laugh and a friendly debate. Brilliant, a true BBC masterpiece, I look forward to it every week but why oh why is it so easily cut from the schedules? Come on BBC, value your best shows!

  • Posted on 07 February 2008
  • at 5:55pm
  • by ShayS

I love This Week. Michael Portillo's self-satisfied pomposity fits in perfectly with Diane Abbot's soothing demeanor and easy humour- with her fluttering hands and his wandering right arm its quite clear to me that they're probably enjoying more than chats about the annual budget in their shared dressing room before the show... But it's Andrew Neil's offhand wit and his frequent digs at the other two (mostly at Diane) that is definitely the icing on the cake - its a really, really great and slightly irreverant programme, thank you BBC.

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