What [person with nothing better to do in the mornings] watched last night

You know that little article next to TV listings in newspapers titled “What [bloke with incredibly easy job] saw last night”? I figured I'd start doing that since blogging about my everyday life was hardly stimulating writing, never mind reading. And tonight seems like as good a time as any to start.

Like most of the people who will probably end up reading this, it was that much-controversial episode of Question Time, which featured BNP leader Nick Griffin as one of the panelists, that was on the box last night. Although it seemed less of an intellectual, topical Q+A and more of a session in medieval stocks for Griffin, complete with peasants throwing rancid vegetables and calling him names.

I should probably get one thing straight before I continue; I don't like Nick Griffin, as a man or as a politician. I'm not defending him, his personal views or those of his party. I'm not saying I wouldn't enjoy watching him get a good verbal kicking in most other circumstances. But when it's coming from someone whose idea of wit is starting a sentence with “Dick, oh I'm sorry Nick” or a smug 12-year-old looking student with a blatantly massive stiffy for himself, it all gets a little tedious.

Besides the audience's juvenile insults and throwaway, self-satisfying lefty remarks making for rubbish television, isn't this is the sort of thing that has given the BNP a real hard-on in the past? No doubt they'll be using words like “injustice” and “undemocratic” to describe the audience's playground treatment of Griffin and they wouldn't be entirely unjustified in doing so. We may have given a far-right party with a history of racism a sympathy vote in exchange for a nob gag and a couple of smarmy comments. Superb.

That's not to say last night's Question Time was all bad. There were some good points made regarding the BNP's immigration policy (bricking up the UK-bound half on the channel tunnel and constructing a machine-gun nest on every beach) and Griffin's position on the panel - sitting to the right of a black woman - made unintentionally hilarious use of his lazy left eye as he seemingly kept a wary watch over her just in case she was concealing a tribal spear in her bandana. But other than that it was mostly forgettable; topics that should have been discussed – the BNP's current policies and the reasons for their recent rise to prominence – were largely ignored or were persistently dodged as panelists belted out years-old quotes to score easy points with the audience. In the end, the whole thing was utterly pointless.