My Week In Media: Lembit Opik
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Your support makes all the difference. Last week I watched...
BBC News 24. The Obama-Clinton race for the Democrat candidacy is such an oddity. It reminds me of The West Wing. I know Ohio quite well as I used to work there one week a month for Procter & Gamble, before I became an MP, and I thought Hillary would be their kind of gal. But the drama of Obama is large in the unpredictability of the results. Obviously, I watched the news of the referendum vote. I voted with Nick Clegg because he is an expert on Europe and I didn't want to read the 200 pages of the EU Treaty myself when I trusted his judgement. He is under zero threat to his leadership. Even the people who resigned don't want him to go. We're a pretty close-knit little team and when the Lib Dems have arguments, we do it in a respectful way.
Last week I listened to...
My car has 372,000 miles on the clock and I tend to listen to Radio 4 in the daytime until I get sleepy, and then I listen to Radio 2. It plays my kind of music. One of my indulgences is The Shipping Forecast. It's one of the great institutions of radio and a soothing experience.
Last week I read...
I don't read newspapers much because I find, from my own experience, that they're less reliable than broadcast media. I have brought 15 complaints to the Press Complaints Commission in the last six months about what was written on my relationship with Sian Lloyd. They reported I dumped her for Gabriela (Irimia, one half of The Cheeky Girls), which contained two inaccurate facts: Sian finished with me and it was nothing to do with Gabriela. I looked at The Independent this morning over a plate of kippers in the Members' dining room. How evocative of the good old days! What attracts me to The Independent is that it has taken a conscious decision to be a campaigning newspaper, to influence as well as to observe, but in an honest way. It has a clear bias towards liberalism and democracy, both of which I am a fan of. I like The Daily Telegraph because I feel it does have an ethos of honesty, even though the two come from different philosophical starting points. I have been looking at the TV pages for pictures of the Sport Relief Does The Apprentice show I'm in. It still feels odd to see pictures of myself on TV.
Last week I surfed...
The Loose Women website ( www.itv.com/loosewomen) because I'm going on it next week. I like the format because it's got a frisson which is missing from a lot of the "I've got a problem..." shows.
Lembit Opik will be appearing in Sport Relief Does The Apprentice on Wednesday on BBC1 at 9pm
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