Dirty Diary

Wherever I was, I missed Paxman asking this question to the team from Kent University: “Born in Paisley in 1940, which artist and playwright designed Billy Connolly’s banana boots and wrote the Slab Boys trilogy for the theatre?”

Easy, right? Nobody got it though, not even River Monsters presenter Jeremy Wade. Fair enough, I suppose. But what has landed the BBC in hot water is not the stunning ignorance of the participants but the fact that Paxman compounded it by then giving the wrong answer. He said the Big Yin's boots were made by Connolly's old friend John Byrne. They weren't. They were made by Glasgow Pop Artist Edmund Smith, as the question compilers would have discovered if they'd checked Connolly's official biography. Or even just Googled “Billy Connolly + banana boots”.

One person screaming the right answer at the telly was Edmund Smith's daughter, who was so annoyed that her dad's creation had been wrongly ascribed to Byrne that she sent an official complaint. The BBC have taken until now to investigate and report back – maybe they can't use Google either – but have now 'fessed up to the mistake. So everybody's happy. More or less.

But the best bit of the whole sorry saga is the answer that was given. It came from broadcaster Paul Ross, older brother to the rather better-known Jonathan, who left Kent University in 1979 with a post-graduate certification in Education, whatever that is. To the question “Born in Paisley in 1940, which artist and playwright designed Billy Connolly’s banana boots and wrote the Slab Boys trilogy for the theatre?”, he answered: “Nicola Sturgeon”.

In soapy bubble

I'VE never knowingly listened to a whole episode of The Archers. Mind you I make the same boast about Dire Straits albums and I still seem to know all the songs, so it's no surprise I have a vague idea about what's going on in the long-running radio soap. Doubtless there's some strange osmotic process behind it – or it might be because I share kitchen space with an Archers addict. In short, I'm well aware when something big is up in Ambridge – big like Helen Archer's trial for attempted murder in 2016.

With its themes of domestic abuse, the case gripped the commentariat for weeks last summer though there were some who objected to the normally sedate and pastoral soap coming over all Jimmy McGovern. A serious crime in The Archers? Surely not. Save that stuff for the inner cities.

Now, however, a study has shown that there should actually be more crime in Ambridge than ever makes it into the script. You see, if Archers aficionados are correct in their belief that Ambridge is based on the Worcestershire village of Inkberrow – population today: 1500 – then statistically there should have been 1.8 criminal incidents per year per 100 people. In Ambridge, however, the rate is only 0.9.

Controversially, the same study shows that while crime in Ambridge has been underplayed, crime in Walford, the fictional East London district at the heart of EastEnders, has been exaggerated: Walford had 9.5 incidents a year per 100 people whereas a similar area of East London had only 3.4. That makes Walford a whopping 10 times more dangerous than Ambridge. Still won't get me tuning into The Archers any time soon, though.

Radio ga ga

HOW far down the list of the BBC's top earners did you get before you had to phone a friend? I reached number eight and a guy called Matt Baker, then found myself scratching my head again at number nine where a Stephen Nolan and an Alex Jones were in a dead heat with two people I had actually heard of – Andrew Marr (noted political pundit and ace inquisitor of Cabinet Ministers) and Alan Shearer (ex-England striker). The ninth-place earners all take home between £400,000 and £449,000 depending on overtime. Or extra time and penalties which go the way of the Germans, in Shearer's case.

Baker and Jones, I now know, are co-presenters of The One Show, whatever that is. Nolan, however, has a programme on BBC Radio 5 Live, which slightly holes the BBC's argument that the high wages are necessary to stop talent defecting to rival TV networks such as ITV and Sky. In fact Nolan is one of five radio presenters in the top 10 (the others are John Humphrys, Jeremy Vine, Nicky Campbell and Steve Wright) and, given that most local radio stations run on a shoestring budget, it strikes me as facile to argue that without a six-figure salary they'd be heading off to Stonehaven, say, to join its local station Mearns FM, or to Douglas, bustling capital of the Isle of Man, where Energy FM has its home.

Cartoon Corbyn

IF the ultimate hipster accessory is a graphic novel and the ultimate hipster Prime Minister-in-waiting is Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, then it makes a twisted kind of sense to try to combine the two – which is exactly what London-based publisher Self Made Hero is doing by publishing The Corbyn Comic Book, an anthology of comic strips about the leader of the opposition. It will be officially launched at the Labour Party Conference in September.

Among those who will have work included are noted satirists and cartoonists Martin Rowson and Steve Bell, who famously sent up then-Conservative Prime Minister John Major by drawing him with his underpants on over his trousers (it was, in Bell's phrase, “the badge of an essentially crap Superman”).

Here's the best bit, though: Self Made Hero are throwing open the doors to all-comers, meaning any Tom, Dick or Barry can have a go with a Jez-themed “comic”. It can be as little as one panel – so manageable on a single sheet of toilet paper – but can't run to more than three pages. The project is “a bit of fun for Silly Season”, admits Self Made Hero's Emma Hayley, “but it's also a great way to engage the grassroots comics community”.

So get drawing, people. You have until August 9.