I'm not sure that the Today Programme got the dust up they were looking for this morning. I was supposed to be on with Amanda Platell, but she was replaced at the last minute by Michael Eboda from New Nation. He duly took the line that it seemed to be a bit of a fuss about nothing and had got overblown. He was right.
I won't relate the whole discussion (you can click on the image above to listen to it), but right at the end John Humphrys posed an interesting question: Should you say exactly the same in private as you say in public. I wasn't sure how to answer that at first so I deployed a delaying tactic and had a bit of rant about Adrian Chiles instead. Humphrys, of course, was having none of it and put the question to me again. I ended up by saying "In theory yes, but we don't live in a theoretical world". A bit lame, but it was the best I could think of! But it is a very interesting question. I am sure none of us can say we haven't said things in private which we wouldn't want made public, although theoretically we should all operate on the basis that anything we say could indeed be made public.
UPDATE: I have just been told categorically by a BBC spokesman that the tennis player referred to by Carol Thatcher was not Andy Murray. And she acknowledges that.
