632 Ear To The Ground

First  viewed  : Summer  1983

This  must  be  one  of  the  more  obscure  shows  featured  here, a  late  night  current  affairs  show  on  Channel  4   directed  at  young  people. There  is  a  little  footage  on  YouTube  as  The  Farm  were  featured  in  their  infancy  during  a  feature  on  that  little-covered  topic, unemployment  in  Liverpool. I  recall  it  because  I  was  quite  taken  with  one  of  the  presenters, a  fresh-faced , very  straight,  young  lady  called  Julie  Hall.

She  went  on  to  be  a  political  correspondent  for  ITN  then  nailed  her  colours  to  the  mast  by  taking  on  the  job  of  Neil  Kinnock's  chief  spin  doctor  which  involved  a  presumably  platonic  accommodation  arrangement  with  Peter  Mandelson. She  achieved  notoriety  during  the  1992 election  campaign  over  an  election  broadcast  about  an  NHS  case  for  both  being  cavalier  with  the  truth  and  at  least  partially  breaching  patient  confidentiality. When  Kinnock  resigned  immediately  after  his  defeat,  she  was  out of  a  job. I  actually  saw  her  in  the  flesh  at  Burtonwood  Services  a  couple  of  years  later. In  the  nineties  she  was  involved  with  Tony  Blair's  Active  Community  Unit  and  now  works  in  academia.

There's  one  other  reason  why  I  recall  her; I  married  someone  of  the  same  name  in  1997.