23.5.06

Have I Got Guy Goma For You

Since Angus Deayton left. I find that the quality of Have I Got News for You is very dependent on who the guest presenter is. I’m sure that this isn’t the first time that comedian Alexander Armstrong has taken the chair, and I certainly hope that it won’t be the last. He slides into the role with comfortable ease and doesn’t exude any of the supercilious smugness that Deayton was prone to.

Although Guy Goma’s accidental interview by BBC news is old hat by now, it was watching Have I Got News for You last night that I actually saw it for myself for the first time, including a slow-motion replay of his realisation that he’s on air.

There seems to have been some confusion about how this happened, including the notion that Guy was a taxi driver. Instead it seems that at some point the Guy to be interviewed for an IT job got mixed up with the Guy to be interviewed for an IT news item. As one of the panellists said, if he had been a taxi driver he would’ve talked with much greater authority on a subject he knew nothing about.

I’ve heard a lot of different impressions of how he is supposed to have looked, but to me, and all the folks on HIGNFY, the unanimous feeling was respect for how well he did. After an initial, wordless, “WHOOPS!” he then managed to talk half-convincingly on a subject he wasn't prepared for. Huge respect for this guy.

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