Like Peter Finch, I'm as mad as hell!

We’ve had an actor in here. He’s got a part in which he plays a whiz British news producer who is sent to a chaotic American newsroom to sort it out.

I told him he should watch Broadcast News, still after all these years the best film ever made about our trade – even if a little overstated.

Of course, I model myself on Peter Finch in Network, who gradually goes barking mad in the course of the film, eventually urging every viewer in Manhattan to wind up the sash windows and shout: “I’m as mad as hell!”

But seriously, I was talking to this actor and I told him that I had worked for a director who was beyond fiction. She produced incredible results on screen, but she yelled the most unbelievable obscenities down your earpiece whilst you were attempting to do sensitive reports (she would shout, for example: “Jon, for f***’s sake! For God’s sake, sit up, you c***!”)

Well, these days she’d be off the air on health and safety grounds – even then, if we had guests we had to issue a formal health warning. The actor said to me: “You must be talking about X” I said: “I am.” He said: “She’s my godmother!”

It seems to me he never needed to come in in the first place with her as a godmother.