Good afternoon. I can honestly say it is good to be back after a slightly longer break than most of you probably enjoyed. But, my goodness, did I put in the hours back in the summer. Well that's my case and I am sticking by it.
If, however, I have two cases of a briefcase sort of size, I can now take them both on the plane with me. So long as I am flying from Heathrow and not Gatwick. And so long as I am flying to Edinburgh and not Exeter. It's as simple as an episode of Mission Impossible or James Bond. All will be revealed at 6.
With or without bag, or bags, the boys and girls building the 2012 Olympic site are finding it more of a tri-, hep- or even pentathalon than it ought to be. And that's just getting to work and back. I'd get a mobile home if I was them, but maybe they've been warned off by the travellers who made an eventual but rather inelegant exit from their's on the site. Harris runs Olympic rings round them all.
Running rings around the forces of law and order was the hero of Anthony Burgess's brilliant futuristic novel A Clockwork Orange which made a star of Malcolm McDowell when Stanley Kubrick eventually allowed it to be shown in cinemas. The powers that be, not least the London Boroughs of the 1960s, feared Kubrick's brutal interpretation of Burgess's chiller thriller would inspire mindless violence in a generation of club wielding, drug taking youths. Well, the only thing they got wrong was the weapon of choice but I fear cinema probably had very little to do with what followed.
McDowell's character thrilled to the chords of Beethoven which is odd given Transport for London find classical music to be soothing troubled brows in 40 London tube stations and reducing episodes of violence. Mind you, the Pastoral is a very different thing to the Ninth. Anyway, Glen waves the baton of peace and explores, if music be the food of peace, can we hope for calm across a broader canvass?
TV's popular drama The Bill is taking another tack on gun-crime and violence by dedicating a run of 8 episodes to the theme. It is subtitled "witness", and Ronke's been taking statements about the new drama that it is hoped may also help make our streets safer.
All on the day that Boris surfaces with his first raft of policies and, yes, they focus on street violence. So, more TV, more classical music or more "flog 'em and hang 'em into submission" ? We'll be asking the towsle topped one, live at 6.
As an after thought, whilst almost anything by Debussy would rock you into placid submission, I'd defy anyone to stand back from the fray to the strains of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. What else are you supposed to do in time to the canon fire? I think TfL are playing with fire.
Nina and I hope you'll march on Moscow with us at 6 and retreat, in better order than Napoleon, at the end of the ITV News hour.
Boom boom!
