The Times - UK (2021-11-10)

the times | Wednesday November 10 2021 3

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Lady Gaga wore a bulletproof

dress to Biden’s inauguration.

Really?

Well, actually, we aren’t sure.

That sounds like something you’d

want to be sure about.

There’s some disagreement on

the matter.

Again — you’d hope there would

be some consensus. What with

bullets being quite dangerous etc.

Here’s what we know: Lady Gaga

thought that her dress was

bulletproof. In an interview with

Vogue (she’s on the cover of the

British and Italian December

issues) the pop star claimed that

her black and red gown was not

only glamorous but protective.

But?

The designer brand that made

it, Schiaparelli, says otherwise.

It claims, in response to Gaga,

that her dress was, “not

actually bulletproof”.

Which means?

That it doesn’t know what

Gaga may have worn underneath

the dress.

Underwear, probably, to a classy

event like that. Although I didn’t

think they made Spanx that sturdy.

They don’t. More likely is that

she may have worn a bulletproof

vest under the dress. Or corset.

Or... breastplate?

Or maybe she had been told by her

stylist that the dress was couture

armour, to calm her nerves?

The lowdown

Bulletproof

dress

I wouldn’t rule it out.

Explain to me why she needed the

bulletproof vest?

Something reasonable like

being on a world stage in the

wake of the Capitol riots, I think.

America being gun-toting and

whatnot. She told Vogue that

she spent the day before her

performance of the national

anthem looking around for

evidence of the insurrection.

Bet that really calmed the

pre-show jitters.

Hannah Rogers

“What that was really about was me

having to be my own floor manager

during a commercial break, right?” he

says, looking mortified. “I don’t know

why it was leaked. Look, the truth is

everything gets leaked.”

He admires and sympathises with

Rigby. Political editors must now not

just broadcast but blog and tweet, for

which they are rewarded with social

media abuse. Spin is worse; access to

ministers more restricted.

“An awful lot now is WhatsApping

spads. That’s how politics develops.

I think it means that cabinet ministers

are much remoter. If you think about

someone like Kenneth Baker or Nigel

Lawson or Jack Cunningham, to this

day if I see them at some reception or

pass them in the street they’ll want to

come up and talk about politics.”

Boulton’s career is remarkable, but

so is his stamina. BBC political editors

rarely last more than a decade, nor do

they also present, as Boulton did for

17 years, a Sunday morning show. Was

there a cost in the time he could give

his three daughters by his first wife,

Kerena? “Well, I got divorced.”

Was that part of it? “I think

certainly the work

rate and the focus

I had on one world

which I didn’t

necessarily share

[at home] was. I

think that was

part of it. I’ve got

three daughters. I

think I’ve got a

good relationship

with them.”

And then he fell in

love with Hunter? “It

ended up that me and

my first wife were in

different worlds and

I found someone in

my world.”

After 35 years reporting politics his

journalistic appetite is undiminished,

his faith in politicians perhaps less

so. He once said that he had never in

retrospect felt that the electorate had

got a general election wrong. “I have

to say I’ve had my confidence shaken,”

he confesses when I remind him.

“Until recent years my assumption

always was that, whether I thought

they were playing well or badly, the

prime minister, leader of the

opposition, the first thing they thought

about was doing well by their country.”

And now? “I’ve really rather lost

that. I think ‘what’s right for me?’

dominates a lot of politicians, rather

than what’s right for the country.”

Will Sky News, I ask, be

recognisable in five years’ time?

“I don’t know. I do think it’s a

fragmenting industry. As we know,

there’s a guarantee of funding [by

Comcast] for editorial independence

for ten years... I hope so.”

And what will he be doing? “I mean,

to give up daily broadcasting is

a wrench. Maybe there’ll be other

broadcasting things.” People don’t

even know he is leaving yet! “They will

now. I hope things will develop. I’m

working on some long-form stuff.

