Sarfraz Manzoor

its saturday late afternoon and i am in Edinburgh for the third time in a month this time for the television festival. one of the great attractions of the festival is that it offers a chance to see semi-famous people in rather unusual settings. yesterday as i was waiting in line for a taxi at edinburgh station i saw an old bloke in woolly hat and with a backpack. it took a few second to register that it was Jimmy Saville. Even more bonkers last night i was just standing outside my hotel reception only to have Carla from Cheers walk past and then to top it all David Soul was drinking in the bar. i felt like i had wandered into the seventies.

as for the festival itself, its been moderately interesting. Jeremy Paxman’s MacTaggart lecture has been widely praised; i thought it was really entertaining but am not sure how practically useful his suggestions were. earlier today there were two sessions which i produced- the first was on how the internet is affecting television and print and that was really good not least because it was presented by Jeremy Vine who is just such a lovely guy and also one of the those you can have total confidence in. a bit like Mark Lawson who cheered a session which featured Charley from Big Brother. i have not seen Big Brother this year so only know about Charley because of the whole racism scandal. she seemed quite nice but deeply self obsessed.