This evening I went down to Billingshurst to sit in the audience for Radio 4’s Any Questions.  This means that I have now seen two different Dimblebys in the flesh this year.  It also means that I have now heard a complete Radio 4 programme – even if I didn’t actually hear it on the radio.I think I may have been the odd one out though.  Everybody else there could tell you what their favourite R4 show was, what they didn’t like, and could name several presenters.   It seems to be unfashionable these days, but for me radio is for music.  If I want news I go to a website and if I want to hear people talking I listen to a podcast.  When I put the radio on it is Planet Rock indoors and Radio One in the car.

Anyway, it was interesting to compare the experience with Question Time on the TV.   The biggest difference is that there is not a lot of direct involvement from the audience on the radio show: they ask a question to kick off discussions and may give a comment on the answers at the end, but that is it.  One reason for this is that there are no boom operators – all the questioners are moved to the front row, so there is no way for anyone else to chip in.

Personally I think this is a good thing.  It makes the whole thing a bit more civilised, but perhaps it is the very absence of cameras that does that.  There is still a bit of playing to the crowd involved but a lot less so than on Question Time.  Although the radio show is a bit shorter it covers topics in at least as much depth as the TV version – although that is not hard and still leaves plenty of room to be superficial.

I guess that is unavoidable though.  They are trying to get through at least six questions in 50 minutes.  With four panellists that allows them an average of two minutes each per topic – and that is not allowing for any ‘housekeeping’, the actual asking of the questions, pauses for applause and contributions from the chair.

On the panel were Shaun Woodward, Polly Toynbee, Jenny Tonge and Caroline Spellman.  I wasn’t best pleased to see Labour represented by Woodward.  He did say all the right things, but it is still hard to trust somebody who has swapped sides the way he did.  Mind you, that was balanced out by seeing the Tories represented by such a lightweight.  I think I managed to stifle the laughs when she was going on about how women have all the involvement in public services because they are the ones going into schools, taking the kids to the doctors and so on.  I know it is true, but coming from somebody who employs a nanny to do all that has a degree of irony to it.

Anyway, it was good to sit back and enjoy some political activity that didn’t involve pounding the streets in boiling sunshine after the last few weeks.  I was also able to meet up with some colleagues from Horsham Labour who had been at the count, although we didn’t dwell on the results, so much so that I still don’t know anything about them except the obvious fact that we did as badly as expected.

Again, my question was not selected, unsurprisingly.  I wanted to ask whether more MPs should follow the example of Ian Gibson – although I wrote it down as Ian Gilmour so I doubt anyone would have known what I meant.  All these slimy, money-grabbing MPs are starting to merge into one now so it is easy to get confused.