Jon Sopel takes no chances with housekeeping

Jon Sopel recounted some of his finest BBC moments at a World Service reception in Manchester on Sunday night, attended by Labour MPs during the party's annual conference. They included the moment the BBC journalist and presenter feared he was under attack in the early weeks of the Iraq war when there was an unexpected knock on his hotel room door in Kuwait. Sopel quickly donned the regulation plastic suit designed to protect the corporation's bravest from Saddam's chemical weapons and put on his gas mask. When he opened the door, however, he was met by a smiling member of staff who asked him if he could turn his bedsheets over. If he wandered what Sopel was up to then he was too polite to ask.