GMB | Patsy Palmer “Walk-off”

This ongoing “story” is buried in the unrelated Piers Morgan thread (albeit Patsy did say “I’m doing a Piers Morgan..”)

Patsy and Piers aside, but in presentational and editorial terms, don’t the guests get to see (or be told) in advance as to how their names will appear on screen or how they will be introduced to the audience? I always presumed that their agents or representatives would rubber stamp every detail from a pres perspective before allowing their talent to go in front of the camera.

Based on today’s episode, clearly not!

Must be a nightmare for production and editors to try to keep everything balanced.

On live programmes (such as GMB), which role generally decides the precise text to be shown on screen? Editor?

What did the on-screen text say?

On long-duration shows or rolling news programmes there is often a text-producer role who has a remit to produce interesting, concise and compliant, captions.

In other areas the journalist who puts the story together and enters the details in iNews will often be expected to come up with a snappy story strap - though I'd expect any content like that to pass through a couple of compliance checks (in BBC News there were usually checks made by the presenter - that they were happy to read it, a Senior Journalist - that they were happy with it editorially, and the Editor-of-the-day, who the buck stopped with)

I think Patsy knew in advance she just couldn't be bothered to do the interview and changed her mind when it was too late.

It's probably no different to other guests being unhappy with a particular line of questioning or how a piece is being framed. There was a famous example a couple of years ago on the Today programme with Gr*h*m L*n*h*n, before all the unpleasantness, when he was invited on to talk about his adaptation of The Ladykillers. What he didn't know was that they'd also invited on a theatre critic and started to engage them in a debate on the merits of reviving shows, and L*n*h*n complained about this on air, saying he wasn't told that was the line the piece was going to take, and also hated the idea that everything on that programme had to be a debate, especially as he liked and respected the other contributor and didn't see the point of having some contrived argument for argument's sake.

It's the same kind of thing that happened here, probably, shows like this do end up booking guests very close to transmission, and they might not be made entirely clear of the entire direction the piece is going to take.

She did seem in a weird mood from the start but you could clearly see her moving in closer to try to read what the title said. I don't blame her for being annoyed. Unless she was deliberately advertising the fact she'd been an addict and turned her life around, it was a bit unnecessary to remind us that she used to be one, considering she's been clean for 17 years.

The strap first appeared during Ben and Susanna's intro before cutting to Patsy, so it's likely she saw what it said before we first saw her, which would explain why she looked a bit 'off' from the start.

Completely ridiculous and frankly insulting to refer to the fact she used to be an addict despite it offering nothing of worth or relevance to the interview, especially as this seems to have been done without it being cleared with the guest first.

Alas, disappointing but not surprising; this amounts to " tabloid TV show behaves tabloidly* " in my book.

* not a real adverb

This looks really poor form from GMB. You'd think if you were to raise sensitive issues like addiction with a guest the producers would have gone through it with them in advance. Another example of ITV saying one thing and doing another with mental health.

In case you were wondering, GMB's interview with Patsy Palmer lasted only 90 seconds before she walked out. pic.twitter.com/RqyATJa0qu

— Scott Bryan (@scottygb) March 17, 2021

When we see Patsy leaning into the laptop to see what the strap says, the look on her face is priceless!

To be honest it was a bit over the top her just walking out the interview like that. If she was sat in the studio, would she have behaved like that? I think not!

My money is on her now putting a complaint in directly with Dame Carolyn McCall, demanding an apology on screen etc.

*The proper word is 'tabloidish'.

DEFINITION (informal) Characteristic of tabloid journalism; lurid and sensational.

The suffix -ish is flexibly used with a base word to denote "somewhat, somewhat prone to, or somewhat like." For example, we have ticklish, reddish-blue, stylish, childish, boyish, a waspish tongue, a foolish old woman, a coldish wind.
Tabloidish means 'tabloid-like'.

Once an addict, always an addict - even if you kept the gambling industry happy, smoked 50 a day, drank several pints before the News at One, or done a lines of Columbia white sniffing powder, and are now clean, and have been for a day, a week, a month, a year or several of them.

If you have the determination and resolve not to and to never touch any of those things again, great - but you were (and still are) an addict. Frank Skinner - who drank far too much in his early days says that. He's still a non alcohol drinking addict.

But, has Ms Palmer aquired a new agent? She seems to be a lot more 'out there' over the past few weeks. Almost as though someone had decided that since Dame Babs has departed, what the world needs is a lovable cockney woman popping up every now and then, and Patsy fits that particular bill.