I said to you that I hadn’t enjoyed the sixth floor because David Plowright had all these political connections and didn’t need my services very much. But Charles Allen was not experienced in the political world at all. We’d actually stopped having receptions at party conferences, David Plowright phased them out a bit in my era, much to my annoyance because a lot of the other ITV companies would have receptions there. As soon as Charles came in, he revived them and in that respect I was closer to Charles Allen because he wanted to know about the political world, because he wanted to improve his connections with the world. That fed right the way through to when he was involved with the Commonwealth Games, which was a major thing with new Labour, and he built up his connections through there. I think he eventually joined the Labour party. So I was, in that respect, brought back into the fold and he supported the regional programmes, regional political programme, for a while at least before it became a victim of this rationalisation of resources. So in that respect, he didn’t know much about the political people. I didn’t have much to do with Gerry Robinson. He was above my pay grade really.
