Seconds away, round one! The BBC’s Andrew Marr has welcomed the prospect of Robert Peston taking on his BBC1 Sunday morning show with a rival political chinwag on ITV.
But Marr said it was “a bit of an odd thing” if ITV was going to directly schedule Peston, the BBC’s outgoing economics editor, against his eponymous Sunday morning show.
“If it’s true that he’s going to do a Sunday morning nine o’clock show directly against mine then on one level I say that’s fantastic, bring it on,” Marr told RadioTimes.com at the Cheltenham Literary festival.
“Competition is good.”
But he questioned whether it was “sensible” for the two shows to go head-to-head (although it remains to be seen when exactly Peston’s show will go out).
“I think it’ll be a bit of an odd thing at the very time ITV is protesting about there being two news programmes on at 10 o’clock on weekday nights to say, ‘But we’re going to put two political interview programmes head-to-head on Sunday morning.’ There’s a strange logic there – or illogic.”
It was culture secretary John Whittingdale who questioned whether the BBC should be running its main BBC1 news bulletin at 10pm at the same time as ITV’s News at Ten.
Marr, who also spoke about the future of the BBC at the Cheltenham event, was asked if he had any tips for Peston.
“The thing about a good interview programme – even if your name’s on the tin – is it’s not about Peston, it’s not about Marr.
“It’s about the interviewees and you have to absolutely subdue yourself and not think the programme’s about you because it never is. The Andrew Marr Show could be done by anybody if you get the right guests on it and you ask the right questions in the right order. There are skills in it but it’s not very difficult.”
