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Robert Peston on the world economy

Robert Peston
  • Posted at 11:50am
  • 09 October 2008
  • by AlisonGraham-RT
  • 4 comments

It won't be long before BBC business editor Robert Peston's appearances on the ten o'clock news are heralded by muffled bells as Huw Edwards reads WH Auden's Stop All the Clocks in his most sonorous voice.

Peston has become a cult figure, the black-bordered, credit-crunch pin-up, with his own blog and hefty profiles in posh newspapers. His worried little face should be featured in a special-edition print of Edvard Munch's The Scream, that icon of silent despair - now there's a tea-towel design I'd love to own.

Peston is terrifying because he's so closely identified with a single story, the collapse of the world economy. When Edwards turns to Peston for his nightly update, we know it's not going to be good, and that Peston isn't going to buy us all ice creams and take us to see High School Musical 3.

Oh, no. When Peston is finished, we are left in no doubt that shortly the contents of what we previously thought were quite healthy bank accounts won't be enough to cover the cost of the Jammie Dodgers at a pixies' tea party. In fact, whenever he appears, I feel like Tippi Hedren in that scene from The Birds, where she's sitting quietly outside the school, unaware that the killer crows are gathering on the climbing frame behind her.

During one recent ten o'clock news, Peston claimed some latest development would "impoverish us all". Really, those were his closing words. I can't have been the only person in the country to have sat bolt upright and yelled, "What did he say? What the hell did he mean by that?" before they started running around the living room like Chicken Licken, insisting "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"

I'd feel a bit sorry for Peston, if only I thought he wasn't enjoying himself so thoroughly. And why not - it's a brilliant, running, ever-changing story, a journalist's dream. And I slightly love the fact that Peston never attempts to dress anything up with the verbal equivalent of doilies - he always looks so bloody miserable because the news is bad, bad, bad.

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Comments

  • Posted on 23 October 2008
  • at 5:35pm
  • by mumu

I'm concerned. Will these plunges in the market effect my parent's pension plans? They retired 10 years ago and I wonder about the economy and they'll get less money per month because of this.

  • Posted on 13 October 2008
  • at 5:32pm
  • by Thalia

No, manmademound, he hasn't. He merely gathers the worst of what's currently happening, and delivers this summary as if he has somehow comprhended the whole sorry mess in some deeper way than us poor saps. Yet were he to try a less theatrical approach maybe he, too would be out of a job. It is television, after all. If you do insist on garnering your knowledge from such a medium, all you will get is someone with part of their brain connected to - yes, you've guessed it - television. And I would prefer to communicate with a brain freed from such inanity.

  • Posted on 13 October 2008
  • at 2:07pm
  • by Ionaclio

I watched Psycho one dreary day a couple of weeks ago and all I can say is that you never see Anthony Perkins and Robert Peston in the same room.....

  • Posted on 12 October 2008
  • at 8:12am
  • by manmademound

Robert Peston has found new ways of communicating issues around The Crunch

http://manmademound.blogspot.com/2008/10/pestons-picks-robert- peston-or-robert.html

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