A Scottish reporter has been gathering plaudits on social media for his persistent questioning of PM Rishi Sunak. It wasn't quite in the class of Paxman's famous grilling of then Tory leader Michael Howard, when he repeated the same question a dozen times as the politician squirmed and sweated, but it's worth a look for its sheer relentlessness.
In a clip that has since gone viral, STV's Colin Mackay asks Sunak repeatedly if he would respect the vote in the next general election as a de facto referendum on Scottish independence, and Sunak wriggles and waffles on about "what I'm focused on".
Every time a politician uses that expression, or a similar one about "What people are telling me...", there should be an ejector seat that propels them at least 50 feet into the air, because you know they're spoofing and are determined not to answer the question.
But Mackay is persistent, and keeps saying, "That's not what I'm asking you... are you going to answer my question?", as Sunak tries again with what people are actually telling him.
"You're just going to ignore my question about Scotland's constitutional future, is that what you're doing? You clearly are."
What larks.
It's usually a better bet for politicians to avoid doing difficult interviews altogether, even if it means hiding in a fridge, like Boris Johnson once did.
Tony Blair always avoided doing the Today programme because he feared the rottweiler, John Humphrys.
DUP MLA Paul Frew has been keeping a low profile since his latest foray into science around Covid, suggesting that 47 deaths in Northern Ireland were linked to the vaccine programme, despite information to the contrary from the Department of Health.
The press office is making sure he's "not available" so that he doesn't have to face defending his half-baked views against a better informed expert.
I recall a similar lack of cooperation when I tried to get Nelson McCausland on Hearts and Minds to debate creationism with Richard Dawkins. At the time McCausland was culture minister and wanted museums as well as the visitor centre at the Giant's Causeway to give greater prominence to the belief that the earth was only 6,000 years old.
Dawkins, who had accused the National Trust of buckling to pressure from the "intellectual baboons of young Earth creationism" by agreeing to include their viewpoint at the centre, was up for it. But the press office decided McCausland was permanently "unavailable" no matter what flexibility on times and dates we offered.
It was all very well holding such views, as many in the DUP did, but they didn't want them to have to face intellectual scrutiny, and certainly not from godless scientists.
The Conservative Party must be wishing they had similar control over the utterances of its MP Andrew Bridgen, who's now lost the whip over his comments comparing Covid vaccination to the holocaust.
Bridgen is the MP who once thought he was entitled to an Irish passport because of the Common Travel Area. I think we should hear more from him. We need a laugh in January.
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IT is hard to believe, especially for any younger readers out there. But I swear, there was once a time when Sammy Wilson was referred to as 'Red Sammy' because he was perceived to be a bit lefty when he was a councillor.
How times change. He's now the sole Dupper who, earlier this week, voted in support of the Tories' disgraceful plan to curb workers' rights by giving themselves the power to sack people if they go on strike. They claim it's to protect the public services that they've been intent on destroying for the past 12 years.
I suppose it applies to his face colour when he gets hot under the collar... which seems to be happening more often these days - and that's even before the EU and UK reach a deal.
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AS I fill in my tax return before the end of the month, I can't help but wonder how a former chancellor, namely Nadhim Zahawi, manages to somehow 'lose' £3 million down the side of the sofa, and has to agree to pay the money back in a settlement to end a dispute with HMRC over his family's financial links to a Gibraltar-based trust.
The Cabinet Office's 'propriety and ethics' team alerted the then prime minister Boris Johnson to a tax office 'flag' over Zahawi before his appointment, but he went ahead anyway. But then ethics and propriety never mattered much to the former PM...
