Channel 5 Stand-Down

So I am sitting in a Channel 5 Studio, make up on, mic trailing underneath my shirt, ready to talk with Jellyellie (yes, we met again today) about teenagers when we are asked to leave the studio before the cameras rolled. There was a more important news story, and we weren’t needed. I talked to Jellyellie in the green room: she was very clever and articulate. Her book on How To Be A Teenager looks very good. She cut to the chase: she asked me how often I checked my ratings on Amazon. I said not at all now: worrying about your book’s ups and downs on Amazon is guaranteed to make you unhappy.

Related reading

  • Teen Rage with Channel 4 at the RSA

    So how did it feel having most of the audience wanting to lynch you?’ an elderly member of the RSA asked me after the event. I had been invited to speak at a debate about Teen Rage at the RSA (http://www.rsa.org.uk/events/detail.asp?eventID=2407) with several notable guests. I had given a short talk on the history of […]

  • Local Radio Interviews

    Appeared on four radio shows today. Sitting in a lonely, sealed-off room in the far reaches of Broadcasting House, I spoke through the microphone to BBC Three Counties Radio (pretty brief one) BBC Radio Shrewsbury (v g, the DJ actually had read bits of the book!), BBC Radio Wales (a half-hour interview), and BBC Radio […]

  • Are academies the way forward? Appearance on Channel 5 News

  • “You are an arrogant, young man”

    It was the ‘young’ part I liked the best. Peregrine Worsthorne was not very happy with me. We were sitting around microphones in a Radio 4 studio, talking about ‘Knowing Your Place’ for the lunchtime Radio 4 programme ‘Off The Page’. I started being provocative because the debate was becoming rather cosy. I said that […]

  • Teenage pregnancy and sex education

    Attended a heated debate at Channel 4, which launched their sex education programmes this autumn. All the experts on the panel pointed out that British teenagers get the worst sex education in Europe: many parents don’t have conversations about sex with their children, many sex ed lessons in schools are patchy and ill-informed, and teenagers […]