The appearance of Nick Griffin, BNP Leader, on the BBC's Questiontime led to an almost unanimous consensus among so-called media luminaries, editors and columnists. Towit that he made a fool of himself on the programme and set back his cause irrevocably. Were they watching another version of the programme that the BBC had pre-recorded with Rory Bremner, the impressionist, playing the part that the Oxbridge twits who run the network envisaged in their corporate fantasies and wet dreams of 'having their cakes and eating them'?

Obviously, the fact that there was a general belief in the fact that he had come across as shallow and nasty testifies more to their watching the programme through their own lazy, subjective, politically correct filters than anything else and should thus be discounted. It is the ultimate 'emperor's clothes' school of British journalism and expresses, more eloquently than admittedly even Mr. Griffin could given the perverted nature of this edition of the programme, why a million people count themselves as BNP supporters: they are fed up to the back teeth with the patronising tone of the self-proclaimed 'intelligentsia'. The predominantly middle class full-time politicos and smug media types believe that if they all talk with one voice then the 'ignorant masses' will fall into line behind their expensively educated 'betters'.

One can excuse the BBC for putting forward the line that it was a unique occasion and people in the audience wanted to question Mr. Griffin on his policies as it was their first opportunity to do so. However the serial nature of the questioners' anti-BNP tone was surely over-kill and unfair. Where was the famous and much-vaunted BBC sense of 'fair play' in this bear bating episode? Why was the programme dragged down to a fifty-minute anti-BNP party political broadcast? Surely there was a conspiracy behind the scenes to allow the usual topical format of Questiontime to be hijacked in this way as a balm to BBC executives' consciences for having 'this devil incarnate' on at all? They could then plead in private afterwards...in 'confidential briefings'... that the programme drew out the rabidly racialistic true colours of the party and as such was a glorious success in degrading the BNP's reputation in the public's eyes. Of course this mindset was apparent throughout Fleet Street as well...but what programme were they actually watching or had, more likely, their copy been written in the febrile, hot-house, atmosphere of the days leading up to the 'media event of the century'. Surely these people want to have their carrotcake muffin and eat it! No doubt they will take the lack of number consistency in the last sentence as categorical proof that I never went to Oxbridge! The media emblazoned Nick Griffin's visage across their front pages and on their news channels and internet sites to whip up a storm of interest in the programme...to drive up ratings for a normally sleepy Thursday evening post-watershed snoozefest and for sales of their own newspapers parasitic on any new diversion with potential. Afterwards they can then claim erroneously that their utterly mercenary hype was all okay because it led to a record number of viewers for 'the 'orrible little man' who would of course all have been turned off by his distasteful Nazi policies and underwhelming presentational skills.

They just don't get it do they!

Have they forgotten that the whole cast of media-savvy politicians and spin has been roundly condemned from their own mouths and Mackintoshes over recent years? The public are entirely fed up with politicians who come across as too smooth to be true - Nick Griffin on Questiontime came across as a real person not a wind-up Westminster android spouting emollient words to one and all but chastising ad infinitum his or her political opponents for things that they may or may not have done twelve years ago. Mr. Griffin may not have a Churchillian flair for language - so what! Who amongst present-day politicians is blessed thus (leaving aside Obama. of course)? Given the truly monstrous persecution of the poor man on the BBC's supposedly even-handed political debate programme, he did exceedingly well in the most trying and difficult circumstances! For a competent debut under the Colditz glare of media and media micro-managed opprobrium he deserves a medal.

It was obvious to all that far from feeling alienated by the BBC ploy of filling the ladies' chairs with members of ethnic minorities, he actually seemed to get on with them on a personal level. Was it my imagination or did Nick and Bonnie share a bit of affectionate tactility at one stage?

In essence the BBC had no alternative but to have him on under their own rules but they felt that they could outfox him and hold him up for contempt as a neo-Nazi. This plan backfired spectacularly. It is now the BBC's mishandling of the programme and its own underhand spinning which holds Auntie BBC to account under its own harsh television lights and proves her to be an anti-free speech bully.

Nick Griffin has had a huge publicity coup anyway. The Great British Public will not take being talked down to by any self-satisfied elite whose only goal in lambasting the BNP is to avoid addressing the lamentable mess that they have made of the country and the admitted half miilion (probably a lot more) of AWOL immigrants.

Since the broadcast, more people have logged onto the BNP website than the BBC pay Jonathan Ross in a month! The irony of all this is that an informed debate on immigration within the media is still as far away as ever due to the self-serving politically correct classes who have realised that it is not a vote winner out there in Middle England.

In a very close general election in 2010 however it may be that a hundred thousand votes here or there could be the difference between overall majority or having to form a coalition.It was a missed opportunity for the country to begin to have the debate sensibly untrammelled by the vitriolic persecution of one portly fifty year old man who at least has the guts to stand up for what he believes, whether misplaced or not, and not just for what the prevailing political/media zeitgeist prescribes in its infinite wisdom.