Privilege

Anyone else think that David Dimbleby is a little bundle of contradictions?  In an interview for the Radio Times (paraphrased by The Guardian), he says tv has got it wrong - there is a placed for older women on screen. Just not, perhaps yet, presenting Question Time, I'd guess. David's 75th birthday comes in October. Presumably the new Controller of BBC1 will create some sort of festival; maybe a Yentob profile ?

David also leaps to the defence of the Bullingdon Club, as it was in his day at Christchurch, Oxford, at the end of the 1950s. "I'm very proud of the uniform that I can still get into. We never broke windows or got wildly drunk."  He believes he was elected. The Bullingdon uniform currently costs £3,500. I'm guessing that is equivalent to around £300 in 1960, yet Dimbleby says, on leaving Oxford, with a third in PPE, he was short of money. His father advised against a broadcasting career.  'I don't think he thought television in the Fifties was a proper job. He wanted me to be a lawyer or a diplomat. But in the end I needed some cash and with freelance journalism you effectively get cash in hand. My first job was as a news reporter in Bristol and paid £3".

In 1913, The New York Times reported "The Bullingdon represents the acme of exclusiveness at Oxford; it is the club of the sons of nobility, the sons of great wealth; its membership represents the 'young bloods' of the university".