Why 5 Live covered Tarrant's marital problems

Here's Harriet Oliver, assistant editor of BBC Radio 5 Live defending coverage - on the Victoria Derbyshire programme - of Chris Tarrant's marriage breakdown. "There are always those who accuse us of dumbing down (and several listeners did) but affairs affect lots of us and I was confident people were interested... There's something about the phone-in format and Victoria's style that gets people to open up. Rather than dwell on poor Chris and Ingrid, we asked how someone can possibly live a double life for 10 years. We needn't have worried about people confessing on air. Perhaps the best caller was a quietly spoken man who told us about his 30-year affair with a married woman. When I asked him off air why he wanted to come on national radio to talk about this he said: "I guess I want to tell someone". (Via BBC blogs)