On the health front, I was called back for my regular ophthalmology check-up for glaucoma and macular degeneration.
Thankfully, I’ll only have to go back if things get any worse, touch wood. It’s more of a safety check, really.
My memory has been put through its paces this week, not least because of Remembrance. I’ve been a lifelong supporter of the Royal British Legion, which is hardly surprising given that I came from a military family spanning three generations.
Alastair Stewart: 'Even with Dementia, an ocean of happy and powerful memories flooded back'
|GB News
For years, I hosted their annual Christmas Carol Service in London’s Guildhall, and one year I was invited to perform at Westminster Abbey, reading the Kohima Epitaph in front of the late Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, right next to the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior.
A nerve-wracking honour. Such powerful words:
“Tell them of us and say
For your tomorrow
We gave our today.”
The Trump Panorama row reminded me of the dangers of the edit suite.
The rights and wrongs are yet to be fully settled, with Trump threatening a huge suit for damages that’s still unresolved. The BBC Chairman admitted there had been an error, but no malice, nor prejudice and on Thursday night the BBC apologised.
Nothing fully offset the gloom of Rachel Reeves' Spring Statement this week.
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Even so, Director General Tim Davie and Head of News Deborah Turness both fell on their swords and resigned. I don’t know Tim personally, but I worked for
Deborah was one of the better recent editors of ITV News.
On the day I hosted the first-ever televised party leaders’ debate, she contacted my family and sent me a hamper with some of my favourite things: three packs of Marlboro, some strawberry-flavoured mineral water, and several packets of Turkish Delight.
A kind and well-informed gesture from someone I always found caring and thoughtful. I wish her and her family well.
The BBC once edited footage of Boris Johnson at a G7 gathering to make him look shunned and isolated, though other edits showed it was nonsense.
They did something similar years ago in the Annie Leibovitz Documentary Editing Row (2007).
That controversy erupted over a BBC trailer for A Year with the Queen, misleadingly edited to suggest the Queen had stormed out of a photoshoot with Annie Leibovitz.
That, too, was a fabrication, and it cost Peter Fincham, then boss of BBC 1, his job. Now it emerges that Newsnight also did a dubious edit on Trump, which was later pointed out on air by a former White House Chief of Staff.
Politically, the week here was dominated by talk of a plot to oust Sir Keir Starmer, supposedly involving Health Secretary Wes Streeting.
There were definite briefings from Downing Street to The Times, The Guardian, and Bloomberg.
Starmer’s Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney, was said to be involved, though he denied it all with wit, saying too many people had been watching Celebrity Traitors!
Wes told breakfast radio and TV that he was, and always had been, loyal, and never a traitor.
Only time will tell how this entire episode plays out…