Let just me say straight away the five most shocking things I'll say in this blog:
1. I'm not on Twitter 24/7. Therefore there are trends that I don't see.
2.When I'm on Sky Paper Review, I don't look at Twitter in between the two programmes that paper reviewers do. Some people do. They'll be onscreen, finish, and then rush back to their phones to see what people had to say. To me that's like going out of the studio, walking down the street and yelling: "Did I look like hell or what? Did I talk rubbish?"
3. Many of the trends on Twitter are - I'll let Shakespeare say it: "As ephemeral as the air".
4. Paper reviews - Sky Paper Review , BBC Papers or anywhere else are actually not about the papers!
Someone once tweeted to ask me why I was so "biased" whenever I talked about the news/newspapers? That's because paper review programmes are comment shows. Not about reading the papers. This is obviously true because if you can read this blog you can read a newspaper, and nobody looks at a screen to watch someone reading to them. You watch because paper reviews are part of that genre begun in America known as: "infotainment"- a hybrid of news and entertainment. Jon Stewart, late of The Daily Show is the master of the genre, so good at it that Millennnials would get their news content from him, even though he told them over and over that he was just a comedian.
Paper reviews fall into the category of debate programmes with people of often opposing views arguing over their interpretation of the news. Late at night, that's apparently what you want to see.
The fifth shocker is this: as a reviewer you're supposed to review what's in front of you, what you're given. You can't bring your own paper in and say: "Hey, can we talk about The Daily Bugle? And you certainly don't say on-air: "Why don't we talk about that story that's top trend on Twitter?"
Because a broadcaster - and you yourself - can be subject to libel. You can make mistakes, a grave error in talking about something before you can "stand it up" : i.e get it verified.
Paper reviews don't talk about entire papers because of that. This is not uncommon.
In the end it's all down to the broadcaster.
We were told it wasn't going to be covered so we skipped the story. The Cameron biog that contains the "pig-gate" story is being serialized in The Daily Mail. Frankly, any day that I don't talk about or have to say the words: The Daily Mail; The Mail On Sunday or Mail Online - is a good day.
Neither I nor my co-guest knew that BBC Papers had made the same decision last night not to run with "pig-gate".
How did I know that?
Because when I got home, and glanced at Twitter, I saw a tweet from LBC presenter Iain Dale. That's how I knew that something was up.
The last tweet I got from Iain, LBC radio host and Sky Paper reviewer, was to chastise me for talking over Toby Young's rightwing stream-of-consciousness recently on Any Questions. I thought I was doing the listening public a favour.
But Iain tweeted to tell me that I had displayed "bad manners".
So seeing his name last night on my TL worried me a bit:
Wow, proud of you, Iain.
And now with the news in his tweet of this morning:
Well, I'm happy for him, too.
I'm happy, too, for that vengeful Blairite ultra out there - who just got a big, fat book contract.