No matter how you spin it, talking about immigration is always going to be dodgy territory. As we learned (if we didn't already know) on last night's 10 O'Clock Live.
The producers - all credit to 'em - managed to get three very different guests on the show. Of them, one thought that we only discussed immigration negatively, another that we drummed on about immigration being so positive that it created a vacuum where there should be debate and the other - the lovely Deborah Mattinson - said that we discuss immigration but the public don't think we discuss immigration. Is your head spinning too? Oh and one was Labour, one was Tory and one shouted louder than the others. Clever producer people.
Also, two were our authors - see here and here.
I say it's dodgy territory because we never seem to really get anywhere. It was a decent debate, all of the panellists were very well informed - either they had researched polls, facts and figures before the show went live or they are in fact a band of encyclopaedic cyborgs pieced together on the 2nd floor of Home Office HQ - but there were no meaningful conclusions. Though that may have had more to do with the length of time allocated to the issue. Cramming a discussion about immigration between the Political Editor of the New Statesman, Gordon Brown's chief political pollster and an adviser to David Cameron into 7 minutes is never going to be easy, and it certainly isn't going to change the way we talk about immigration in this country. But then I guess that's a given.
David Mitchell questioned whether immigration is traditionally the elephant in the room when it comes to reasoned political debate in this country. In this case it was, because the rest of the show was pretty funny. Especially the part where Charlie Sheen made clear that he was a nutter, followed closely by Colonel Gadaffi and both were taken to task in classic Screenwipe-esque Brooker fashion. I'm swiftly coming to the conclusion that 10 O'Clock Live does have a point (having turned over midway through the first episode), and that point is to bring a light touch to darker issues. It should stick to that. In last night's debate it offered nothing new and probably enlightened no one. But elsewhere I giggled. Like when Jimmy Carr said new advertising rules meant that the logo to be included on all television shows to connote product placement would be "a baby, with square eyes being force-fed shit." Funny, topical, and doesn't require more time than it must be jammed in to.
Anyway, speaking of elephants in the room. This weekend I'm going to a hen do. We're supposed to be dressing up Burlesque. What I didn't realise until yesterday is that this means I have to leave the house in what amounts to my underwear. Just a word of warning, if you're planning to be in East London on Saturday, don't be. It won't be pretty. Trust me, I've seen me in my underwear.