Good afternoon.
Car keys, left socks and mobile 'phones: I am always losing them or misplacing them. But, as I write, I am listening to the Chancellor of the Exchequer explain to the House of Commons how someone who works for him has lost or misplaced the personal and financial details of anywhere between 7 and 25 million people. And what makes it funnier, if it weren't so serious, is that it was lost ..... in the post.
A government, fit for the C21st that promised an "information super-highway"! You wouldn't trust them with changing a plug, would you?
A government, fit for the C21st that promised an "information super-highway"! You wouldn't trust them with changing a plug, would you?
They should all have gone to the Science Museum with Liz today: and the kids Liz met there would probably make a better fist of it than those little darlings that sit on the green leather benches of Westminster. Liz and the kiddies get all touchy feely at 6, in the interests of science.
Not a lot of science involved in the Congestion Charge: cameras spot you going in: if you pay, cool. If you don't, they fine you and fine you big. They banked a pretty £95 million in the last period from goons like me who occasionally forget to pay in time. Well, one of our guests tonight has the answer, we think. If you already have a GPS then your resistance will be low. Tune in and you may hear something to your advantage. Unless you are the Mayor.
He can't tune in, as it happens, because he is still in India. And he has gone underground. Not politically, but physically. We reveal what he found in the dark, dank depths of Delhi. Harris is our man with the teeming masses.
Child prodigies come and go: they have a sort of built in obsolescence like light-bulbs and iPods. Shirely Temple went on to be a UN Amdassador, but so did Geri Halliwell so perhaps that's irrelevant. Michael Portillo and Martyn Lewis were in TV ads as children and then had very successful careers elsewhere.
So what of Freddie Highmore? Well, at the ripe old age of 15 he has already been there and done it at the peak of Hollywood - egged on by no less a star than Johnny Depp. He started at 7 so, for more than half his life, he has been a successful actor and he is still 3 years short of voting, a year short of joing the army, and 3 years short of going, alone, to one of the horrid, naughty, violent films the big boys make. Like Mr. Depp. Freddie, in good boy mode, joins us at 6 to talk about his latest showing on the silver screen.
And , all over London, the lights are going on: we shall not see them off again in this year's lifetime.
Tonight, it's Regent Street and there is science involved, it seems. Something to do with motion, movement or maybe magic - I don't know but nor, I fear, did the luminously lovely Faye when she attempted to explain it to us at our planning meeting. But she was very excited and assured us Glen had O level physics. Or GCSE. Or CSE. Perhaps a Scout Badge?
See you at 6.
Alastair & Katie
Alastair & Katie