“I’ve just got to accept to a certain

point that you and I, we’re tail-end

baby boomers, and there’s a kind of

move against the baby boomers, and

the fact that we’ve had less time at

the peak is just the way it goes... It’s

a big change for me, but I’m still young

and healthy.”

Boulton, I feel sure, will have plenty

of canvases to cover for many years

yet. The loss is Sky News’s, and ours.

Adam Boulton, also

top, with his Sky News

colleagues Kay Burley

and Beth Rigby

good show, but I’ve always said to
John Ryley, ‘I want to work for
someone who wants me to work for
them,’ and fortunately so far I’ve had
the luxury of being able to do that.”
But he feels that time is ending? “It’s
difficult because it affects colleagues,
but, yes, I do... How are we doing?”
He is unused to being at this end of
an interrogation, and careful in what
he says about his employers. It is
striking how fair Boulton is being, but
then he has always placed a premium
on his impartiality, to the point of
never voting. True, in 2002 he had an
affair with Anji Hunter, Tony Blair’s
director of public relations, and
married her four years later, but she
quit No 10 soon after their relationship
started and he thinks it “depended” on
him knowing she was leaving.
From its start in 1989 Sky News
was popular with politicians, partly
he thinks because the Westminster
bureau he set up bothered to make
them up before they appeared. Labour
was always happy to appear, although
the party’s relations with Sky’s
predominant owner, Rupert Murdoch,
had been frosty in the 1980s. (I ask if
Comcast’s purchase of Sky in 2018 is
behind Sky News’s changes, but he
says he really does not know.)
Yet hasn’t GB News, despite its
disastrous launch, uncovered an
appetite for opinion-led news? “I have
no reason to think that’s the direction
we [at Sky] want to go. However, it
irritates me. To me the hard work,
where we expend blood and tears —
and there really is blood sometimes:
Mick Deane [the cameraman and
journalist] was killed [in Egypt in 2015]
— is news-gathering in the field. It’s
much easier to sit in the studio, let
other people gather the news and then
bloviate about it.”
He began his career at a news
agency in America, where he’d studied
international relations after reading
English at Oxford. After working at
BBC external services he joined
TV-am for its launch in 1983 when for

a few crazy months it

imagined Britain desired

intellectuals at breakfast.

Four years later, in a

general election, Labour’s

Denis Healey exploded

when TV-am presenter

Anne Diamond presented

him with a Sun front page

about his wife’s private medical

operation. “I could hear in my ear the

director saying, ‘Cut, cut, cut!’ because

then he went, ‘Anne Diamond, you’re

a shit.’ Then he turned to me and said,

‘You’re a shit as well!’ and thumped me

in my chest. Normally you would have

just kept all this quiet as we’d gone to

an ad break, but the next guest into

the studio was [the gossip columnist]

Nigel Dempster.”

Roll on 23 years to the Monday

after the inconclusive 2010 election.

Boulton pointed out to Labour’s spin

doctor Alastair Campbell that

parliamentary maths prevented

Labour forming a governing coalition.

Campbell accused him of being pro-

David Cameron. Boulton jutted his

finger: “I’m fed up with you telling me

what I think.” Had he lost his temper?

“Well, the viewer will have to be

judge of that. I hope not. I don’t think

I’m a particularly shouty interviewer.

That incident with Campbell was

partly born out of the fact that we

know each other very well and he

knew how to wind me up, and the

quickest way was by attacking my

impartiality and my integrity.”

Actually, he says his “worst”

interview was not with a politician but

the actress Sarah Miles, whom he

gently accused of writing somewhat

unreliable memoirs. “At which point

she started crying. Complete disaster.”

On air Boulton is a courteous

presence. Off air — and I confess I

know this from sharing classes with

him at university — he is kind but

combustible. In 2018 he swore at

Rigby, Sky’s political editor, before an

interview at the Labour conference

and the off-air footage was leaked.

Television

is very

sensitive to

the idea of

diversity

CHRIS MCANDREW FOR THE TIMES; CAMERA PRESS

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