AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

I don't think Nicholls is the significant part. As with the Croydon Playboy case, a small time crim was trying to persuade the police (or the police were trying to persuade him) that playing a small part in a notorious case and thereby becoming the star witness would get him off his latest brush with the law.

Since these 'spurious supergrasses' have no knowledge other than what they've read in the papers, the police have to provide them with all the telling details. (Which they did very badly in the Croydon case because they had to this before they'd heard all the forensic evidence.)

How did the Crown Prosecution Service treat Nicholls subsequently? That was a significant part of the Croydon case.

[Mick Harper]

The Media Show

Not the least surprising thing about Elon Musk is that he doesn't have a PR department. He doesn't have 'handlers'. This emerged from the Media Show interviewing the Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, Zanny Minton Beddoes.

She had approached Musk for an interview when they met at a Californian function (she knew him 'slightly). He told her to contact him on X. She did. He agreed. Next thing she was turning up at Musk HQ in Texas and was, basically, ushered in to Musk's office and the interview started (albeit an hour late).

Ms Beddoes is well used to interviewing the rich and famous (she was very waspish about Benjamin Netanyahu) but was amazed at the lack of palaver, the lack of screening for this question but not that question, the lack of any sort of time frame. Musk and her just chatted for an hour and a half about whatever entered their heads. (Apart from them both being communication professionals.)

It was all recorded on film so why Musk later went ballistic about Zanny's treatment of him to his quarter-billion followers on X is something you'll have to ask him when you next meet.