The Politics Show

I was reading the Metro newspaper on the way into work today, and noticed a 60 second interview with Roy “The Boy” Brindley. Presumably the main thrust of the interview was to promote Brindley’s new autobiography “Life’s A Gamble”, and many of the questions drew interesting responses from the old school poker pro.

However, after a series of poker/gambling related stories, the interviewer scores a stunning own goal by veering off course and asking Brindley for his views on the current state of the UK economy.

The question was along the lines of “Who would you bet on to win the next general election?”

In a perfect world, Brindley would now launch into an analysis of the false credit boom, excessive wastage, public sector pensions black hole, ineffective VAT cut, spineless FSA, stealth taxes, rife corruption, impact of the SNP attracting key Scottish Labour votes, plunging value of sterling, genuine civil unrest and imminent soaring tax rises to pay for this fiasco. From this he might conclude that the current government will likely be annihilated at the next General Election.

Unfortunately, Roy goes down a rather more simplistic route and muses that the Opposition leader is a public schoolboy, Gordon Brown hasn’t done badly with the economy in the circumstances (!) and since it’s a two horse race, Gordon is the value to win.

The moral of the story for interviewers, I guess, is don’t ask your average poker player anything unrelated to hole cards, position, ranges, football or horses.