Quintin Jardine's blog

Where have I been? Daft question; like everybody else in Britain, I’ve been pretty much glued to the telly watching Usain bolt for the finish line, watching Murray mint himself a tennis gold medal, watching Joshua fight the battles of the Excel Arena, and so on. it was tense at first, and the vultures were circling, but then the cyclists ht top gear, the rowers upped their stroke rate, and the gold medals started to flow at a greater rate than anyone had dared to imagine. After that, it would have seemed downright unpatriotic to criticise anything or anyone, and even our scurrilous media had more sense than that.

Until it was all over, then the BBC, after two weeks of comprehensive, often brilliant coverage, only slightly marred by the unfailing crassness of John Inverdale, the clumsiness of Clare Balding, out of her depth in the aquatic centre, and Gary Lineker not really understanding anything that doesn’t involve a ball, reverted to type.

The Prime Minister was invited into the BBC Olympic Park studio on Sunday morning. He announced a piece of genuine good news, a further two years  of guaranteed funding for UK athletes that will underwrite the programme through to the next Olympics, yet he found himself under attack by the presenter Mishal Hussein, who didn’t seem to think that was long enough, and didn’t choose to hear Dave’s point that with an election in 2015, he isn’t in a position to give longer guarantees.

Every one of Ms Hussein’s questions seemed to begin with the word ‘But . . .’. Who knows whether she was briefed to be offensive, or she was simply pitching her hat into the ring for Paxo’s job, but whatever, she was rude, aggressive and out of step with the national mood. On top  of that the studio manager didn’t even give Dave a proper make-up job, (An oversight? Don’t you believe it.) so that after two minutes under the lights in the glass box his top lip was glistening, while his inquisitor sat serene in her full inch-thick slap. Some things never change.