Faye Turney in the media spotlight. Photograph: Tonight with Trevor McDonald/ITV1
I watched Faye Turney's interview on ITV1 with some trepidation, as the internet threatens to explode in a mass of misogynistic hot air about the single woman among the 15 sailors and marines held by Iran. Turney has been reviled as a bad mother, as a coward and God knows what else. But what everyone has missed is that it's Trevor McDonald who looks the fool in this programme.
For the record, I incline to the view that it's crass to sell your story, whether you're Faye Turney, someone who has shagged a footballer or a former MP, an armchair general or even a national treasure TV presenter.
But at least Turney made an effort to look animated throughout the interview, which is more than can be said for McDonald, who sat like a stuffed dummy, only stirring into life to ask stupid questions like: "Did you ever cry yourself to sleep?"
Turney, her husband and her daughter managed to frolic among the sunlit daffodils during the sequences shot outside the hotel room in which the interview took place. Trevor, by contrast, just about managed the noddies. Perhaps the effort of sounding like a portentous stuffed shirt in the ludicrous script took it out of him?
The whole episode is pretty tacky, let's face it. One of the tackiest things about Turney's trial by media has been the spectacle of snobbery at work. Michael Heseltine huffed and puffed on the BBC about how distasteful it was to see service personnel selling their stories. As far as I can see, the only difference between Heseltine and Turney is that she's a woman, she's not an officer and her vehicle of publication has been the tabloids and tabloid TV.
But tackiest of all in this sorry episode was the prurient questions delivered by McDonald in his honeyed tones: "What form did this interrogation take?" "They actually said that to you, 'You want to see your daughter again?'" "Were you allowed to wash?" "Were you made to take your clothes off?"
I know he is a national treasure but some of his questions made my stomach turn.
