George Galloway storms off ITV Lunchtime News

Respect candidate Geroge Galloway featured as today's Ballot Box Jury guest and from the start was very apprehensive about the whole thing.

The interview began with someone asking questions from Glasgow but the sound failed and so George started a rant about how ITN have dredged a short clip accussing him of being a Sadaam sympathiser!
He totally disagreed with this and said he has answered this question 500 times. He wanted to swiftly move on.....
A woman from Scotland asked a question to George and he replied that his party wasn't even standing in Scotland and so accused ITN of not being able to find any suitable guest to ask questions from his area and accussed her of being a set-up to fire hostile questions at him.

Nicholas Owen and Katie Derham tried to continue with the interview and said that all questions they have recieved were along a similar vein when George said that they were also set-up and that he wouldn't be dealing with ITN ever again in the future. He stated that when his party wins he wont give any interviews to ITN.

The camera then cut to a close shot of Nic and Katie whilst George stormed out of the studio.

I hope ITV News Channel feature this great piece of tv many times throughout the day - its classic!

Please feel free to add any more detail or to correct any details that I may have got muddled with!

I may be wrong but we didn't actually see him storm off the set.

They finished the interview,then cut to a VT previewing Kier Symons report to be shown later in the programme. When they cut back to Katie and Nick,George had left his seat.

Now being repeated on the ITVNC.

a big well done to katie and nick for showing george up as being the vile and arrogant man he really is.

I thought Nick and Katie were a little too easily flustered by Galloway, but to be fair no-one ever gets very far with any interview with him as he just accuses anyone who questions him of being part of some conspiracy.

And I'm sure I've heard him say he's never speaking to ITN again on several previous occasions.

I have to say, it did sound to me like they were just pushing Galloway's supposed love of Saddam and his regime a little too much.

I interviewed him myself just prior to the last election, for student radio up in Lancaster and, I'll admit, expected a bit of a fight from what i'd heard and read of him beforehand. However, ease him into things and he's nothing short of charming.

Before people fly at me, accusing me of being some big supporter of the guy - i'm not. I would never vote for his previous party, and couldn't really see myself voting for his current one either. Nevertheless, starting with out-and-out accusations of being some sort of enemy-loving traitor is a bit much for a mainstream "impartial" television news service.

Something I'd expect of Fox, sure, but not ITN. Not even in these days of populist, lowest-common-denominator news and current affairs programming from ITV.

All I would say about Galloway was that he did seem a little too unwilling to answer the juror's question purely because she was outside of his party's area. Didn't stop any of her questions being valid.

Either way, a bloody good laugh for me this lunchtime!

It's so unbelievably hypocritical suggesting that a woman's views were irrelevant just because she lives in Scotland. After all, he was a Scottish MP for over fifteen years, and is now fighting an East London seat where he has no connections or relevance - he just so happens to think it's where he stands the biggest chance of winning. I really hope he gets his ass kicked on Thursday... if he hasn't completely disappeared up it beforehand.

And the bulletin can be seen here ITV Lunchtime News

To be honest, it was a pretty poor interview. Katie and Nicholas, just getting flustered, and tripping over each other. They really didn't know how to handle him.

I knew the moment the headlines went out and labelled him the "admirer of Saddam Hussain" that the tone was set for this interview. It was immediately antagonistic.

It was amusing though, Galloway doing his best to trash the programme (which in my opinion hasn't got any better) making reference to the viewing figures and the fact they'd set the whole thing up

By the way, the thread title is misleading, he didn't exactly storm off, he remained for the duration of the interview, for what it was worth.

Jeez! Is it just me, or is the connection to the WMV file extremely slow?
It's going to take 2hrs to download the file! Eek

Its the entire ITV Lunchtime News you've got there, perhaps somebody could cut it down for low-bandwidth peeps.

John

It was great. What a loon.

BTW isnt Katie Derham hot?